Customer Reviews

Bodum Assam 4-Cup Tea Press Teapot

5 star:		(68)
4 star:		(28)
3 star:		(14)
2 star:		(19)
1 star:		(17)

 

 

I bought this with the bodum tea warmer (the electic one they sell here) and use it every morning at work. It is WONDERFUL, as I can brew up tea or just have hot water on hand for teabags or my chai tea mixes. There's a hot water tap at work from the coffee maker, so it's simple to fill up. If I had this at home, I'd get a 4-cup pyrex cup so I could microwave that much water at once.

CLEANING:
You use a scrub brush every few days if needed. One of those yellow sponges with green scrubbies on them. The infuster does NOT hold on to flavor unless you are simply not washing it. The infuser is plastic, so if you don't actually wash it off but just run water over it, yes it will retain odor/taste. You have to have a semi abrasive action to take off whatever hangs around. Really not an issue if you aren't a completely lazy bum. Takes me about 30 seconds to run a scrubby sponge around the inside and outside and I only need to do that if I've left it sitting around for hours on end with strong tea leaves inside.

The plunger does NOT get stuck unless you are a complete weakling or have a defective product. There's suction at work once you've pushed it all the way down, so of course it won't glide up smoothly with a light tug. I probably use more strength opening a jar of jam than I do lifting the plunger.

Combine this with the warmer and you've a GREAT product. You can have tea on hand for hours and sip your mornings away.

They also sell a 2 cup and a 6 cup model. Judge how much you might drink and then pick the one that suits you best. I sometimes wish I had the 6 cup one instead, as I find that if I have that much tea on hand at my desk, it's very easy to drink and suddenly find it all gone without thinking about it. I love it.

I received this tea press as a present and I love it. It is easy to clean and easy to see the strength of the tea brewing. In the time it takes to heat the water, you can fill the basket with your favorite loose tea, take your cup and saucer from the cabinet and put some cookies on a plate. And did I say how easy it is to clean? I take my tea leaves and feed my plants with them, then I simply rinse and wash the parts.

I love this tea press. In fact I have a large one for company and a small one when it is just the two of us. The previous reviewer said that there were tea leaves everywhere but I think she was probably not using tea leaves but processed tea which is very small and look almost like coffee grounds. So you do need to take care that you buy the right kind of tea which is pretty easy when you know what to look for. I have had mine for a year now and have never had a problem.

As for the care of this it is easy to clean and pretty sturdy. I recommend it to anyone who likes tea.

Enjoy!

Okay, I admit, cute is a big draw, however, as most Bodum products, this is a very functional item.

JUST THE RIGHT SIZE:
This is a perfect size as a personal teapot. It holds a full 16 oz., about 2 mugs worth. For my purposes, it is enough to drink in one sitting of reading a chapter in a book. Though it cools, it does not cool enough to be unpalatable for the 2 mug capacity.

PLASTIC INSERT COULD BE BETTER DESIGNED TO STAY PUT WHILE POURING:
The plastic insert, though it has these ear things to catch on the glass pot, when you are pouring the last bit of tea, is inclined to plop out. You need to hold the top on, while pouring that last bit. It is too bad this does not rotate in, so that it latches better. If you have a cat sitting on your lap while reading two hands are just not available.

IF YOU DON'T WANT TO STOP BREWING MAKE SURE PLUNGER IS ABOVE WATER LEVEL:
I found that if the plunger is below the water level, it quickly drops, stopping the brewing process, you need to be sure to leave it above the water level to avoid this. It is too bad it was not done a bit different to avoid this. I found I had to play with it a bit to get it where I wanted, prior to stopping the tea from steeping. Once it is done it does a great job of stopping the steeping. Just don't try to say that out loud.

DON'T KNOW HOW IT IS WITH LOOSE TEA:
I only used this with tea bags, as I had no loose tea on hand. I don't know how it will do. However the holes in the basket looked a bit large, so a very fine tea may get out; creating sludge.

OVERALL QUALITY:
Bodum does a nice job designing. I liked this tea pot without a protruding spout. It takes up less room, and is not so vulnerable in the dishwasher. I was concerned that it would weep down the side of the pot when I poured, but it did not. I am a tad bit dissappointed in the plastic insert in that it falls out easy, but for the price I think it is okay.

