Objects | A Tea Addict's Journal

Zhuni

Posted on April 7, 2013 by MarshalN

There’s a lot of discussion, everywhere, of what is zhuni and what is not. It’s quite easy to tell what isn’t, especially if you’ve seen enough of them, but what is, is harder to say. I think I am reasonably confident, however, in saying that this pot I bought not too long ago is, indeed, zhuni.

The walls of this pot is quite thin, and it is a nice build. It’s slightly large for one person use, but I think its shape and size works well for oolongs. A Taiwanese oolong should do quite well in it, and I am quite excited to try it out.

There are little problems – like the little chip in the base that you see here. Can’t complain though, as perfect condition ones these days are astronomical in price. These days Chinese buyers are hoovering up everything, from pots to tea to supporting teaware. It’s getting harder and harder to buy things now, and until the China bubble bursts (if it ever does) I think high prices are here to stay.

What’s in Yixing clay?

Posted on January 7, 2013 by MarshalN

So, what’s in Yixing clay anyway?

Last year I got in touch with Professor NH Cheung of the Department of Physics of Hong Kong Baptist University, because they have this technique that they have been using to do spectroscopy on various things – forensic analysis on ink toners, for example, among others. They can use it to figure out what elements are present in any given substance without causing damage to the material itself. Well, what better than this to test if Yixing clay has lead or not? After all, that’s what everyone’s worried about, it seems, and this method seems infinitely better than the rather dodgy lead test kits that you can buy. So we got in touch, and Professor Cheung’s PhD student (soon to be Dr) Bruno Cai conducted the tests. You can read the full report here: 2012.12.31 Report of PLEAF analysis on yixing tea pots-1

I asked them to take samples from both the lid and the base of the pot, so as to get a more general sense of whether there are differences. I also gave them two pots – identical ones from, presumably, the same batch, which are here listed as “sample 1 and sample 2″. I thought it might be interesting to test to see if they share similar characteristics. In case you’re wondering, they’re the same as these ones:

The quick summary is – no lead (Pb). Among the elements present are: Aluminium, Calcium, Iron, Magnesium, Silicon, and Titanium. We don’t know in what quantity they are there, but that’s a start.

We might try to do more tests on different pots. They have also done tests on yixing ware previously – some reddish yixing cups, to be precise. The signatures are a bit different. This could get interesting.

Traveling tea set

Posted on November 22, 2012 by MarshalN

Having obtained this recently – I’m still trying to make sense of all the parts. So far, identified objects are: chataku (2), dishes (2), metal tea scoop, dry leaves presentation vessel (I think – the red/black thing), watercolour painting booklet, signed Baishi laoren 白石老人. Can’t tell if that’s real or not. For the bottom section: 5 yixing cups in bamboo holding them together, 5 small wooden chataku (are they supposed to be used on top of the metal ones?), 5 leaf-shaped dishes, 1 shiboridashi, 1 chaire, made with pewter and missing the original lid (with a replacement wood lid instead) and what looks like an incense burner of some sort (bottom right). Not shown here is a dried lotus that’s extremely fragrant.

I’m trying to figure out how one should be using this for tea. The parts that are easily identifiable are good enough. The rest I presume are for incense burning and also for snacks. One would also have to carry some sort of kettle and a stove. Having a tea picnic is not easy.

Buying tetsubins

Posted on November 4, 2012 by MarshalN

Buying tetsubins is a treacherous business. There are all kinds of problems that can arise in the process. I’ve probably bought about a dozen of them now, over the past few years, so have a reasonable sample size to talk about. The first issue, when buying them used anyway, is that the pictures are not always clear, so you are taking a gamble, and the size of your gamble depends largely on the quality of the pictures.

