A Tea Addict's Journal

Entries tagged as ‘teaware’

Thoughts on seasoning pots

April 26, 2008 · 7 Comments

My method of seasoning pots is really very simple — use it. I remember when I first started out, I’ve learned all these tricks and things you do when you get a new pot. These days, I find myself not caring so much about all that, since I now tend to think they’re mostly just myth. I do still boil my pots when I get them new, because there are gunk and things that you don’t really want that you may wish to clear out of the pot. The first time I brew a tea in it I won’t drink, because new pots can be nasty. Otherwise though…. I just use.

I do polish my pots sometimes, with a wet (very important — must be wet) towel. Dry towels can make your pot look really shiny but in a slightly undignified way. Rub the pot with the wet towel while the pot’s hot… it will give it a nice shine without that “dry rub” look.

It is important to keep the lids more or less even coloured with the body of the pot, so it is necessary to pay extra attention to the lid. It is also important to make sure that mineral deposits don’t form on the pot — those can be rather difficult to get rid of once they set in. If you have a habit of pouring water over the pot, for example, they can congregate in certain parts of the lid/pot and gradually build up mineral rings. I’ve had one pot that I had to then meticulously work out the ring by constantly rubbing/seasoning that part. Not fun. Use a brush to brush out the liquid so that it won’t happen.

Other than that….. there really isn’t much to do. I’ve found that just by repeated brewing, without even much polishing, the pots gradually will take on a bit of a shine. It’s nice when you can see it change like that — somehow there’s a sense of accomplishment. It’s part of the fun.

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New thoughts on gaiwan vs yixing

April 24, 2008 · 9 Comments

As many of you have probably noticed, I almost never use gaiwans anymore. In fact, last time I touched any of them was when I sold one of them in my teaware firesale. Before that…. I don’t remember when the last time I used a gaiwan was.

I’ve found that there’s really no good reason to use gaiwan when one can use a yixing. I used to think that it is better, for the purpose of testing a tea, to use a yixing rather than a gaiwan, because, so the thinking goes, the yixing might change the way the tea taste in a way that a gaiwan would not. So, gaiwan is thus more accurate as a way to assess a tea.

I think that is still true if and when I am trying to test out a larger number of teas all in one go using the same parameters, as in a multiple sample tasting using, say, 5 minutes brewing. However, I almost never do that. Instead, I brew them normally and form my opinions based on that. If that’s the case, why should I use a gaiwan? After all, if, say, I were making a purchase decision, ultimately after I do buy the tea, I’ll be using my yixing to make it anyway. It would be foolish to use a gaiwan to test it and then never use the gaiwan again to brew it for drinking. As anybody who has used multiple pots for the same tea would probably know, teas behave differently in different pots. Shouldn’t I be testing the tea based on how I would normally drink it, rather than how I never drink it?

Of course, the other thing is that one realizes that there are so many other variables involved, one thing (i.e. vessel) doesn’t really make that much of a difference. Once I saw past that…. I’ve never used a gaiwan since, basically.

Besides, using more teas in pots season them faster. That’s always a plus.

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Having tea outside

April 23, 2008 · 7 Comments

It was nice having tea outside yesterday. The weather was perfect — not too cold, not too hot, not too sunny. Having a way of making water while outside frees you from electrical outlets and lets you make tea anywhere you want…. that’s always a plus.

The first tea we had was a tieguanyin I got from Beijing about three years ago.

You can tell it’s not that fresh anymore, and now that I’m tasting it, I don’t think it was very very good to begin with. Very average stuff, in fact, and probably not even tieguanyin — maybe this is benshan.

For the purpose though, it worked well enough. It was a tea that’s light and not too hard to make. Easy going enough.

The colours are pretty

We then had a beidou #1, also from Beijing. It’s interesting what two or three years of drinking does to you — stuff that you used to think is good no longer seems so good. The beidou is only ok — then again, it’s quite cheap. Compared to the rougui I had two days ago… it’s no match.

What was nice though was to drink outside at all — listen to birds, watching the deer walk by, etc. It’s just not the same.

