Rob wraps about the Tuffy Steeper

Rob Cooke explains why the Tuffy Steeper makes a great tea companion, especially on-the-go...

Anybody else wondering what else he has in his back pocket...???

Roughing It with Gourmet Amenities

One of our newest customers just shared this photo with me. He emailed to show off how he hooks up great loose leaf tea while camping!


I met him and a bunch of other backpackers interested in brewing loose tea on the trail through a forum on backpackinglight.com. One of the forum members had suggested our Tuffy Steeper - due to its compact, lightweight structure. I added that for people who also enjoy a cuppa joe, the Tuffy can double as a filter for coarse ground coffee beans. And while that does add practicality, being a purist myself, I would buy separate ones for the trail so that residual coffee bean oils wouldn't taint my tea. Admittedly anal, I'm sure other tea geeks would agree.

Thanks Steve for giving our Tuffy Steeper a shot as your backpacking tea filter and we can't wait to see more photos of our Tuffy on the trails of Yellowstone. Congrats on your new job there!

As a matter of fact, we'd love to see everyone's photos of our tea gear in use. Send me your stories and photos, info@theteaspot.com

Tuffy Video Review by Organic Earth

So Stinkin Cute!

With a tip of the hat to The Beatles, this tiny yellow submarine infuser is made from heat-resistant silicone (like our Tuffy Steepers), and submerges to the bottom of your cup to steep. Though it doesn't look like it offers your tea leaves much room to expand, I'd like to see this Tea Sub go head-to-head with the Sharky Infuser in a cuteness contest.

I found this new tea infuser on The Green Head - a great gadget site with quite a lot of tea gear, including our own Steepware. I also snagged these photos from there.

Go Tuffy!

We were pretty excited to get the call telling us that our Tuffy Steeper won a Gear of the Year award... and we're listed at the top of the tea category!  Like all of our products, this one was a labor of love, for loose leaf tea of course.  And, also like with all our products, it was designed with a singular focus on our mission of making loose leaf tea an everyday luxury.  The Tuffy was designed to do exactly that - to make it easy to steep loose leaf tea in any of your existing teapots or mugs, and to allow you to take your loose leaf tea on the road.  Top of mind at The Tea Spot is always the customer, and the customer experience.  We found the highest grade silicone, and molded it into an easy and fun-to-use tool for your favorite loose-leaf teas.  And what a thrill it is when our ideas and work get recognized as doing what they're supposed to!

The Tea Spot steeps loose tea in WHAT?!?!?!

We get a lot of questions regarding the choice of silicone for our Tuffy Steepers. As the socially responsible loose leaf tea company, and the creators of STEEPWARE... it was a rather dramatic departure from handcrafted porcelain! And needless to say, for a tea connoisseur, the thought of steeping your tea in a rubber basket is, at first blush, not very appealing! But I would challenge even some of the most refined tea drinkers to carry a Silicone Tuffy Tea Steeper around on their next few out of town trips… and I’d bet that most of them will ultimately succumb and become users of this nice, big, and practical loose leaf tea filter that folds up to less than half of its total volume. Yes, the first time you smell a new Tuffy, it’s going to smell of rubber – but pour boiling water through it, and let it sit for a while – it will be odorless after your first steeping (it you prefer to rinse it with tea that will go to water your favorite plant later, be my guest…

There was a lot of research and testing done on silicone materials before we came out with this product – that’s why our’s is made with a German-grade (not US, sorry!) silicone – it exceeds the FDA standards, and is considered “medical-grade” silicone. I too was a bit taken aback the first time I saw a quiche baked in a flimsy rubber pan – wouldn’t that rubber melt right into my food?! Silicone rubber is a synthetic rubber made from a polymer of silicon and oxygen, and food-grade silicone is considered very inert. Silicon is one of the most plentiful elements in the Earth's crust, second only to oxygen. The melting point of our Silicone is 932°F - not a likely temperature to get anywhere close to while making tea…

In addition, we feel that there's no big barrier to purchasing and using silicone rubber objects, if you follow the general responsible consumption plan, aka, Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. Silicone is certainly preferable to toxic plastics, and a happy alternative material (so far as we know) in baby bottles and non-stick pans. It's reasonable to replace disposable paper muffin tin liners and the like with silicone liners, if we use the silicone liners for years and years. So… no need to make things complicated next time you camping or on the road – you can just grab a Tuffy Steeper, along with some of your favorite tea leaves and stay well anti-oxidized… that’s why we created it – so drink up, and feel good about it!