The first tetsubin I ever bought was a cheap little hobnail thing that I bought off eBay for about $20. It was cheap, it was small, but it was a tester, so to speak. At that point I didn’t own a tetsubin, and wasn’t sure of its usefulness in tea brewing. When it came, it had issues – specifically, the water tasted funny. It was sweet and yellow, and I think it was tea residue. The previous owner used it as a teapot (or something similar) and the water therefore was infused with whatever leftover flavours in the tetsubin. I eventually treated it by baking it in the oven – all the volatiles got burned out. I also discovered, while baking it, that the surface was covered in some kind of gunk – a layer of substance that I’m not sure what it is, to this day. Some of it might have been the paint/coating on the surface to keep it from rusting, but something else was there too – something that melts a little at low heat and was sticky when touched. It all got baked away, which was a good thing. Still, it was too small to be practical, but as a proof-of-concept, it worked, so I resold it on eBay for the same price I bought it for, and moved on.

The second was also an eBay purchase, the one right next to the hobnail one in the above-linked post, in fact. That one had a major problem – a tiny little hole, to be exact, that was right in the center of the bottom of the tetsubin. It was tiny, so not visible in any pictures, and it wasn’t pointed out in the listing, but it was there, and it rendered the pot unuseable. That was a pain, and another way that a purchase can go wrong.

I’ve had a number of good purchases since then, and in fact, the third tetsubin I ever bought is also the one I still use most days. It works – it’s lighter, relatively rust free (although more rusty now than when I bought it) and it’s good to look at. Still, there have been issues in the ones I’ve bought since. Sometimes, they’re so rusty as to make the tetsubin hard to use – it’s a real pain to clean, and an investment of time. Sometimes, the sizes are not clearly marked, so when they show up, it’s a real surprise – not always a pleasant one. Other times, there have been repairs done that wasn’t mentioned, and while it might still be usable, it’s good to know if your tetsubin has been fixed or not.

A recent acquisition was a bit of a gamble – the interior shots were iffy, and so I wasn’t sure what to expect. Thankfully, it turned out all right.

A bit rusty inside, but that’s solvable.

Which gets to the other major problem with these things these days – price. Whereas a few years ago, tetsubins were relatively cheap affair, that’s no longer the case. These days anything half decent is at least a few hundred dollars, and anything with any amount of decoration will set you back way more. Trying to find those bargains are hard now, and trying to find bargains in good condition, more difficult still. This is mostly driven, like everything else, by Chinese demand – a tetsubin like this can easily sell for 10,000 RMB in China, advertised as an antique of some sort. It is indeed good for boiling water in, but those prices are ridiculous. Alas, that’s the reality we live in these days, just like the prices for tea.

Other people’s seasoning

Posted on October 4, 2012 by MarshalN

Many of you have probably read the apocryphal story of an emperor visiting some farmer, was brewed some tea. When asked, the farmer replied that there was no tea, only seasoning from the pot. And there’s the story about a collector wanting to buy a pot from a farmer for a good price, and the next day when he came back, he found out that the pot was cleaned and so no longer wanted it – stories like this reinforce the idea that Yixing pots will season over time, and that when properly seasoned with years of brewing, are themselves capable of amazing teas.

I’m sure when you stare at that teapot of yours that you bought two or three years ago, you might be wondering how, if ever, that pot might acquire any taste from all the teas you’ve brewed in it. I certainly had wondered the same thing. Sometimes, though, it’s good to get some positive feedback.

This is a shot of a white mug I have, with water from an old pot I bought about two years ago from eBay. I never actually used the pot since I purchased it, because it’s a big one – about 350ml or so. Last night, with MadameN wanting some easy to drink tea, I decided to try this pot. The pot is already pretty clean. After rinsing it with cold water, I poured hot water in it to clean it a bit. The first rinse I threw out. This is the second rinse. The water spent maybe a total of 10 seconds in the pot, and the colour, as you can see, is a light yellow.

The pot smelled right after the rinse too – a slight sweet smell, reminding me of green tea residue. I didn’t actually taste it, but it’s pretty obvious it’s not going to taste like plain old water. The pot was advertised on eBay as something that the seller’s grandmother bought from China.Who knows how much green tea has been brewed in it over the years.

