A Tea Addict's Journal

Entries categorized as ‘Objects’

The power of silver

September 5, 2008 · 2 Comments

It can make my $3 huangjingui taste like $30 huangjingui.

Well, maybe I’m exaggerating a little, since the tea is still weak and a bit flat, but at the same time, I got the most incredible throatiness for what is certainly a mediocre tea today, and the only variable is the kettle used. For people like me who look for such things and appreciate them in tea, it’s a nice plus. The taste also changed a bit — cleaner, as I’ve mentioned before, and a little sweeter. Tetsubins can be heavy sometimes for the lighter teas, and huangjingui is on the light side of things.

And for those who remain skeptical — the difference should be obvious, not subtle. My friend who owns a silver kettle said the same when he first tried it — he thought it would only be a minor difference, but it turns out the changes are quite dramatic.

This, however, is not an endorsement to go out and buy a $3000 kettle. They’re not worth that much money.

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Silver kettle

September 4, 2008 · 2 Comments

I got a heating plate (you can see a corner of it in yesterday’s picture) so I can safely heat my silver kettle without running a high risk of screwing it up. I noticed that a flame will help tarnish the silver, even just a little. I decided I’d like a more even and less risky method of heating the thing.

I brewed some wet stored Vietnamese puerh today, and at first, used a tetsubin. Then, near the end, I switched to the silver kettle…. with a remarkable difference. The fact that they’re different is of course not surprising, but exactly how it’s different and what’s different is, perhaps, still a little startling when drinking it. The tea comes out much cleaner in taste, and also much sweeter. Maybe it loses a little body, but it’s definitely a different tea when using the differently prepared water.

I wonder how the Huangjingui will taste with the silver kettle. Time to experiment.

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New stuff

August 26, 2008 · 1 Comment

Today I recieved in the mail two beautiful cups as a wedding present from our common sensei. The cups, I believe, have Korean origins. They have a milky white crackled glaze, sort of like Hagi-ware for the Japanese ceramics aficiandos out there, and is quite large. Just large enough, in fact, so that when I put my two chataku together, the lips of the cups just touch, which means no tea wasted when I pour straight from my pot into the cups, gongfu style, splitting the guangyungong bing I brewed today evenly into two cups.

Perfect!

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How to deal with a new yixing pot

August 12, 2008 · 6 Comments

I think I mentioned a while ago that a friend of mine has asked me to write a column for the magazine he’s editing. I just got a copy today of the first issue, and it has a rather interesting article on the care of Yixing pots. This is advice from a daughter of one of the Yixing pot artists on how to deal with new pots:

1) First use hot water to rinse the pot, both inside and out, and get rid of the dust and dirt on the pot. Then put it in a cooking pot that doesn’t have any oil (or other forms of contamination) and fill it with water – three times the height of the teapot itself — and boil for two hours. This will get rid of the soil and the fire taste.

2) Put tofu into the teapot, add water and boil the pot for an hour. The gypsum in the tofu will help reduce the fire element in the pots, and can help disintegrate the excess materials of the pot (this is written pretty ambiguously in Chinese — not sure exactly what she’s talking about).

3) Buy some sugar canes, cut it into pieces, and put it into the cooking pot. Boil for an hour. The sugar will help moisturize the teapot.

4) Then you can brew it with the kind of tea you chose for this pot!

So, sounds rather simple — I’ve heard the tofu before, but not the sugar cane. I’d imagine all this should be done in one go. I wonder what the sugar will do to the pot….

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Tourists

August 2, 2008 · 2 Comments

There was this wonderful looking kama in my room at the hotel we were staying (no, we were not in Japan)

But some people decided to use it as a candle holder

Which is really quite unfortunate, because the kama itself is rather nice. I, for one, won’t mind having one, although the ones shaped like these are almost impossible to use for my kind of tea making. Subsitute it for a tetsubin though….. oh, the endless possibilities.

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Collective wisdom

July 17, 2008 · 15 Comments

As we all know, many brains is better than one when it comes to solving problems…. so I need your help 🙂

Along with the broken pot, I bought another one that turned out has a bit of a crack on the outside (didn’t see it because, well, it was covered in dirt). That’s not the real issue though.

Looks nice enough

Until you see the inside

And this is AFTER cleaning it with BLEACH. You don’t want to know what it looked like before — imagine a white covered interior that feels like it is caked on for ages. I have no idea what it is, or how it is so stubborn. I’ve already removed most of it, although you can see how it still has that brown base that makes the whole bottom sort of spotty looking.