Show us some love.. & get a FREE $15 Gift Card!

We are thrilled to announce the launch of our TUFFY STEEPER, a compact silicone tea steeper...


... and receive your FREE Gift Certificate by email within 1 business day. Attach your name & your email address in order to receive the gift certificate.



Offer Expired... June 15th, 2009

Hey Tuffy Steeper, What's Your Name?

I think the worst thing about being an unpaid intern is that I don’t get my own desk. Everything is shared, and usually in a state of disarray when I show up. Cracker crumbs on the desk, pencils on the floor, wonky keyboards, various post-it notes scattered around that say things like: “Danielle. Guy from hotel called. 617-594-9862.”One major bonus of having my own desk means that I can stash my personal necessities—in addition to the standard office supply fodder—conveniently in, on, and near it. Extra shoes, chap-stick, lotion, my favorite mug, photos of celebrations long passed, and perhaps most importantly: my secret stash of loose leaf tea and steepware. You know, the things that make a desk as home away from home as can be, despite the fact that piles of paperwork, renegade paperclips, and runaway bric-a-brac serve to remind me that I am, regretfully, at work. But alack! No desk is to be had for the time being. This means I must be on-the-go at all times, carrying everything I could possibly need between leaving home for work at 8 a.m. and leaving class at 10 p.m. in one trusty behemoth of a bag. Notebook, folder, keys, gum, two pens, one pencil, a stack of business cards, one hair stick, hand sanitizer, sunglasses, a voice recorder, mini brush and USB drive, wallet, hand lotion, eye drops, sunglasses, a delightful assortment of snacks and lip gloss, a Reese's Peanut Butter egg--whoops, nevermind, and a used copy of Jane Eyre all currently reside here. Perhaps I shouldlearn to live with less, but such is my lot: hauling my portable life on trains, buses, temporary desks, and classrooms.

Fortunately for me, a miraculous device has finally been created so that this process of hauling my crap around can include loose leaf tea. I don’t know about the rest of you, but no matter how small a steeping device is, it’s never. small. enough. Fragile parts or awkward shapes certainly don’t make them handy for travel, while loose leaf steeping mugs for travel essentially have yet to be perfected. Enter the Tuffy Steeper. This silicone steeper is, quite literally, what I have been waiting for all my life. Okay, not all my life, but ever since my loose leaf tea-drinking odyssey began two-and-a-half years ago. It collapses conveniently into a flat circle about a ¼” thick, and the combination lid/saucer fits snugly into the top, making it a cinch to add to my ridiculous bag of stuff. Since I’m already waxing girly with the contents of my purse, I’ll go ahead and make things worse by announcing that I just love that it’s purple.

The Tuffy Steeper also proves its genius in practice. As I fumble around in the office kitchen one morning, I’m quite pleased to be busting out my loose leaf tea in the workplace once again. Now I will say this: Unfortunately, this wonderfully roomy steeper is a smidgen too large (at the top) for my standard-issue 8 ounce coffee mug. Fortunately, it really had no affect whatsoever on my ability to steep tea. The top part of the steeper stuck out of the mug, and so what? If I had my own desk I’d also have my own (bigger) mug (instead I borrow a lonely mug from the dish rack). Cleanup at the end of the day involved nothing more than a quick swish of tap water before I was on my way to class. Personally, I think it would be pretty slick if these things had a sort of plastic sleeve or protective disc that the infuser could fit into, so that you could toss it around and not worry about those rogue cracker crumbs and extraneous debris getting all over it. In any case, I’m just chuffed that I can have my luxury loose-leaf tea to go.

Ode to Tuffy Steeper. And Colorado.