This pot is actually not a Yixing, but rather a Chaozhou pot – it’s also one of the few big Chaozhou pots I’ve encountered. Chaozhou pots seem to have a clay that is more porous than Yixing. I’ve never done any A/B tests with them against Yixing to see the effects they have. That might be something worth trying.

I ended up brewing some awkward sort-of-aged Taiwanese Lishan oolong in the pot – sweet, smooth, easy to drink, while still tasting a touch green. It’s not a bad combo.

Too bad it’s so big, otherwise I’d use it more.

An international pot

Posted on September 20, 2012 by MarshalN

The potter Petr Novak has been making teaware for a while now, and offering them to us who are interested in something a little different. A while back, I bought a shiboridashi, which is a style of Japanese kyusu that looks a bit like a gaiwan with a spout, from him, intending it to be a gift. I haven’t gifted it yet, and am not sure if I want to. The pains of a hoarder.

Yesterday I got the above pot in the mail, one of the last of the Yixing pots in Czech Republic series, I believe. I found the experiment fascinating, and right up my alley of the kind of things I’d like, so I asked if I can get my hands on one. Here it is.

The pot is shiny. It’s much shinier than your usual yixing pot, which in my unqualified, ignorant view of pottery is probably attributable to higher temperatures. The surface of the pot is not quite smooth – it feels slightly sticky, actually. The clay inside the pot looks visibly different from the outside, which I guess is because of the firing process and the difference in temperature, or something along those lines. The same can be said of the base of the pot, which doesn’t have the same colours or texture as the body, and is closer to what’s on the interior. The grains of the clay are larger than what you normally see on Yixing clay these days, but then again, these days they’re so fine I actually don’t like them.

I haven’t had a chance to try these yet with tea, but this should be pretty interesting!

Packing and moving

Posted on September 3, 2012 by MarshalN

This is the sum total of my tea life, at least in terms of stuff. The boxes in the far back are teaware of various sorts. Boxes of tea are here and there, and some have been unpacked already into the cupboard you see on the left.

Packing up your tea life is actually quite an interesting exercise. You rediscover pieces of teaware that have been relegated to the B-team, and haven’t been used for years. For example, I found my little tieguanyin pot that was sitting in the back of my cupboard, not having had a drink of tea for probably four or five years, at the very least. It was the first yixing pot I bought for myself, so in many ways it does hold some significance. It’s not something I would buy now, and I even debated whether or not I should let it go and sell it to someone where it will be used and loved, but I can’t quite get myself to do it, so into the back of the cupboard it may go again.

There are also teas that I forgot I bought, or that I haven’t tried for years because they have been difficult to access because of their storage location. The retaste project is meant to try to remedy that, but the progress on that is very slow, mostly because of the constant stream of stuff I have to drink. I will, however, get to every one of them, eventually.

I also learned a few things while packing my tea this time. For example, loose cakes are a real pain to pack, but they can be made considerably easier to deal with if you do this

A giant plastic bag or something similarly sturdy, and all of a sudden you’ve got a tong of tea. It has the added benefit of keeping all the loose tea that will inevitably fall out inside the bag, so that when you’re done, you’ve got fannings that you can grandpa easily. Similar arrangements can be done for bricks and tuos as well. They do make packing the tea much faster, and more importantly, there’s less bumping against each other, less crushing of leaves, less losses overall.

Now I’m trying to put together an inventory of teas that I have – something I’ve never actually done before, since I kid myself that I don’t have that much tea, when in fact I do. Likewise, for my burgeoning collection of yixing pots, I think I also need a list as well. Otherwise they all become undifferentiated and I can’t even tell you what I’ve got, which is probably a bad thing.

Ugly, dirty ducklings

Posted on July 27, 2012 by MarshalN

Or are they old ducks?