How do I clean this thing?

I’ve heard you can use citric acid to melt things away like this, but I’ve never tried it. Aside from that…. what else can I do? I mean, I’m not sure if this pot is really that usable, since it is cracked (although it does not leak — cracking is only on the outside, strangely enough). Either way though, I’d like to at least have it be clean….

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A new pot of sorts

July 14, 2008 · 2 Comments

A new little thing came in the mail a few days ago

The owner of the pot clearly loved it very much, and used it very, very heavily

And so it took some damage over the years

But because of repeated use — it has the nicest patina I’ve seen in a while

Too bad it is broken… and has a hole in it to boot.

I’m not sure what I will do with it. I got it because it looked like really nice clay, and I wanted a reference pot — something to compare others against, and also, perhaps, something to experiment on. There are simply too many conflicting theories out there on zhuni, what it is, what it isn’t, etc. I think I now have some idea of it should be, but the variation out there makes it hard to say with certainty whether a pot is or isn’t real zhuni, especially, of course, if you only see a picture of it. In some ways, buying a broken pot might be the best bet of getting the real deal.

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Caring for a tetsubin

July 7, 2008 · 3 Comments

One of the tetsubins I have came with its original box, and inside the box are two inserts. One is a list of the artist’s achievements — awards, shows, etc that he has been in (among which was apparently a purchase by the emperor!). The other, though, is rather interesting and which I neglected to read when I got it — it’s about caring for the tetsubin.

The first part of it is rather simple and not worth mentioning, but the last part has four points, which are rather interesting

1) Use pure water, rather than tap water. If you have to use tap water, then you should let it sit for a night before using it — and only skim off the top, not the whole container. The bad stuff, such as whatever chlorine or anything else they use, will sink to the bottom, so they say
2) Use a mild heat to dry the thing out thoroughly after use, and let it sit uncovered for the night so that it doesn’t trap moisture inside. That’s sensible.
3) Use a cotton cloth that’s slightly damp to wipe the outside of the kettle after use, while it’s still warm. That I didn’t think about at all
4) Never use it on a gas stove, it’ll crack the damn thing.

I wonder what the damp cloth will do. Maybe I should try doing that from now on.

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Another pot

July 4, 2008 · Leave a Comment

This one some of you might remember

It’s the pot that I talked about a few months ago as having a lid and body that are different in colour. It’s funny, because over time, I think the difference has become a little less obvious. There’s still a difference in tone, and you can probably see it in the picture, but if I didn’t tell you, it might have been easily overlooked.

One of the problems with buying old teapots is that sometimes they can come poorly seasoned or unevenly done. Not seasoned is not a problem, but when it’s uneven, it can be annoying and difficult to fix. Another common problem are things like mineral deposits on a pot, which can actually be extremely hard to remove. I have another pot that has some strange patches where the surface is almost oily. I don’t know what’s going on there.

Which, I suppose, is part of the fun. Seasoning new pots can be so boring 🙂

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Patience

July 3, 2008 · 5 Comments

I remember when I first bought this teapot, I was quite excited. It had a nice patina on it already, as it was used, and it was the perfect size for me. As you can see, I’m still using it for puerh, as I have since the day of the purchase. It’s been….. about two years since I got it. During this time, it went through some changes, and I remember, to my dismay, that the patina started peeling off a little. The original patina, it turns out, was somehow more like a little film of shine on top of the pot itself. When I rubbed the pot, it would rub off a little. Gradually, there was a little ring near the bottom of the pot as well as some lines forming underneath the spout. The patina was cracking, so to speak.

So I decided to rub off all of the patina, which I did.

That happened in Beijing. I remember I spent probably half an hour doing it, and when it was done, the pot became a lot duller. I wondered to myself if I did the right thing.

Now, after another year of use, the pot has gradually taken on a bit of a shine again, but the type of shine is different. It’s no longer the rather glossy shine that it used to have, but instead has a slightly dull surface, but you can sort of tell it is not quite “dull” when you look at the pot.

I don’t usually rub my pots when I use them, and don’t really do anything these days to actively try to season them. I just use them. Over time, I’ve discovered that that’s probably the best way to let them season — regular and repeated (and careful) use will, eventually, give the pots a nice sheen. It just takes time and patience.

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