Editorial policy

Sourcing

Every factual claim on this site is either a manufacturer’s published specification, a cited published brewing guideline, or arithmetic performed on one of those two. Each one carries a link to the page it came from, next to the claim rather than in a bibliography at the bottom.

• Product specifications come from the manufacturer’s own page wherever one could be retrieved. When it could not, we cite the specific retailer listing we did read and the source label names that retailer, so you can always tell which kind of source it was.
• Brewing parameters — temperatures, times and ratios — are attributed on every page where they appear. Where two credible sources disagree, we say so rather than picking one and presenting it as settled.
• Where a maker publishes nothing verifiable, the product card reads Not verified. We do not fill the gap from a listing or from memory.
• Arithmetic is shown. If a number is derived rather than published, the working is on the page.

What we will not publish

• Test results. We have run no tests. No boil times, no thermal measurements, no controlled tastings, and no phrase resembling “in our testing”.
• Reviews or ratings we did not collect. There are no star ratings and no review counts anywhere on this site, and no Review or AggregateRating markup in its structured data.
• Testimonials. We have no customers and therefore no testimonials.
• Prices typed by hand. Prices render only from an automated check with the date attached, or the page says Check price.
• Credentials nobody holds. No expert panel, no certifications, no tenure claims, no “medically reviewed by”.
• Health claims. This is a gear site. Where a health-adjacent topic comes up — caffeine, for instance — we cite a regulator and stop there.

Corrections

If something here is wrong, tell us: info@steepandspout.com or the contact form. Include the page and, if you can, the source that shows the error.

1. We check the claim against the original source.
2. If it is wrong, we fix it and update the page’s Last updated date.
3. If the error changed a recommendation, we say so in the text rather than editing quietly. A silent fix to a pick is the thing we are criticizing other sites for.
4. If it is not wrong, we reply and explain why, with the source.

The bar for a correction is a source, not a disagreement. A different opinion about which kettle is nicer is not an error; a wrong published capacity is.

Update cadence

Dates mean something here

The Last updated date on a page changes only when the content genuinely changes. We do not re-date pages cosmetically to look fresh, and the automated price check — which runs daily and redeploys the site — does not touch it.

This matters more than it sounds. A site that re-stamps every page on every deploy has made its own dates meaningless, and the whole point of publishing a date is that a reader can trust it.

Independence

No manufacturer has paid for placement here, sent us a product, or seen a page before it was published. If any of that ever changes, it will be disclosed on the page in question and not only here.

We earn affiliate commission on purchases made through our links, which is set out in full on the disclosure page. Commission rate plays no part in ranking.

Authorship

Everything here is written by Scooter M., and the byline on every page names that person because a person wrote it. There is no editorial team, and inventing one would be the same kind of borrowed authority as inventing a lab.

The method that replaces the credential is set out on how we pick.

AI use

Where AI tooling is used in producing this site, the same rules apply as to everything else: every factual claim must trace to a cited source, and no page ships a figure we could not point at. The sourcing rules above are the standard, regardless of what drafted a sentence.