Tag Archives: teapots

How to pour a teapot

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What a ridiculous title for a post, eh? “Grab the handle and pour”, is the expected response. However, as anyone who’s tried to use a yixing pot for the first time can probably tell you, there’s a little more to it than that.

First of all, let’s clarify that I’m mostly talking about fairly small teapots, in the smaller-than-400ml range. Those big heavy twenty-cup teapots are pretty foolproof and you don’t need an article on this blog to tell you how to use them!

Often, teapots of this size are called Yixing (宜兴, pronounced roughly “ee-shing”), even if they are not from the Yixìng region of Jiāngsū province which is most famous for the style. Debating the authenticity, usefulness, and naming of these pots is far beyond the topic of this post, but suffice to say if you have a small teapot made of clay, ceramic, glass, or even silver, these principles will apply.

Before anything else, warm the teapot with some hot water before using it (then pour it out). While this may seem like a chore if you’re really looking to dig into that first cup of tea, you can turn it into a pleasurable experience all by itself. First, some clay pots will make delightful bubbling sounds when they start to absorb water, and hearing that symphony is a great prelude to get my senses focused on the task at hand. Second, the tea will likely turn out better, since the water temperature can drop significantly when pouring into a cold pot. But third, and the most fun in my opinion, is that a warm pot can produce an amazing fragrance from tea leaves. As soon as you are done warming the pot, toss in your dry tea leaf and shut the lid. Give the leaves just a few moments to heat and then carefully (lest you burn your nose hairs) lift the lid and inhale the aroma. A good quality tea will produce a fragrance to stop time. You can also sniff the inside of the lid which will protect your nose from the hot steam.

Once the tea has infused for an appropriate amount of time (which can vary considerably based on preference), it’s best to pour it all out. If making tea for more than one cup, either pour the infusion into a sharing pitcher or fill each cup about half-way once before returning and filling each cup the remainder. In this way the strength of the infusion is more-or-less constant between cups. Having a pitcher requires much less practice than knowing how full each cup should be and avoiding drips on the table.

vertical-pourAs the teapot is being poured, the angle will increase from horizontal to vertical (and sometimes beyond) which can cause the most disastrous and unfortunately common type of broken teaware that I’ve seen: the lid will fall off, sometimes even cracking the cup as it lands. I think everyone who’s owned a small pot has gone through this experience or has seen someone who has. There’s no shame to not remembering to hold the lid, but there’s a few different ways to go about it.

Probably the most simple is to use two hands, placing one hand on the lid and using the other to grasp the teapot handle. The second method is to use a free finger on the pouring hand to hold the lid in place; this technique can be done with either the index finger (more traditional) or the thumb, depending on the size of your hand and your grip on the teapot. It’s best to avoid touching the lid itself which is likely to be extremely hot, but every teapot should have a knob or handle with which it can be held safely.

two-handed method
thumb method
index finger method

The trick with any method is to avoid covering the small hole in the lid which prevents a vacuum from forming inside the teapot that would stop or slow the pour. (In fact, a well-made lid will fit on the teapot so well that covering the hole should stop the pour of liquid completely.) If using the one-handed technique, this is generally accomplished by putting a little bit of sideways pressure on the lid’s knob rather than covering it completely.

covering the hole
not covering the hole

Even though I’d say that a Gaiwan is worth ten teapots for its flexibility and convenience, there’s a definite aesthetic about a Yixing or Jianshui teapot that can really be pleasant to use. And with practice and an appropriate pot it’s possible to create infusions that bring out hidden characteristics of the best and least of the tea world. Not every pot will work well for every tea, so if you have a pot, give it a try with different leaves and different times to find what suits it (and your taste) best. Just remember to keep the lid on top!

A Reprisal of Gaiwans

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I posted a while ago about how to pour a gaiwan, but I wanted to talk a little more about this super-useful device.

What is a gaiwan? Why should you have one? Where do you get one? How do you use it? These are all good questions! Let’s break it down.

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What is a gaiwan?

It’s this ceramic thing with a lid. In fact, gaiwan literally means “lidded bowl”. Usually there’s also a base or saucer making it a three-piece brewing tool. They’re basically an ancient Chinese teapot and teacup all in one. Hundreds of years ago it was common to actually drink tea directly out of the gaiwan as it was brewing, but today we usually use them as a teapot only.

Why the change? By pouring all the tea out of the gaiwan at once we have much more control over the infusion time and therefore the flavor of the tea. Leaving tea leaves in water while you drink the first cup will just continue to make the tea stronger, often masking many of the flavors and nuances available and turning the brew into a bitter broth. Of course that’s assuming the drinker is looking to find the flavors and nuances of a tea and that there are nuances to be found. Flavored and scented teas (tea containing something other than just tea leaves) are designed to provide a burst of flavor without having to look for it.

