A daily tea-making regimen is not necessarily unaccompanied by occasional moments of comedy. A frequent occurrence for me--usually in the first couple of infusions of a tea like yan cha (which needs pretty much instantaneous steeps at the beginning)--is depicted above. The water's in the pot--time to quickly pour it out, but wait! Why won't the lid go on?! Quick, try to sloppily pour it out anyway!
There's the culprit--sometimes it only takes the tiniest obstruction to throw off a finely-tuned system. Yet, the tea seems to still come out just fine, in spite of a moment of panic.
Remove the offending leaf, and it's back to smooth sailing. There might be hiccups along the way, but there are always more infusions to come.
