Re-deploying a Yixing pot

1. I would not do anything at all - why erase the hsitory of that pot? Why try making everything lke life starts from teh scartch?
2. If the picture-perfecr spirit of the "Better Homes and Gardens" is too strong in you, then its your history and individuality that has to be preserved, not the pot's. In that case I would immerse the pot and the lid in the 5% water solution of white synthetic vinegar for couple of days and then in clean water for a week. make sure you use white vinegar, not wine - based one. Less radical approach would be to immerse it in clean, slightly salted (non-iodized, rock salt) water for several days changing water once a day.

Sasha.

Actually I am trying to free up 2 pots to begin experimenting with oolongs, one for light roasts and one for darks (I assume that's how its done). And... I only have one virgin pot at the moment. I am not really as much concerned about erasing the history of the slightly used pot as I am about adulterating the oolong experience.

Mike

On Sat, 11 Sep 2004 19:47:23 GMT, "Alex Chaihorsky" cast caution to the wind and posted:

You might consider simply trying the pot with the oolongs you're interested in and seeing how it fares. If that doesn't work to your satisfaction here are a few methods that have worked for me.

1. Boil, boil, boil. Use distilled water (no residue and greater solvent action). Make sure your pot is scrupulously clean.

1. Fill with activated carbon and leave to soak with distilled water. Follow-up with method 1. Aquarium carbon is good enough for this application (since the solvent is only water) but true filter carbon is better. Apparently aquarium carbon can be made of some dodgy materials.

2. After boiling the pot, try gently roasting the pot with the desired tea. Fill the (dry) pot with tea leaves, wrap in aluminum foil, and roast for an hour at around 200-250F. Remove from the heat and let cool for a day before you unwrap it. This adds a lot of fragrance.

I shun the practice of boiling with tea as I won't soak my pot in anything I wouldn't be willing to drink (with the exception of activated carbon).

Cheers,

Cameron

Hi Cameron,

I am curious about your knowledge on carbon. I have a 150gal aquarium and buy my carbon by the cubic foot. I would love to find a better and/or more economical source. Can you point me to more data on carbon and how to quantify quality? Since this is so OT maybe you could send me an email, I tried sending to your email address but it appears to not work.

Thanks,

Mike

Mike Petro snipped-for-privacy@pu-erh.net

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Cameron snipped-for-privacy@posting.google.com9/11/04

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Also, for comparison purposes, Mike, maybe try steeping the oolongs in a porcelain gaiwan. That's a good idea when you try a new tea anyway; no matter what you do to prepare your pot, it *will* somehow add its signature to the tea you brew in it.

Michael

Mike,

I bought a pretty little yixing pot at a Chinese antique-ceramics dealer and its interior was pretty musty and nasty-smelling, almost like stale cigarette ash. I despaired of ever using it for tea, but a couple of boilings and a few strong brews of inexpensive green oolongs (it was to become a light-oolong pot) eventually got rid of the bad smells completely, and it smelled sweetly of oolong after that.

At least until I dumbly brewd a dan cong in it, and now the pot has an aroma somewhere between the two...still, it works fine for light oolongs and maybe that scent will take over in time.

Pu-erh, I don't know, it can be pretty strong and distinctive...

Joe Kubera

A cheap Yixing pot cannot be that expensive. A generic factory mold with non purple clay and no chop mark about $10. I recently saw a zisha set with rare 4 cups for $38.

Jim

snipped off at the kneecaps

I wholeheartedly agree, this has always been an internal struggle for me. My Engineer side strives for repeatability and total control over as many variables as possible, therefore choosing a porcelain pot. My Adventurous side wants to experiment with cultural concepts and learn from them, therefore my growing collection of zisha pots. Balance, somewhere in between, is something that has always evaded me.....

Mike Petro snipped-for-privacy@pu-erh.net

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It's really interesting, not to mention bemusing, how we operate from either side of our brains, so to speak. Part of me wants to reserve a pot for each type of tea, but another wants to just flow along, letting the tea color the pot. So, what am I to do? I think when it comes to a tea you've spent say

16 USD per gram for, you want to make sure to taste it without the influences of the pot's pre-history. But, with the common horde, it probably doesn't make that much of a difference.

Mike, do you think that the one-pot-one-tea idea came from a time and a place where and when the pot's master drank but one tea his whole life and the pot followed suite? I wonder about that.

Michael

Mike snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com/13/04

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I think my style is steering me towards trying ALL new teas in a neutral pot to see what they have to offer. Then try the same proportions, temperatures, etc in a clay pot and compare. At this point one could make a better judgment as to which style compliments the individual tea. The jury is still out...