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Why should you have one?

So if a gaiwan is just an unusual teapot, what’s the point of using one? Bringing out the best flavors when infusing loose full-leaf tea requires some practice and learning. There are many reasons to own a gaiwan, but in my opinion the first reason is to learn. A gaiwan is an excellent tool to learn skillful brewing techniques and also to learn about individual teas.

Whenever I have a tea I’m unfamiliar with, I always try to brew it in a gaiwan first, before using a teapot. The wide opening and white-colored interior make it ideal to inspect the leaves as I begin and removing the lid makes it easy to look at the color of the liquor while I wait for the steeping to be done.

Good tea infusion usually relies on timing, but I never rely on others (and certainly not packaging) to determine the proper time for my tastes. I always prefer to experiment first and learn as I go. When the color looks right, a gaiwan has the additional advantage that it pours out into a cup or pitcher almost instantly. A teapot may pour much more slowly, making determining the timing difficult indeed. Even an additional 10 seconds can significantly change the taste of some teas.

When should I not use a gaiwan?

Finally, it should be said that a gaiwan is not ideal for every situation. Japanese green tea, for example, is generally very finely broken and will usually not pour well from a gaiwan, since the straining mechanism only works for larger leaves. A Kyushu or shiboridashi is a much better idea there. There are other teas with tiny leaves that may also cause a problem, but for any rolled oolong, Puer, and most green and red tea you’re going to be fine.

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Where do I get a gaiwan?

If you have a local tea shop, you’re may already be in luck. On the other hand, not everywhere that sells tea also carries traditional teaware. The web makes buying teaware like a gaiwan much easier than it once was. That said, there are a few things to look for when selecting one.

First, consider the material and color. I would suggest only purchasing gaiwans that have a white glazed interior. The white color makes it easier to see your leaves and tea color and a glaze protects the cup from absorbing any flavors from one leaf that might influence other types of tea. Porcelain is a pretty good bet, but clay gaiwans also work. The color on the outside of the gaiwan is less important so feel free to look for something pleasant to your eye.

Also you might want to think about size. Any size will probably be fine, but many traditional gaiwans are appropriate for only a small cup of tea per infusion, whereas others are quite sufficient for sharing between a few people (or filling a mug). Small ones are easier to handle and pour while larger ones are often harder to grasp with one hand (although as you’ll see that’s not necessarily a bad thing). This is very much up to personal preference, but I would err on the side of smaller if you’re unsure.

How do I use a gaiwan?

I’m going to include a short video here showing the common ways I use a gaiwan. This, perhaps more than anything, seems to be what prevents people from using one. Below the video you’ll see a few tips that may help.

The important things to remember are:

  1. Use fewer leaves than you think if you’re filling by eye.
  2. Leave about 1.5cm above the level of the water when pouring to avoid superheating the rim.
  3. Grasp only by the rim edge and the lid knob to avoid burning.
  4. Make sure the lid is tipped just a bit to avoid dumping leaves or blocking the flow.
  5. Pour quickly and decisively by tipping the gaiwan more than 90 degrees. Slow pouring or a gentle angle will cause the boiling water to run down the outside of the gaiwan.
  6. Make sure all the water is out of the gaiwan when you are done pouring or the leaves will continue to steep.

I hope everyone has a chance to try using a gaiwan someday! If I were to recommend just one piece of teaware for a tea lover, a gaiwan would definitely be my pick. Happy sipping!

Preparing Japanese Tea

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Green tea from Japan differs quite a lot from its Chinese cousin. The different cultivars, harvesting, and processing provides a distinct experience. It can also be challenging to steep. Many folks I’ve encountered have found their first experience with grassy bitter Japanese green tea to be their last. With this post I hope to provide those people and others with inspiration to give this amazing style of tea a second chance.

While the steps below may seem complicated, if you understand some of the principles of how tea steeps, it all makes sense. First of all, Japanese tea tends to be machine-harvested, which results in smaller and more broken leaves. Broken leaves mean that the tea will infuse much more quickly and can become bitter in much less time than a full leaf Chinese green.

Furthermore, unless passed through a fine mesh strainer, it’s likely that many of the leaves will end up in the cup when it’s done. These leaves will continue steeping the tea as it cools and may cause unwanted strength even if the timing is just right.

