In case you didn’t know, I love tea. Despite the self-imposed tea-buying hiatus for the majority of this year, I finally bought more tea. To be specific, I spotted a 24 Days of Tea advent calendar from a DavidsTea store in San Francisco. Those things went out of stock on the website in hours, and the closest store to Atlanta is Chicago, so I handed over some money and a calendar became mine.
I was a good Sushi. I let the tea sit and didn’t open any of them until yesterday, December first. After getting home from my Thanksgiving weekend, I cracked open the advent calendar with a tiny 1 on it and was rewarded with my tea of the day: Forever Nuts, a fruit and nut blend that I heard turned water into a beautiful reddish pink.
Sweet, right? I got to work opening the tiny (but very cute) tin. Note the words “got to work”. See, here’s how the process should have gone. Step one: open tin. Step two. Brew tea. Step three: profit.
Here’s how it really went.
Step one: Attempt to pop tin open, but the lid is practically glued on.
Step two: Attempt to unscrew the lid, thinking it’s one of those tins you have to unscrew, but nothing budges. Grab one of those rubber grips and try. Nothing moves.
Step three: Repeat steps one and two a few more times until it’s pretty clear the lid isn’t budging. Start to suspect the thing really is glued on.
Step four: Tweet your frustrations, then repeat steps one and two. You know how complaining about an annoyance sometimes makes it go away? If only it were that easy.
Okay, am I being dumb or is the first #24daysoftea container nigh impossible to open? This shouldn't be difficult! @davidstea
— Sushi (@sushimustwrite) December 1, 2014
Step five: To Google! Look up ways to unseal a container, even though you’re already familiar wtih most of the tips. Try steps one and two again for good measure.
Step six: Grab a knife and stab the top plastic part of the jar. Manage to get a cut or two in there, but nowhere near enough to scoop out any tea. Try steps one and two again. You know, just in case.
Step seven: Bang up the sides of the container. Try steps one and two again. Tweet again.
I've used a rubber grip, twisted it, banged the tin up with a knife, and stabbed the plastic top and it still won't open. 🙁 #24daysoftea
— Sushi (@sushimustwrite) December 1, 2014
Step eight: Refusing to accept defeat, grab a hammer and hammer the sides of the tin until it finally budges. Enjoy tea and hope to any gods listening that the other 23 days aren’t like this.
I earned that tea. I just don’t want to waste half an hour of my life on opening the others.
8 replies on “That time I opened a tea tin with a hammer”
But did you, you know, like the tea?
I did! A little sweet, a little nutty, and it brewed a lovely red pink.
That sounds like an awful lot of trouble to go through for tea. I would have probably given up on it and just come back to it later.
It really was. Luckily today’s tin opened without a hitch. One thing we learned from this is that I’m certainly determined to get what I want.
Had the same trouble. Love their tea. Not so fond of their packaging.
Thanks for posting this! Same problem here… I’ve had the same 4oz can for a month or two by now, and for the first time, I couldn’t get it open by tapping it on the table or twisting it manually. The can has a bit of a nasty dent in the side from the hammer, but I FINALLY have my cup of tea thanks to your advice. 🙂
I’ve experienced similar issues with older 4oz tins. Either my hands are getting less able to do this or the tea tins have a shorter shelf life than expected. Must investigate further. (By which I mean stop by DT on my next San Francisco trip.) But hooray finally getting your tea open!
Thanks for the advice. I received 12 tins as a Christmas gift, and have been trying to open Coffee Cake for the past two months! I tried with a hammer and it didn’t inflict too much damage on the attractive tin.