Why this scale is in the kit
For years the team graded sample lots out of Kunming on whatever scale the warehouse had — usually a 0.1g jewelry unit that lied to us at the low end. When we started running calibration sessions with tea.degree and the early cohorts at tea.school, the gap became unworkable: a tutor would call a 4.8g portion, a student would weigh 4.8g on their own scale at home, and the two cups would taste meaningfully different. The problem wasn’t the brewer. It was the instrument.
Testing ran through the better part of 2024 across units from three Shenzhen OEMs, with sample batches sent to Hunan and Henan for repeatability runs. The brief was narrow: 0.01g resolution that actually holds across a one-year calibration cycle, a silent timer, USB-C, and a tray wide enough for a small gaiwan but small enough to live in a travel pouch. Two of the three candidates drifted under steam exposure. The third — this one — held its zero through a full week of bench testing in our Kunming office.
The units are assembled in Dongguan, QC’d in Kunming before they ship. Each one leaves with a 50g calibration weight, a USB-C cable, and a card with the batch number and test date. If yours drifts past tolerance inside a year, we replace it.