Finally, Japanese green teas are generally steamed to fix the leaf rather than pan-fired or baked as they are in other countries. This results in a tea liquor that’s much more “vegetal” in the same way that steamed vegetables tend to be “greener” tasting than those same vegetables when fried. If the infusion is too strong, the result can not only taste bitter, but grassy as well.

In essence, Japanese green teas are much more delicate and need a little more care when preparing them. Here’s my suggestions for most styles of Sencha, as well as Kabusecha and Gyokuro (Genmaicha, Hojicha, Kukicha, and Matcha are a different matter).

1. Use a mesh strainer

Kyushu
Shiboridashi

Because of the small and broken leaves we ideally need to use a mesh strainer. Japanese Kyushu pots usually have these built-in, but such pots can be hard to find on the Western market. Another option is the ceramic “teeth” on the lip of a Shiboridashi pot which are designed to catch the small leaves as the liquor pours over the rim. Lacking these tools, any wire mesh strainer will do the job, even a large kitchen strainer. If you don’t have any strainer on hand, just be aware that the tea will continue steeping in the cup and you may want to reduce the infusion time to compensate.

2. Use fairly cool water

tama_setupSince the broken leaves will steep much faster, we need either a very short infusion time (which can be challenging) or we need to slow down the infusion somehow. More of the compounds in a tea leaf will transfer to the water if the water is hot, so using cooler water will slow down the process to make it more manageable. I usually use about 55-70°C (131-158°F) water for Gyokuro or Sencha. Within that temperature range, a steep of about 1 minute should result in a delicious brew. If your water is hotter, decrease the time. With 80°C water, a 20-30 second infusion should work, but it might taste a little scorched. The amount of leaves in the pot also makes a difference. I tend to use more than I would for a Chinese green; for a 300ml pot, I usually use about 8g of leaf.

3. Use fresh leaves

tama_dryThis step may be out of your control, since many vendors don’t list the age of their tea, but green tea (Japanese or otherwise) should be consumed within 6 months to a year of its harvest date. It should also be stored in a sealed package with no air or light reaching the leaves. Older leaves tend to be dull and flat tasting giving the palette all the tannin but none of the sweetness. For this reason be wary of stores that keep their tea in clear plastic or glass containers (I’m looking at you, grocery stores).

tama_pouredFollowing these steps should result in a deep and rich cup of Japanese tea. The qualities to look for in a good cup are usually a bright energy with seaweed-like saltiness and a satisfying Umami taste on the tongue. The aroma of freshly-cut grass is a good sign, but a “grassy” or bitter taste is not usually desirable. As always, your taste may certainly be different from mine, so experiment to find your preferred brew. Even so, hopefully the above guidelines will give you a head-start.

Moving Leaves and Tea Balls

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Let’s talk about all the different shapes of tea pots that are out there. It’s quite an interesting artistic exploration to see how some teapots are designed. Now first of all, as I’ve often said, you don’t need anything fancy to make tea. A saucepan, kitchen strainer, and a mug will do. But what’s a little non-intuitive about that statement is that sometimes a saucepan would actually do better than a teapot.

Why is this? It has a lot to do with how the leaves come into contact with the water.

I’ve done some really terrible drawings to help explain this.

wide-tea-infusion-basketFull leaf tea infuses rather slowly, meaning that it takes some time for the flavors, aromas, and other properties within the leaf to be extracted into the water. This is a good thing. It’s what allows careful brewing to bring out the best balance of flavor and strength. The bitter properties of tea are generally the last to emerge, so they will appear only at very high temperatures or after a relatively long immersion time.

In still water, the (delicious) chemical properties of the tea leaf will expand slowly outward from the leaves themselves, concentrating around each individual leaf. If the leaves are just floating around, as in a saucepan, then this will ensure a fairly even distribution of tea taste in the water.

tea-infusion-leaves

Tea infusion with leaves loose in the pot.

If instead, however, the leaves are held in once location and packed together, then that area of the water will become quickly infused with flavor, leaving the rest of the pot to be mostly uninfused. This is how a tea ball works.

As such a pot is poured, it’s likely that the tea area and the non-tea area will mix, resulting in a fairly weak infusion. To compensate for this, many people have taken to steeping their tea for a longer time, which does indeed make the average tea body stronger, but it also allows the bitter qualities of the leaf to be more prevalent, since it gives them time to be extracted from the tea.

tea-infusion-ball

Tea infusion with the Death Star tea ball.

But this problem is not only related to tea balls. Many tea pots include a built-in basket strainer designed in such a way that the leaves are also unable to carry their flavors around the pot. The wide, flat, cast iron pots that I’ve seen so much recently have this problem built-in. They have a tiny central straining basket, which acts like a tea ball to keep the leaves in the very center of the pot, and the wide internal area keeps most of the water away from the leaves while steeping. (Brewing in a mug can have the same problem if you use a basket strainer that is too shallow.)

tea-infusion-basket

Tea infusion with a shallow basket strainer.

