Tetsubin

Sep 22, 2006 24 Replies
D

I use a mixture of things, but I boil my water either in an electric kettle I have that the element is encased, or my whistler glass stovetop tea kettle, a lined regular tea kettle, or sometimes a HotShot.

I brew in either a gaiwan, my ceramic or glass mugs with a polymesh (nylon) People's Brew Basket, Yixing (I do brew a particular jasmine green in Yixing even though it is not "correct"), or in one of my porcelain/ceramic/yixing 3-piece mugs with mug, strainer, and lid.

All of them make it very easy to cleanup with the Yixing and brew basket being a bit more of a chore. But with Yixing it is enjoyable to me. And, I'd love to find a gold/silver kettle I have nothing against those at all except cost. I also hope I don't give off a vibe that one need be wary of questioning me or my methods/thoughts... quite the contrary, I love a good discussion and I'm happy to be proven wrong and showed new things and ideas. I tend to ignore many "technical" tea things and prefer, time, experience, tradition, and common sense... that doesn't make me "right" and I don't care to be :) I just enjoy the simplicity of tea and how it was enjoyed originally, and I'd bet good money there were no scales, timers, thermometers, and 3-day-old picked tea airmailed next-day for more than my car cost me.

- Dominic

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M

snipped-for-privacy@d34g2000cwd.googlegroups.com9/26/06

07: snipped-for-privacy@hws.edu

Thank you Thitherflit. It is just as I suspected. The Tetsubin was/is a water heating vessel meant to heat the tea water, not to brew. God, you, and I triumph yet again. All else is trash.

Cordially, Michael

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D

Unfortunately kitchen stores, Joyce Chen, and boutiques everywhere see it differently such as

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who has 12 different ones all with stainless steel infusers for brewing and even
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2285 who sells a ~$150 "traditional" tetsubin again with the stainless infuser. Both of these examples go to porcelain lined ones, and I don't have the time to find the others but I assure you that many, many places sell the non-lined tetsubin with the stainless infusers as well. I fully agree with you guys that if one was going to use it that it would be for water boiling, but even historically it could go either way with only the kama being a water-only vessel.

- Dominic

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... AFAIK Tetsubins have also been used/are still in use to warm up sake [to keep it warm], but sas a different story.

Karsten [Downing: strong Ostfriesian blend w/ "Kluntje" & heavy cream, registering 10/10 on the kick-o-meter]

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A

Actually I have been to couple of cafés in Russia where they serve "north african style" sweet teas with milk and spices from not too large (may be a

1 liter) but quite massive tetsubins with enamel lining and although it has nothing to do with any particular tea serving style its quite nice. The tetsubin keep hot for quite a while because of large metal mass, its well made and milk tea looks quite good in tetsubin styled glasses. Testubin also serve as a nice hand warmer (it was numbingly cold). Has nothing to do with the styles of drinking tea that we on this forum mostly do, but I have to admit that it was quite nice. I would absolutely love to have had one of these during my field geology days because that would allow me to brew black tea on campfire real easy and keep it hot for awhile. But the enamel might not be sturdy enough for campfire. I tried several times to brew black (shu, cooked) puerh in testubin for my friends who like shu puerh (I kinda don't anymore) and it also worked beautifully.

I prefer the lentil-shaped ones with "porcupine" spikes or hobnails (hira arare) for smaller ones (and this one has that wobderful oxidized bronse color)

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and for larger ones this is my absolute favourite:

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Sasha.

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