What method of preparation do you use most often or exclusively?

Usually I use Gongfu for most Puerhs that I know what to expect from. I will use a gaiwan if I don't know what to expect.

I use a clear thermoplastic travel cup to take some tea to work everyday. Most often a green puerh.

I use an Adagio Ingenuitea for Reds (blacks to westerners)

I use a kyusu for Japanese greens.

I use a gaiwan for Chinese greens, oolongs, yellows, whites, and most any other tea.

Mike

The weekday wakeup black/red is brewed in a Jena glass infuser mug. Most of the rest of my, uh, solitary drinking in the course of the day is prepared in a gaiwan and decanted into a tall porcelain cup. When sharing with others, I might use a gaiwan or, often for oolongs and Puerhs, a little glazed pot.

/Lew

I use a Chatsford right now for my black (red) tea and when I do my greens I use various and sundry glass jars (jelly, canning jars, whatever is clean and that I have a measurement on) to brew. I brew 300 ml at a time with the greens, that way I am not wasting any when I need to do multiple steeps. Any more at one time would end up being a lotta tea!

I'm doing my shu puers in a yixing right now. It's a big yixing though and...well...I end up with a lot of tea. Swimming you might say. ::glug::

Melinda

(Oh...sometimes I'll use my gaiwan at my desk for greens and oolongs and bring along a thermos of hot water. It's ok but...it's still a little messy for me. My gaiwan is a little dribbly, or it might be me)

Kyusu for Japanese teas. For all those other, lesser leaves, brewed in the tiny enameled sauce pan in which the water was heated to temp, the tea then strained into a cup, a Heath Ceramics open-top (cream? sauce?) container, or sometimes a Pyrex liquid measurer.

--crymad

I prefer the British approach which is more tea from bigger pots and more time to gossip with friends.

Jim

Mydnight wrote:

I use the larger pots when brewing my slew of common green teas that I have amassed from being a teacher in China. When the students find you that you really love tea, they will get you some common green...really nice sentiment in my opinion!

Had a guy buy me some decent Tie Guan Yin once!!

With blacks, I use my igenuiTEA almost universally. With greens, it depends on my mood, but more often than not I'll use my gaiwan. Oolongs get the same treatment, unless they're ti kuan yin, then they're yixinged. Whites always go in my gaiwan. Marlene

Before I understood some things about "real" tea, I found a China Black (Red) that I really liked so I bought a yixing for it...I still use that pot for that tea. In a like manner I have a pot for TKY and a pot for DaHongPao. I don't do greens (as a rule) nor Pu'er. Everything else gets the 1920's Brown Betty my wife bought me for my birthday or a Thrift store ceramic. If I continue true to form I will need several more yixing for the oolongs that I am finding irrestible.

I use gongfu for my pu-erhs, and for pretty much everything else (Chinese greens, oolongs of every description) I use a gaiwan.

I've got a tetsubin for the occasional Japanese green.

If I ever have a black tea (hong cha, not hei cha) I'll use my gaiwan, but I rarely drink hong cha anymore.

With the gaiwan, I decant into tasting cups for better teas, but for my everyday stuff I just sip striaght from the gaiwan

James

At the risk of telling somebody how to live his life, I've never understood why decanting a gaiwan of ordinary tea is too much trouble. How much trouble is it, really? I mean, it's one pour and you're done with it, but sipping from a gaiwan is more trouble than sipping from a cup, and that's each time you apply your lips. Plus, the liquor gets less and less tasty with the leaves sitting in it.

/Lew