Tea Knife

The only tea knife you'll ever need. Seriously. 

Compressed teas like pu-erh need to be broken apart before brewing. Sometimes, you can use your hands to pry chunks of tea off, but often they are tightly pressed enough that the use of a tea knife, pick, or needle is required. Some types of puerh tea are especially tight such as brick tea, iron cakes, and tuocha.

We had too many experiences with thin and weak tea knives bending and breaking, or slipping and stabbing into our hands, so we set out to make the knife to end them all.

We had these tea knives custom made to our specifications based on previous experience with similar designs of this knife shape, which often had sub-par materials or subtle design choices that we felt could be improved.

The KUURA knife is made from one continuous piece of solid steel, which we upgraded to food-grade 304 stainless, with a brushed finish. The handle coating is thicker and more durable black PVC, which also makes it safer (nice and grippy) and more comfortable to hold.

We had the tip made to still be sufficiently pointed for precision, but rounded off so it won't bend and is more hand-friendly (no stabbing!). The blade edges we had bevelled so they aren't sharp. 

To use the knife, use one hand to steady the cake, and the other holding the knife to gently insert and then pry-off layers of tea. Keep the knife pointed away from your body and other hand.

Compressed tea generally forms laminated layers, so the design of the knife helps to lever the layers apart so you can extract tea without excessive breakage of leaves.

If you somehow break this tea pick in normal usage, we will replace it for you.*

Dimensions: 17 cm long, 1 cm width, 1 cm height. Approximately 120g weight.

Please note there may be minor cosmetic variance in the appearance of the steel as well as the exact shape of the tip as they are finished by hand; all knives are perfectly functional.

*obligatory disclaimer. If you purposefully break it by going at it with an angle grinder or some such, we won't replace it...