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Throatiness

April 21, 2008 · 5 Comments

I borrowed the term throatiness from Lew, who was the first person I remember using this particular term. What it is supposed to mean is a sort of feeling in the throat when you drink a tea — some sort of coolness or tingly sensation. This is the kind of thing that usually only puerh has, but some other teas sometimes will have them too. Generally speaking, only good tea will have it and the longer and stronger it is, the better the tea is.

That is until I got my tetsubin. Now, oddly enough, almost all teas give off this sensation. Mind you, better teas still do better with longer/stronger feeling, but instead of just having that feeling once in a while, now I get it all the time, or at least most of the time. Of course, it might have to do with the fact that I’ve upgraded my tea drinking. I didn’t use to imbibe 20 years old oolongs regularly. In Beijing, and to a lesser extent Taipei, I was often drinking stuff that is no good for the sake of learning or experimenting. So obviously there is a bit of a sampling bias there. On the other hand, I have found that with teas that I know well, using the tetsubin will give me a stronger sensation of throatiness.

Is it some sort of chemical reaction, or the extraction/release of certain compounds through the addition of whatever it is that the tetsubin adds? I have no idea what it is, but it’s further proof that one can’t use only one or two criteria to judge a tea’s quality. So much depends on what you use to brew that tea, it is almost impossible to tell for certain what is causing the tea to taste a particular way.

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Primary colours

April 19, 2008 · 8 Comments

Since I was on the topic of colours of teapots

The top right is yesterday’s pot. The bottom right is my dancong pot. I think you can see why I say it’s the closest, but still not purple…

Enjoy 🙂

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Purple clay?

April 17, 2008 · 6 Comments

Everybody knows that Yixing clay is supposed to be good for tea. Everybody also knows that Yixing is often called purple clay, but how often have you ever seen stuff that can truly be called purple? They’re most likely red, brown, dark brown, beige, green, or blue even, but purple?

I found a pot that may, I think, qualify as purple

The only other pot that comes near this colour is my dancong pot, but that, when put next to this one, appears dark brown instead of purple. I didn’t mess with the colour balance on this picture, and it’s taken under sunlight. The pot really is sort of purple.

Is this the original yixing clay? Is this how Yixing zisha is supposed to look?

The pot I got for what is basically a song, and I think it might be a Republian (1911-1949) pot. The maker’s mark is Gemingchang, which is a Republican period workshop. It’s not the world’s best made pot. But the clay intrigues me. It’s purple. It’s a bit rough to the touch. In fact, I’ve noticed over time that many older pots seem to have rougher surfaces than the ones that are made these days (real zhuni excepted). The reason, as I was told, is that nowadays the clay is mixed much more finely, whereas back in the day without machine or high tech tools, the most they can do with the clay is a coarse ground. That would make sense, I suppose. I also wonder though if the clay themselves changed over time. I’m sure it has.

I used this to make the biyuzhu again today, this time with a lot less leaves. Compared to the zhuni pot, this time it came out a little less fragrant, but the depth and the throatiness was much more pronounced. The tea still lasts forever, even with less leaves…

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Cooked puerh!

April 13, 2008 · 5 Comments

I was fishing around in my box full of weird stuff, samples, leftovers, and that kind of thing, and among them I found this

If I remember correctly, this is a sample from Aaron Fisher. I cannot for the life of me remember what this is, but sniffing it (and trying to get past the Lapsang Souchong induced smokiness — there’s a bag of LS next to it) I think this is a cooked puerh. I don’t know where it’s from. The shape is odd — there’s a sort of cylindrical shape to the original piece, I think, and this is just a small chunk of it.

I brewed it… and yes, this is probably a cooked puerh, although, it might be one of those older ones where there’s a bit of raw tea mixed in? Or stored differently? I don’t know. It is definitely a very good cooked puerh — soft, but robust, with a tinge of youth in there somewhere. It also does something that most cooked teas don’t — lasts very long, which made me think this is not cooked after all, yet there are so many things in the taste that remind me of a cooked pu. I don’t know. I should label my tea.