A Simply Perfect Mother's Day Gift- Make your mom fall in love with tea this Mother's Day.

I have to tell you, once I started working for a loose leaf tea company my mother was excited but skeptical. My entire life, and her entire life for that matter, we had grown up drinking Lipton, Tetley or Salada tea bags or some other tea bag that was most likely found in a plastic bag, in a Tupperware container, behind the bag of flour, at the back of the lazy susan. Despite the fact that we didn't know much about tea, tea was a part of a somewhat daily ritual, definitely a Saturday or Sunday afternoon ritual complete with biscotti, ricotta pie and friends. Still the idea of loose leaf tea seemed to evade my mother.

She wanted to learn about it, had heard from myself that it was so much better than what we had grown up with, and much better for you, but she wasn't sure that she could handle the process. So around February I sent her and my father their first loose leaf tea package, complete with STEEPING mugs,(my mom got the red one, red is her favorite color, dad got the blue) and the Tuffy Steeper. The tea arrived on Saturday morning. Saturday afternoon I get a call while I'm doing a demo of our tea at a local Gourmet Housewares store. I don't pick up. By the time I can get a second to take a look at my phone, my mom has called three times in a half an hour. Now just to note, my parents live in Vermont and I am 2000 miles away, so when she called three times in a short span of time, I get nervous.

I call her back and all I hear when I pick up the phone is "I LOVE this tea!!!" My mom repeated herself, "Oh my God Andrea, I LOVE this tea. I can't believe how good it is and it was so easy to make! I would be happy if I never had another tea bag again!" The tea she was referring to was Red Rocks, our Rooibos tea with vanilla and almonds. "And your father LOVES his Earl Grey," she said. She was so excited that the tea was amazing and that it was easy to make, but was also saddened that she had been missing out on this her whole life! Every day after their tea arrived, I received one or two phone calls a day describing how much she loves her tea and how cozy the mug is. When my mom took a trip down to Boston to see our relatives she had to call me from the car "Do you know how hard my life is right now? The worst thing in my life is that I am going to your grandmother's house, and I know the only tea she is going to have there is Lipton, and all I want is a cup of Red Rocks!!! ". I quickly explained to her that she should have taken her Tuffy Steeper with her and some tea so she could have it on the road. She poo-pooed that idea saying that the Tuffy Steeper was for her office and that she would have to get another one to travel with. You can change some things with my mother, but once she has an idea in her head, its normally not all that easy to change.

So why am I telling you all of this? I am letting you know that I grew up in a family who only drank pretty bland Lipton tea and now my mom is thrilled to have a cup of amazing loose leaf tea every day. Loose leaf tea and a STEEPING cup or mug is a fantastic gift for Mother's Day. For the mom's who are more on-the-go or traveling types, the Tuffy Steeper paired with a tin of tea is a great idea. No more searching or wondering how to get a cost effective and useful gift this Mother's Day! And if your mom or grandmother is anything like my Italian mother who is set in her ways, convince her that making a cup of loose leaf tea can be an everyday luxury and they will be very grateful to you!

Tea on the Road - It’s getting a lot more interesting for tea lovers to travel in the US

Those of us who are tea fanatics, and/or drink tea like our lives depend on it, all have our own little tricks for getting our fix on the road. How many times have TSA guys been all over my “scissor” tea ball… (I carry my X-ray stealthy TUFFY STEEPER silicone infuser now!) or my Automatic Teapots - “does that thing play a tune?”… And we all know that “place” in every city to rush off to between meetings (Alice’s Tea Cup on the upper West side of New York City; Teaism in Dupont Circle, Washington, DC; the Imperial Tea Court in San Francisco, to name some of my favorites). Well, I’m finding less need to be frenetic about my travel stash any more, as more and more quality tea sellers pop up in new and surprising locations.

On a recent 3-day trip from Boulder to Cleveland and Rochester (a friend of mine offered condolences when I explained why I had to decline a dinner invite that weekend!) I had an amazing cup of freshly steeped tea on all three days away from home, none of which I had to prepare myself!