All that said, if you’re used to using tea bags, the same rules don’t always apply. Or rather, the rules do apply, but the infusion is so fast that there’s little chance for control or refinement anyway. The tea in most tea bags is ground up CTC (“crush-tear-curl”) or at least very broken. The result is that most of the possible flavors as well as the bitter qualities are released all at once, and the result is similar to the tea ball but much more blunt. If many tea bags are used or allowed to infuse for several minutes, the result is the same blunt, strong infusion spread all around the pot.

So, what can we do about this? Well the answer is to look back at the saucepan and the kitchen strainer. Putting tea leaves directly in the water without any separation will give you the best possible chance of finding the flavor of the leaves. Straining can come when pouring (in fact, the best tea pots in my opinion have strainers built into their spouts). The usual rules of time and temperature still apply, but experimentation will be much easier since you can much more easily see the color of the infusion as it progresses and you can even sample it without worrying that one part of the pot will be different than another.

Am I being too picky about my tea brewing? Oh, most definitely. These factors are only one of the ten thousand things that can affect the results of making a pot of tea. Don’t stress. Keep this piece of information in the back of your mind as you choose a teapot, but use your own experience as your guide for steeping tea. As the ancient tea masters wrote, “Tea is very simple… it is only to boil water, along with tea leaves and drink it. Anything else is superfluous.” The rest comes from within.

The Size of The Teapot

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Many months ago I wrote a post on Dobra Tea’s blog about tea pot sizes. This is an updated version of that post.

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I often joke that the more I learn about tea, the smaller my teapots become. There’s quite a lot of truth to this, and I thought it might be valuable to explain why. Here’s a brief primer on teapots that I hope will encourage your own pursuits.

Contrary to what seems popular in the US, cast iron pots are almost never used to brew tea in Asia. Traditionally, they are used to heat water over a fire, as in Japan’s tetsubin. In this case, however, the kettle must not be glazed on its interior, as high heat may damage the glaze and pollute the water within. Certainly water from these kettles is used to make tea, but the tea leaves themselves don’t enter the kettle.

Most tea-producing countries use clay or porcelain to infuse their tea. Unglazed clay, such as Yixing (宜兴) or Jianshui (建水), can absorb subtle aromas and release them into subsequent infusions. Ideally, these pots should only be used for a specific tea to avoid the flavor of a roasted oolong from affecting your light sheng puer. Porcelain is a little easier. Hard ceramics easily handle infusing many different teas as they clean easily and do not keep flavors around. In small sizes, even an English-style “Chatsford” pot can make a wonderful cup of tea (as long as you don’t use a tea ball!).

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Most of my teapots hold between 100 to 400 milliliters of water. That’s about 3 oz to 13 oz or 0.5 to 1.5 cups. Once a teapot is larger than 400 ml, it becomes difficult to ensure a well-timed tea. There are several reasons for this.

Most tea can become bitter or over-strong if infused for too long. Let us say that I have found a particular Green tea reaches its peak flavor at 1 minute. If I pour in the water to fill the pot, the tea begins steeping as soon as the water reaches the leaves. The longer it takes to fill the kettle, the less time remains. Then, when I begin to pour the tea, the leaves continue to infuse while the liquid is poured out. This means that if a pot takes 30 or 40 seconds to empty, at least some of the tea is steeping for quite a lot longer than I would like and may become unpleasant by the time it reaches your cup.

Certainly it’s possible to compensate for the added time by beginning to pour your tea early, but then the portion of the infusion that is poured first will be somewhat under-steeped, which when mixed with the rest of the pot will yield a watered-down cup. This is all complicated by the fact that some teas (particularly those with small or broken leaves) can be over-infused after only 20 or 30 seconds!

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Another reason for a small teapot is something of a spiritual one. If a tea is prepared in a small quantity, it is much more likely to be appreciated by its audience. Throwing back a gulp of tea, you may never taste the subtle nuances, good or bad, that become obvious with a careful sip.

Ultimately, of course, tea is a personal experience, and the choice of teapot should above all be one that is comfortable and suits your own style. Don’t be afraid to experiment! I bought a small teapot in Hangzhou that I planning on giving as a gift. I didn’t have huge expectations for it. When I tried it out and made some shou puer, it poured terribly. However, I have since found that it makes an excellent Hong Cha pot and now I use it every week. It’s a learning process for all of us. Keep pouring.