Bringing tea making to the 21st century

While our technologically minded cousins across the pond might have their Dr Pepper, their Mountain Dew and their “caw-fee,” our little island nation is more content to sip contentedly on a cup of fine chai. However, while coffee brewing has become heavily mechanised in the past couple of decades, with fancy machines that bring technology to the fore in its production, tea has been left out of this advancement, until now.

Cambridge Consultants are the team behind the creation of this new machine, known as the Tê. It looks very much like a contemporary coffee maker and features disposable capsules, but they're filled with tea. There's also no milk integration as of yet, though presumably that would be possible in future versions.

However unlike coffee machines, there's some differences in the drink's production. With no beans to press or grind, the main body of the device, focuses instead on water circulation. Using small tea capsules with grilled edges, a rotating centre point gently spins the capsule, drawing water up through the centre and forcing it out the sides. This brews the tea in a faster manner than a static tea bag, dropping brew time to two minutes – according to the creators. Air bubbles are then forced through the liquid, which apparently removes bitterness, without affecting flavour. [yframe url='http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vXpWWfDlm8k']

Based on a user's preferences, they can dictate the strength of the tea through a series of button based choices.

The Tê will be debuted publicly for the first time at CES next year.

KitGuru Says: I want one. I had a teasmade when I was a kid and that was fun to play with – though I always let the milk go off – but this looks like the real deal. Guess who's getting a review request email in a short while…

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