My departure from the Denver International Airport (DIA) was over an hour after my bus got to the terminal, so I started the trip well by chatting it up with my old friend and owner of the Cof-Tea café on the Main Concourse, Zach McNeal, over my morning standard Bolder Breakfast. Such a great treat to get my favorite breakfast tea, freshly made, at the airport! No longer a chore to have to wait for an arriving or departing flight at DIA with his loose leaf tea selection… Cof-Tea is open early, closes late, and is so central in DIA.

The next day, we had a quick lunch with my older daughter’s boyfriend in Cleveland. He recommended a sandwich place on the Case Western/Cleveland Institute of Music campus called Arabica Café. And oh, what a tea list! All 3 of us got different pots of loose-leaf tea, and they were all great – Japanese Sencha, Russian Caravan, and Oolong. My daughter sheepishly admitted that she never thought she’d find teas to rival what she got at home, until she discovered this place. Definitely fueled our 4+ hour drive to Rochester nicely…

Java’s, the café with an awesome vibe that will warm you inside and out, is located next door to the Eastman School of Music. Not only does it boast a nice tea list, but an entire second room of 20+ teas that you can also purchase in bulk. Way cool. I got to start my chilly Rochester morning with a cup of Puerh and a cup of Assam, then mixing the two and sharing with my daughter.

3 days, 3 locations - with no freshly steeped loose leaf tea until recently - and we enjoyed some of the best teas ever… Yes indeed, Change has come to America!

Simple Steps to Improving your Rooibos Tea

If you're new to loose leaf tea, seeing particles of your tea floating around in your cup isn't necessarily appealing to look at let alone drink. We're a culture that is used to bag tea, no muss, no fuss, nothing floating around in your drink.

The tea, or rather teasane, that is the worst culprit of this problem is Rooibos tea. Rooibos is not actually from the tea leaf, but rather is an South African herb that is very flavorful, has tons of nutrients, is caffeine free, but is VERY difficult to filter when making a cup of tea. It seems that no matter what strainer you use, a metal ball, mesh plastic, a Tuffy Steeper, etc. little bits of Rooibos get out and not only settle at the bottom of the cup, but many of the bits of tea feel the need to float right at the surface, ready to enter your mouth upon first sip. I no longer mind having the tea leaves or herbs floating in my tea, but for those of you who do, I am going to explain to you a fantastic and very simple way of steeping your Rooibos, like our Red Rocks, so that you can have your cup of tea without choking on any tea bits.

Step 1) Boil your water.

Step 2) While the water boils, put your Rooibos tea in an infuser/steeper, like the Tuffy Steeper pictured here.

Step 3) Leave the infuser off to the side, aka. do not put inside the cup, mug or teapot.

Step 4) Once the water comes to a boil, pour the water 2/3-4/5 of the way up the mug.

Step 5) With the water already in the mug, take your infuser with the tea in it, and slowly lower it into the mug.

Step 6) Wait at least 6 minutes for the Rooibos to steep.

Step 7) Pull the infuser out and you have a practically Rooibos free cup of tea!

The important step in this process is #5. Typically with loose leaf tea, our infuser with the tea is already in the mug and we pour the water over it. Normally this is the best way to steep. However, by doing this with Rooibos we're forcing the already fine tea bits right out of the holes of the infuser. Instead what we're demonstrating is that when you slowly lower the infuser into a cup or mug mostly filled with water, the water comes rushing into the holes and pushes the tea into the middle of the infuser. What you end with is a cup of tea with hardly anything floating it in.

I must give credit where credit is due, it was not me, but rather my coworker who came up with this idea and described this simple change in procedure and therefore we can all thank him for a better cup of Rooibos tea!

Show Us Your Tea Spot!

We want to feature you & your favorite place to enjoy a cuppa tea. Send us a photo of your garden, kitchen nook, driver's seat of your car, or wherever you find solace with your tea.

We'll feature the photos here and our favorite 3 submissions will receive a free Tuffy Steeper & Tea Spot t-shirt.

Email your tea spot photo to info@theteaspot.com. In the body of the email please include your name & a short description of Your Tea Spot (50 words or less). We'll be collecting submissions throughout this month. Have fun with it!