I wanted a teapot that timed the infusion of my tea. Not a tea-maker. I’d tried one of those before, but could never get it to produce as good a quality of brew with its drip-drip mechanism as you can when you immerse all the fresh tealeaves at once. And besides, I wasn’t interested in a 3-story AC device that would keep reheating my steeped tea – but a more classic teapot that I could take with me to the table or the garden. I just wanted it to consistently produce a perfect pot of tea, without my needing to sit by with a timer and pull the steaming hot wet leaves out at precisely the right moment… humpf. Where to start? How do you integrate a mechanism with something that doesn’t draw current or have batteries? Was this an unrealistic expectation? It kept gnawing at me. I kept doodling. Springs? Make use of buoyancy? Have the infuser pop up out of the water at the end of the steeping cycle? A ratcheted mechanism that rotates or lifts the leaves out of the water? Or that operates like a French press upside-down?
