Original Teastick by Gamila Products

BRAVO!! I travel a lot and my sister bought me one in Boulder. I couldn't find it so I ordered another on Amazon. Now I keep one in my kitchen and the other is in my special tea kit that I bring on road trips. I had zero complaints with this product. Firstly, it stands to reason that if it's a tea stick and you have to put in tea you have to make sure the tea you put in fits and you close it. If not, yes, you will get some loose tea. If you take a minute to make sure you haven't overloaded it and have slide it over so it is supposed to be closed, it works perfectly. It's also very easy to rinse out (I have the water flow through the top and if a bit of tea is left just tap it). This is now my favorite device to use for loose tea (and I have about 7 varieties of tea at home.

would have given 5 stars but its a bit of a pain getting the tea in. although it does look really cool

After reading the reviews I decided to purchase this to use for my daily cup of loose tea in a large mug at the office instead of using filter bags. The quality of the product is very good. It fits nicely into a mug with all of the tea submerged in the water. But I have not been using it because the tea does taste differently. I use a lot of pu-erh or dragonwell green or jasmine leaves that are larger and I can almost fit the same amount in the teastick (about 1 teaspoon) if I kind of push it in but perhaps because the tea doesn't get to swell as much, the flavors are not the same. Also, I didn't anticipate having to go to our breakroom to empty the leaves--if I do it while they're wet it's kind of messy; if I wait until they're dry the next day then a bunch get stuck at the top and there's no other way to loosen them but digging them out with your finger or end of a utensil. I suppose if you use smaller tea leaves this might be perfect. I also think it would be great for travelling.

The overall concept of this type of filter is really cool, but this particular product doesn't work well. When you slide the mesh forward there's just so little friction that I don't trust it to stay closed if bumped or jostled: for all intents and purposes the mesh is just a sleeve freely sitting around the scoop.

The perfect tool for making a cup of tea using loose leaf tea. No mess, no fuss, no extra cleanup. It acts as a tea scoop, scoop up your tea, slide it shut. Hang it in your cup and steep. Slide it open to dump it out, rinse it off and you are ready again.

Nice product but my tea was ground a little fine and some of it passed through...

While it does work it doesn't perform perfectly. After a certain amount of tea leaves it stops brewing as much, probably because the leaves don't have as much contact with the water. After brewing when you empty it out you'll notice that some of the leaves haven't really been properly steeped.

I have not used these yet because they are Xmas gifts but they are good quality and look much easier to load and rinse out than most. Hopefully the metal will hold up. Will report back if not.