The wet leaves, as you can see, are dark, but not pitch black. They remain somewhat flexible. Aaron, if you’re reading this, do you remember what it is? My bad for forgetting…

A word about my tea service these days:

Trying to forego the tray was a bit of a tough decision. I remember when I first started using the tray, I found it liberating, beause I felt like I could do whatever I want and get away with it. Now, however, I found not using the tray makes me more disciplined in my brewing, and also, as a side benefit, conserves a bit of water. The large bowl serves as a kensui for the waste water. I might get a real kensui to sub in or this bowl, which I think should see more useful service as something else (fruit bowl?). Then again, I’m pressing the pewter bowl into service — that was originally a fruit bowl as well. In fact, other than the yixing pot, I think the only other things that are intended for tea in this setup are the chataku (the pewter cup holder) and the tray in the bottom.

Incidentally, tea works just as well (if not better) as Pledge in buffing up dark wood.

Update: Aaron just told me that this is probably from a 500g tuo from the 80s, one of those cooked puerh where the process of fermentation was incomplete or lightly done, so that they taste sort of raw-ish in the midst of the mostly cooked flavours. I think this came up when I was telling him about how I’ve seen people selling some 80s tuo that are obviously cooked as raw tea, and thus this tuo came into the picture….

Interesting drink, and thanks for the sample 🙂

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Teapot mysteries again

April 1, 2008 · 9 Comments

First of all, thanks for those comments, as I try to plug the holes in the article and make it a little better.

Here’s some more of that “is that really true?” business with teapots.

I remember one of the very first things I learned with pots is that they need to be well made. Ok, but what’s well made? Well, it means that they should

1) be well made
2) pour well
3) good to handle

Now, I don’t think anybody will have any sort of problem with any of these issues, and neither do I. However, I do have some issues with the way things have been portrayed or interpreted.

For example, I have been told before that to test whether or not whether a lid is well made, one puts water into the pot, put the lid on, and then pour water out. First of all, the stream of water should be smooth and doesn’t break for a long time. Second, when you put your finger on the air hole, the stream of water should stop completely — this is, supposedly, evidence of a well fitted lid and a well made pot. Good for purchase.

That’s the part that I’m questioning these days. My black pot, which makes good tea, leaks when you pour. It does not stop flowing when you put your finger on the air hole. In fact, it hardly slows when you do that. The lid is fitted, but not well fitted, obviously. The pouring is good, but not fantastic. But… it makes good tea.

Since when did it matter whether or not a pot stops pouring entirely when you push on the air hole? How does it affect tea making? In the days before machine made pots, could one truly expect such things from a teapot?

I’m not so sure. I don’t see how that has anything to do with the making of tea. That’s an action that nobody would ever perform when pouring tea out of a pot. Obviously, a lid that is so loose as to leak water profusely out of the lid is no good, but that’s an obvious case of poor make. A pot that doesn’t stop entirely when you plug the air hole, or a pot that has a stream that starts breaking earlier than others, is not a pot that will kill you.

The lid leaking a bit when you’re pouring is a bit of an annoyance, but it’s not a deal killer either, as long as you learn how to use a pot and control it properly. The only thing I can think of when that can be a problem is when you try to do it Chaozhou style, and the lid leaks tea everywhere. But that’s something that can be managed.

If anything, I think a well made pot needs to be made of 1) good clay, 2) good pour (including a fast pour…. not too slow, as some pots are prone to do) and 3) good handling. But ultimately… it needs to make good tea. A pot that doesn’t make good tea, in my opinion, is a useless pot. I don’t know how a tight fitted lid has anything to do with it.

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Tea caddies

March 29, 2008 · 7 Comments

I’ve gotten interested (yes yes, among many other things) recently in tea caddies. Storing tea is pretty simple, of course. You just need a can that isn’t leaky, is preferably opaque so that light doesn’t penetrate, doesn’t give your tea a nasty smell, and maybe is cheap to boot. Beauty, however, has a price. Being somewhat dissatisfied with using cheap plastic Carrefour containers that sort of give off a plastic smell, and tired of paying $7 for a stainless steel can that is practical and air tight, but is rather ugly, I decided maybe there’s a better way to store tea, especially things like aged oolongs that need the sun and air protection, but which I hope to treasure (and avoid plastic smells of all kinds. So recently I’ve started paying that price.

I’m still in an exploratory stage right now with tea caddies, and am trying to figure them out as I go along. These are all made of pewter of one sort or another, and are of various ages. The oldest is probably the one in the middle, which is certifiably old (around 100 years). The newest, no doubt, is the one hiding in the back, second from the left. That one is in a style that is easy to find from places like Royal Selangor, which will at least set you back a Ben Franklin, or if you want a cheaper variety, China.