I recently purchased this pot from Amazon, and also ordered a variety of high grade specialty teas from another internet company. One of the teas was a cranberry tea, which had dried cranberries in the blend. I cleaned the infuser well after brewing the flavored tea, but found my next brew of oolong tasted like the cranberry! The plastic infuser apparently absorbs odors and tastes very easily... and these flavors are difficult to remove without long-term soaking. Overall, the pot itself works very well, but be careful if you like a variety of blends and flavors.

I'd been looking for a small teapot for months when I ran across this tea press. I love having herbal tea on cold evenings, but one cup is not enough and a standard teapot is way too much. This pot is just right. Since it's a tea press, you can steep the tea exactly the way you like it, without having to fish out a tea bag or mess with a tea ball. I have an electric mug warmer on my desk, and the pot fits beautifully. With the tea leaves out of circulation, I don't have to worry about a stewed tea taste, but my tea is properly warm all evening.

I do have two minor quibbles. The first is that the plunger will sink to the bottom of the pot all by itself. I have to tilt it slightly while the tea steeps. The second problem is that the lid fits only when the tea strainer is in the pot, so you are stuck with leaving the strainer in place. I still love my little pot, but it's a four star experience. Fix the lid, and it's five star all the way!!

i have a collection of 2-4 cup tea pots which i use frequently. this is the one i use the most, because it's the most convenient.

since it's microwave safe, i can heat the warming water in the teapot. i like the press action, because i don't have to worry about removing an infuser until i'm ready to wash the teapot. i don't use gunpowder tea, so i have minimal problems with bits in the pot. yes, loose tea does sometimes get stuck in the strainer, but it's not that hard to remove. the shape of the pot keeps any tea leaves from ending up in the cup.

i have put the strainer and the teapot through the dishwasher many many times over the four years i owned my original (i'm ordering a replacement--no matter how good the manufacturer, glass still breaks when dropped in the sink). all the parts look the way they did the day i opened the package.

i highly recommend this teapot.

The design is completely upside-down. It should have been done where you lift the tea up out of the water rather than press it into some compression chamber. If they had done it that way they could have had a far finer, more open mesh in their infuser basket.

As it is the infuser basket is very closed off, with only a few hundred holes, of over 1mm in diameter, in contact with the surrounding water (compared to thousands of tiny holes in a wire or plastic mesh infuser). This means that there is very little circulation of the water via convection, and means that inside the infuser basket the liquid will reach saturation quickly while outside the infusion will be far too weak. You therefore must manually circulate it in order to get proper infusion. Some leaves will get through as a result of this pumping and the larger holes.

Furthermore, one simply *must* make the full 16oz or so of tea with this design, as less liquid will not reach the infuser basket because the compression chamber is at the bottom! Duh!

And to top all that off (or bottom it out, as it were), the damn plunger sinks of its own accord, cutting off even more of the infusbale area. There is no simple way to stop this from happening. They could have put a couple little nubs at the bottom and top of the pole, which one would twist into a slot and would firmly keep the plunger up or down as you wanted it. Instead, you have a delicate balancing act.

Worse off yet (if it could get worse), the whole stated advantage of the product is leaving the tea sitting there post-infusion time without it oversteeping and getting bitter. But the glass is beaker-material and while it stays warm OK is nowhere near as effective as the good old lined cast iron teapots that you heat up with boiling water first and then infuse with a proper mesh basket that reaches all the way to the bottom and gets lifted out when done. So with this thing your cold tea isn't oversteeped. Bonus.

The thing is designed to appear clever but falls on its face (or on its plunger). They deserve this wrap on the knuckles.

After I was introduced to the superiority and richness of loose-leaf tea over the much compromised and degraded tea bag format, I want on a quest to find the ultimate tea infuser. I tried a steel mesh ball, a mesh net that goes over the tea mug, and a French Press. I then opted for the glass and metal Bodum Assam 4-Cup Tea Press over the less expensive plastic one because the plastic might melt, might adversely affect flavor, and its filter holes were too big to filter all forms of loose tea. The Bodum Assam 4-Cup Press proved superior in terms of its filter (no loose tea particles floating in the water), its heavy-duty construction, its dishwater-safe feature, and its ease of use. You can forget all the other methods for infusing tea. Get the Bodum.

This is a fine product. I've been using it for six months now without any problems, including the plunger. It works almost exactly like a French press for coffee. Regarding complaints form other users--I put it in the dishwasher once a week, which gets rid of odors. It's much easier to use than a teaball or infuser...but you cannot leave the tea without being plunged any longer than you normally would or it will get bitter.