I'm just not sure how this is better than the tea ball I've had for the last fifteen years...

Agreed, Ben. Or alternately a pot with a built in diffuser. I guess the idea is you drop the tea in top and stir to diffuse the tea. For people who only drink 1 cup hot at a time, I guess this is a little more convenient. i fail to see it as worth 18$ though, especially as its single user at a time and as such you can't really show it off to guests (unless you buy like 5).

a teaball also costs less than $2, compared to the $18 for this contraption.

Seems like this stick gives your tea leaves more room to unfurl and expand than teaballs do, which provides a more flavorful cup of tea (the teaballs don't generally have enough space inside for this). Other than that, it's not necessarily better than your teaball, but if one didn't already own a teaball-like gadget then one could purchase this stick. I don't think treehugger is telling us to pitch our current teaballs, they're just providing a beautifully-designed option. Would make a killer gift, along with some organic fairly-traded loose tea, too.

This teastick is a stellar device for those of us who drink tea with abandon. I picked one up at a shop in Cambridge, Massachusetts called the Museum of Useful Things. However, there is one minor issue with its design. It does not perform well when the loose tea has small particles (e.g. rooibos, teas with lots of ground herbs or tiny flower petals.) I brewed some ginseng peppermint tea and ended up with a mouthful of grainy, ginsengy nastiness! If you're into big, chunky loose teas like jasmine, gunpowder or lapsang souchong, you'll be in steamy and fragrant eco-bliss with this clever little doodad.

The difference is that this device meets the elite standards of modernist design....and its more expensive, so you know, there's that to look forward to.

Yep, another sad example of treehugger = disposible income. Sorry, but I'll stick with my $1 teaball.

As for the comment about there being less room in a teaball, I don't have that problem. I fill mine to less than half and I find that plenty for one cup of tea.

Teaballs - tea leaves stick out, difficult to fill, have to handle the tea (or use a teaspoon). Grungy, difficult to clean. Empying requires more yuckiness. Teastick - slide, scoop, close, brew, slide, tap, empty. Simple. Sometimes good design costs a little more.

The editors could also have gotten this tip way back when the first story (about the lovely over-packaged tea bags) was all the rage. After all, the Tea Stick was the reader-recommended alternative in the comments to that blog entry (comment #6 from RainyDayKitchen - who sells the TeaStick - darn capitalist infiltrators!)

Andy, after you use a tea ball a few times, you get good at scooping up just what you need.

The one I own is attached to spring-loaded tongs. Pinch=open. Scoop the tea. Release=close. And then dunk. It takes me about 5 seconds to do the above. I paid 5 bucks for mine. Cleaning takes about 10-20 seconds of scrubbing with a stiff-bristled brush. The ball has a primitive elegance. And you can use it for impromptu kitchen puppet shows.

I have a teaball that belonged to my grandmother and I will continue to use it but I do have a comment about the stick... if it is "tapped" too hard at cleaning will it still open and close?

One not-so-subtle design weakness: While a teaball will manage in any height cup, this thing has a fixed height (unlike the broad variety of tea mugs out there).

A nice doodad, but I personally agree with the teaball users on this one :)

Well, this is embarrassing, but I have one of these. Or something similar in design. It came as part of a pack of doo dads a girlfriend (long since dumped) brought home from some tupperware party type thing.

You don't know how many times I tried to grate cinnimon and lemon zest with that thing...

"You don't know how many times I tried to grate cinnimon and lemon zest with that thing..."

Now that you mention it, I might have made the same mistake if I had found this in my kitchen.

It's kind of hard to tell how large this Teastick is from the photo. However, it seems that tea leaves would try to expand equally in all directions and so would have less space in a cylinder (Teastick) than in a sphere (tea ball). For the people who have it (and aren't using it to grate your favorite spices) -- does the tea actually take up the whole space vertically?
Also -- if you really want to make sure your tea has legroom, go for a tea basket -- they go for some $6, clean fast (assuming you don't let your tea leaves dry out within), and are reusable for a long time (been using the same one for over a decade now).

Well, I don't know about the rest of you, but I think it's a great idea for scooping/brewing/disposing of loose tea.

As an owner of numerous tea ball doo-dads over the years, this one strikes me as perfect for the office, and much less messy, which seems to be the point of their design goal looking at the sellers' site.

No regular TH reader should be surprised by the pattern here as in most consumer design: one person creates a new design, sells it for way too much money and eventually, if the object is truly new and useful, it is mass produced and the price goes down. Nuff said.

What's wrong with regular teabags? They can be tossed into your compost pile.

"What's wrong with regular teabags? They can be tossed into your compost pile."

If you compost them, I suppose they are not too much of a problem, except that doing without is even better.

They fall into that category of "small, but lots of 'em" along with toothpaste and such. How many hundreds of millions of people drink tea each day? Multiply that by the amount of material it takes to make a teabag and the extra amount of space it takes to ship them vs. just tea leaves, and that's probably quite a lot.

"They fall into that category of "small, but lots of 'em" along with toothpaste and such. How many hundreds of millions of people drink tea each day? Multiply that by the amount of material it takes to make a teabag and the extra amount of space it takes to ship them vs. just tea leaves, and that's probably quite a lot."

In the grand scheme of things, tea bag waste is pretty low on the totem pole of priorities.

Plus, one needs to consider that tea bags provide portability and ease of use, such that someone is far more likely to take tea (or herbal infusions) that way than from loose lead (especially if the herbal mix includes roots and/or seeds, which must be decocted). So there's health implications involved with tea bags -- ie, they help people to make healthier choices (eg, instead of drinking coffee, soda pop, etc).

And speaking of herbal mixtures, what are the energy and resource implications of simply dropping a bag in hot water versus boiling water for 20 minutes (minimum) for decoction, then steeping for a minimum of 10 minutes for infusion? That's not to mention the amount of time and effort involved in each one.

Then you can even think about packaging and waste. If you go to a store, most loose leaf teas and herbal mixtures are sold in tin containers, whereas many tea bags are sold in paper boxes, with a reclosable wax pouch. And even though the herbs and teas in bags are probably of inferior quality, it's possible that they remain potent longer than certain loose leaf options.

In sum, I just don't think it's so one-sided.

Those wasteful loose tea tins: I use those to keep my spices, which I buy in bulk bags. They're colorful and do the job nicely.

I bought one of these teasticks and mine definitely is superior to the traditional teaball.

two reasons: it infuses the tea much more effectively. The single cup of tea tastes exactly the same as a well-brewed pot of tea, whereas I have found a teaball to be a lot weaker. Second it's a lot easier to clean. I always wound up using part of a paper towel to get all the tealeaves out of the teaball, whereas this thing you just tap it on the edge of the trash (or compost, take you pick) can and then maybe rinse it.

I guess it depends on whether you'll pay extra for a good mug of tea (and depending on the kind of tea you buy you'll alreay know whether it's right for you).

Does that mean treehugger=$$? Probably. Does a hybrid cost more than a used gas-guzzler? Probably. Does solar cost more to install than a conventional oilburner? Probably.

What's really wrong with paying more for good design & something that works better?

Has anyone tried this? I am wondering if the all metal construction makes the handle too hot to touch comfortably due to conductivity? thanks.

I think this is exactly what I'm looking for, the cup I make my tea in is very narrow and tall and only fits the smallest tea balls. I am using one now and only fill it about half way, but still the leaves have no room to go anywhere and end up filling the entire sphere. Does anyone know the exact dimensions or have a photo with some comparable objects in it?