One of the issues with these things, especially the older ones, is that they sometimes have stuff either growing in them, or at least smell like they have stuff growing in them. I have yet to figure out how to clean them properly (anybody who’s skilled in dealing with old pewter ware, speak up now please!). The one on the far right has whitish powder on the inside. The second to the right has some green stuff and smells like old socks. I’ve put some of my cheap Benshan in it in the hopes that it will suck out some of the nasty smell. Failing that, I might use some of my old sencha to get the job done.

The cleanest one is actually the one on the far left, which I have to say is the best score I ever got through any auction site anywhere. You can hardly buy a new pewter tea caddy that is mediocre in looks and quality for $50. When it is an older piece, made of fine pewter, I probably have to pay triple that price, at least, to get something like this. Somehow I got lucky. I have a bag of tieguanyin that I’ve been carrying around for years, waiting to open it for a drink. I think I will do that soon and stick the rest of it in this caddy. It will probably just fit.

Unfortunately, pewter tea caddies is probably not the most practical in terms of tea storage on a large scale. It’s very heavy, and since it’s soft, over time you’re bound to get a few dents in the caddy. In addition to the cost of the caddy itself, the shipping also costs a fortune, as they are extremely heavy (the silvery one, for example is 650g, not counting the box and all). Still, there’s something to be said about owning a few pieces of fine teaware, and I like the idea of having some of my best teas sitting in nice looking jars… if only I can clean them properly.

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Yixing mysteries

March 23, 2008 · 10 Comments

One of the very first thing I learned about yixing pots is that you shouldn’t use more than one type of tea in it. They say it mixes tastes as you season the pot, and will eventually lead to a pot that brews tea with weird combinations of flavours. This is something that I’ve heard repeated many, many times, and which I myself have told others before. However, I am increasingly skeptical as to the truthfulness of this claim, and whether or not such division is truly necessary.

I should first point out that I am not saying that all pots are equally suited for all types of tea. I do notice, for example, differences in my aged oolongs when I brew it with my black pot versus my zhuni pot. However, I am no longer sure that it is truly necessary to confine each pot to one type of tea, especially in some of the rather fine distinctions between, say, Taiwanese high mountain oolong and low roasted baozhong, to name a pair that can be distinguished from each other, but whose tastes are not too dissimilar.

I own a pot that is around 300-400ml in size which I occasionally use for lazy brewing of loose puerh of one kind or another, usually some wet stored stuff or the very rare cooked puerh. I haven’t used it for anything else thus far, but last night I felt an urge to drink some darjeeling all of a sudden, and pulled out some of the black darjeeling generously given to me by Mr. Lochan of Doke tea. It’s a fine darjeeling, sweet and mellow (and I think aged slightly since last year, when I got it). I brewed it in my pot, the same one that I’ve used all along for puerh. Did I notice anything funny that I could attribute to puerh? No, not at all.

Sure, one could say that it is probably because I haven’t used the pot enough for puerh yet, therefore it didn’t impart anything to my darjeeling that I could detect. It does make me wonder though, how often do you need to use the pot before it will start affecting the taste of the tea being brewed, and how much of that effect is dependent on the previous teas you’ve brewed in the pot?

My guess is we generally overestimate the amount of work that seasoning a pot does to the taste of the tea in the pot. Seasoning the clay certainly makes it look nicer, but I’m not too sure if it really makes the tea taste nicer in any meaningful way — or at least, a meaningful way that is detectable by most drinkers. If it takes, say, prolonged use over years with one type of tea for a pot to gain any sort of meaningful “seasoning” that will affect the taste of the tea (more than the pot itself would otherwise) then is it really useful to advice newcomers to tea to buy more than one pot? I have heard before that all of this is just a ploy by pot makers/sellers to sell more pots. It sounds like a conspiracy theory, but there’s no proof that it’s not true… or is there?

Mind you, all of the above is purely speculative. Yet sometimes I do feel that when somebody is led to believe that they must buy half a dozen pots for all the teas they plan to drink…. is that a bit much?

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