A Tea Addict's Journal

These days I’m drinking not much more than traditionally stored puerh, cheap Wuyi, and the like. I am pretending to be busy with work…

What I have been doing though is sometimes starting out a tea with the tetsubin, and then switching over to the silver kettle later on. It’s an interesting contrast, and predictable in its effect. The silver kettle water makes tea that comes out cleaner with much higher fragrance. The tetsubin water is always heavier.

I do need to test this out with, say, a stainless steel kettle in order to have some sort of a control to see what comes of that. I have also been told by a friend who has tried different silver kettles that they seem to have different effects — thinner silver, he says, makes better water, which is an interesting observation.

There is one hazard with silver kettles though — they are VERY hot to the touch, which makes sense, since silver is a fantastic heat conductor. It does mean that when using it, it’s easy to burn yourself if you’re not careful, and water will cool very quickly if it’s not kept warm.

I do wonder how Japanese used it back before electric ways of heating things — did they keep it on a charcoal brazier? Without heat? What happens?