In praise of bamboo tea tools

Don’t we all love and even obsess about our teapots? Whether Yixing or Chao Zhou, tetsubin or a Brown Betty, we all have our favorites. Most of us probably also have favorite cups or mugs or tiny gong fu cups. We even write and ask about types of tea kettles for heating water, from electronic temperature setting ones to charcoal fire pots. Lots of us have a favorite tea ball or infuser or travel tea mug.

Much as I have my favorites of all of those, I vary which ones I use daily. But there’s one thing that I use everyday. Well, actually two. My bamboo teapot leaf scrapper and my bamboo tea measuring spoon. Almost every time I pick them up I’m reminded again and amazed at all the shapes and functions that bamboo can be put to. I’ve had mine for years and amazingly, they don’t seem to break. Steamed and shaped or carved, a bamboo tool never scrapes or harms the inside of my clay pots and seems to remove the leaves better than any miracle plastic implement. And because it’s not uniform in shape and szie like a metal teaspoon, my bamboo measuring spoon is better because it always seems to accomdate the different leaf shapes and sizes for every particular brew I’m making. Once or twice I’ve even used the sharpened pick tool to extract leaves from a spout or the filter holes on the inside of my pot.

Though I haven’t seen any posts about them, tea tools are the unsung heroes and faithful companions of the tea world.