Interesting notion, I suspect that it has had something to do with the class of the pot's master. Judging by the ancient texts, Cha Ching etc, it is clear that a well traveled person was exposed to many teas. While a rural person probably drank the tea favored by his/her cultural minority and/or region. I would assume that the traveling consumer would have quickly discovered the dangers of contaminating a clay pot, where the more rural consumer might not have ever had the occasion to notice. I am sure that cultural differences also surfaced in the methods and paraphernalia used to brew tea. At some point someone discovered that glazing helped to neutralize the pots influence.

Mike Petro snipped-for-privacy@pu-erh.net

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Mike snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com/15/04

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Sounds good and logical to me. Tea and its drinking are a game to play. It's fine to change the rules whenever you like. You know, the great potter, Hamada, of 20th Century Japan, when asked why he repeated his design over and over again, replied that it was because it came out a little different each time and he had something of an intimate relationship with it. (Michael, the butcher, paraphrases too freely he fears; but the sense is there somewhere.) Like drinking a green tea under glass to view its antics, I think, to get to know a new tea, a gaiwan is best. Afterward, an YiXing pot of good breeding. Afterward, any old pot you like. Like the cosmos, it's a joke.

Bach Cantata 117 with a wonderous green-sided TGY. Yum. I'd be in heaven if I weren't headed for hell in a handbasket.

Michael

I'd smoke it. But I'd use a different bong than the one for my 200 year old puerh or was it microbial enhanced hashish. You can't tell the difference. My dealer has a cheaper tuocha hashish which fits nicely with a corn pipe. I thought some of my local tea shoppe prices of 10c/g was outrageous. For that I use a sterile needle or 10 repeat infusions to get it down to a price I can afford to drink. I'm pretty sure the last cup has no caffeine. I tried something called oriental blossom yesterday and it puckered my tongue worse than a hangover. I could taste chunmee and pieces of flower. I didn't recognize the spongy little pieces of something else. I always thought Japanese concoctions were unique but the Chinese have their little delicacies.

Jim

Sasha, you have just given the recipe to pot suicide! :")

Mike, if you are moving from light to heavier flavour tea, so it shouldn't much of a bother that the residual flavour of green tea will overpower that of the oolong. If you like, just fill the pot with boiling water, let it sit for several minutes, then empty and repeat the process several times, that should 'cleanse' your pot. White vinegar may strip the pot of tea residual, but remember, the yixing pot is microporous, the vinegar and its sourness will be lodeged within the pores and taint the pot, it'll take a lot of washing out for your pot later.

What I'm concerned with is that you mentioned your pot having a 'musky clay smell'. This can be due to several reasons:

01 you didn't air the pot properly 02 you didn't 'cure' the pot properly, or never at all 03 the clay for the pot is not good yixing clay

If it's the last, there's nothing we can do about it, but for the 1st, you just rinse it once more and make sure it's thoroughly dried before putting it away. For the 2nd, there are several methods but too lengthy to write here. You can email me if you are interested. If you like, you can send me pictures of your pot and I might be able to help you determine which one is better for light oolongs and which for darker...

Samarkand

These are strong words, you have to explain your statement. :)

Sasha.

I am beginning to beleive that this notion of "one pot per tea" is pure marketing hogwash. i use one clay pot for everything. YMMV. Didn't one of the regulars on this group try hot water in several of his well aged pots without noticing any taste at all?

back to lurk

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Lurker,

Putting aside the issue of whether clay "absorbs" tea molecules to an extent that changes the taste of tea over time, each pot does indeed brew each tea differently. If you line up your pots and brew the same tea in each, you will find that the tea from each pot tastes and/or smells different from the others. So, you want to experiment a little to find out which pot brews each tea best. This alone suggests that more than one pot might be the way to go. On the other hand, maybe this is all imagination, and "hogwash" is the operable word.

Michael

Not even touching the essence of the discussion - just a subnote - its the pores, not the clay, that has an ability to absorb. Although the raw clay (and some mica) minerals can absorb water intramolecularily (sometimes up to 50 times its own volume), fired clay can't.

Sasha.

I used to believe that too.. then I got a yixing pot, brewed a cup of green tea in it, which tasted fine, brewed about a dozen pots of puer over the next couple of weeks, all of which tasted fine, then brewed the same green tea and it tasted friggin awful.

So for me at least the Yixing pot definitely absorbs the flavor of tea and so now I stick with just one tea.

:") Indeed. Vinegar has a strong smell, and as the yixing clay is highly porous, the vinegar will seep into the clay and it'll be hard to remove the smell and taste from the pot. It's a little like rubbing garlic on your hands and then for the next several days your hands smell garlicky...a couple of days someone showed me a yixing pot his friend gave to him. It was an old pot which I guessed was probably a burial piece. His friend asked him to use turpentine to rub off the soil stains...that's another pot suicide...

Danny