About Steep & Spout

Who writes this

I am Scooter M.. I got into loose-leaf sideways, through coffee gear I already owned. I read the manuals, compile the published specs, do the arithmetic, and write down what I find. No lab coat, and no units in a test kitchen.

That is the whole biography, and the omissions in it are deliberate. I am not a tea master. I do not have a certification. I have not been doing this for fifteen years, and if I said I had, you would have no way to check.

What I am is genuinely interested in this, which is a smaller claim and a true one. I got into loose leaf sideways, through coffee gear I already owned, and the thing that struck me immediately was how much of the writing about it assumes you already know the vocabulary. That is the gap this site exists in.

What this site does not do

We have not tested any of the gear on this site. There is no test kitchen, no shelf of kettles, no thermal camera and no controlled tasting. Nobody here has held a Fellow Stagg EKG.

That is worth stating in the first paragraph of the page rather than the last, because almost every site competing for these searches implies a lab that does not exist. The phrasing to watch for is “in our testing” attached to twenty products across four unrelated categories, published by a company with no premises.

We would rather be the site that says plainly what it has not done than the site that borrows a credential.

What we do instead

Compile what the manufacturers actually publish, name the page every figure came from, and explain what those figures mean for someone making tea. Across 23 products there are currently 60 specifications on this site with a named source next to them, and every one of those links is live on the page where the number appears.

Where a maker publishes nothing we could verify, the product card says Not verified rather than quietly borrowing a figure from a retail listing. That gap is a finding in its own right: a great deal of tea gear ships with no spec sheet at all, and a beginner is better served by knowing that than by a confident number nobody stands behind.

The full method, including how picks are ordered and what would make us change one, is on how we pick.

Who this is for

Someone assembling a first loose-leaf setup, often arriving from coffee, who wants the minimal correct kit explained without being made to feel stupid about it.

That reader shapes everything here. It is why the starter pages lead with what you can skip, why the answer is two objects, and why a page titled tea gear you can skip exists on a site that earns a commission when you buy tea gear.

How this is funded

Affiliate commission. When you buy through a link here we earn a percentage, at no extra cost to you. Amazon is currently the only retailer we earn from, and the full arrangement is written out on the disclosure page.

The honest version of that arrangement is that it creates a pressure, and the defense against it is structural rather than a promise: every pick names who should skip it, at least one pick per roundup is something we tell you not to buy, and the cheapest correct answer is usually the recommended one. A fifteen-dollar thermometer outranks a hundred-dollar kettle on several pages here, and the commission on those is not close.

What is on the site

45 pages across six sections: kettles, infusers and steepers, teapots, a beginner pathway, brewing reference material, and a section written specifically for people arriving from coffee. Everything is listed on the sitemap page.

Corrections

If something here is wrong, tell me and I will fix it and say that I did. That is the arrangement described in the editorial policy, and the address is info@steepandspout.com or the contact form.