I love ugly pots. If you’re generous, you can call them rustic. Less generous souls will call them poorly potted, with bad craftsmanship and bad form. Either way, I love them.

Buying pots like these though entails some risks and problems. The most annoying and difficult to deal with are dirty pots. There are two kinds of dirts that you can encounter. The first is easy – just tea and other sundry dirt that can be easily cleaned. Then there’s another kind of dirt which is extremely difficult to clean. They appear as a sticky substance that clings strongly to the pot’s inner surface (always inner, never outer). Then on top, there’s often a white, limescale like substance. It’s nearly impossible to remove, with vigorous scrubbing necessary.

With bigger pots, scrubbing is at least possible. With small pots though, that’s really, really difficult. Both of these pots are infected with this unique brand of substance.

Keep in mind what you see here is already after three cleaning attempts – I’ve already removed a lot of the residue, but much remains. I honestly don’t know how anyone or anything can get that dirty. The spotted pot, especially, is puzzling. It’s part of a pair. The other pot in the pair is in great shape – stained, but doesn’t have this white stuff. This one, however, is covered in it.

I have some inkling of what this might be. I think water does eventually leave some residue in a pot. For example, my most often used young puerh pot has some of this white stuff too after years of use.

But it should really come with dark tea stains, like this

Not some sticky substance that clings tenaciously to the clay. Sigh, I just wish I can find that perfect chemical that will melt this stuff away.

Essential teaware

Posted on July 12, 2012 by MarshalN

Let’s say you need, at a very minimum, a kettle, a pot, and a cup. If we start with the kettle, you need at least something to heat the kettle with, and maybe different kettles for different purposes. Some people prefer electric water boilers that have temperature control settings, others opt for more fancy setups with charcoal burners and clay kettles, and still others fuss even about the type of charcoal they’re going to use for aesthetic purposes or some pseudo-practical reasons. Still others think it is imperative to buy, say, a clay kettle, a tetsubin, maybe a silver kettle, and a number of heating mechanisms to match. Kettles are pretty simple, so there isn’t a lot of variables there, and I think we have exhausted most of the possibility and the baseline of what might be considered essential.

Then you move on to the pot. Here’s where it gets complicated. Obviously, as everyone surely knows, you can only ever use one kind of tea per pot, otherwise the apocalypse will hit and humanity will end. So, for every kind of tea you drink, you need a different yixing pot. That will easily end you up with a dozen or more pots, one for green, light oolong, dark oolong, aged oolong, raw puerh, aged puerh, cooked puerh, maybe subdividing the oolongs into different regions, and reserving a few of different sizes for the times when you have guests. Some will most certainly tell you that certain kinds of clay are only good for certain kinds of tea, or better yet, that having different clays brew the same tea will provide different results. If you’re serious, then, you need more than one per tea type.

You also clearly need a gaiwan, since without it you cannot possibly test out teas in a neutral way, so you need at least one, maybe multiple, of those. If you’re serious, you may also need a cupping set, or three. Likewise, if you want to drink sencha, a kyusu with a yuzamashi and some yunomis are indispensible. Or if you want to have any matcha, then you need a chasen, a chashaku, at least one chawan, a natsume, a sieve, and a chakin. You also need a decent kama, probably with a matching furo, if you want to play seriously. Now, so far we’ve only covered Chinese and Japanese teas. If you want to, say, do an English tea service, well, the list goes on and on.

Of course, we haven’t even gotten to cups yet, not really anyway. There are many, many theories out there on cups, but everyone who has ever done one of those taste comparison test will almost always tell you that different cups will make things taste different. A general rule of thumb I have encountered is that smaller cups are for oolongs, bigger, wider cups for puerh, but then you need to consider issues such as the thickness of the cup, the glaze, which affects the cup’s tactile feel on your mouth and possibly the tea, as well as the shape and curvature, which will influence how the tea flows to different parts of the mouth. If you are into smelling, you need a wenxiangbei to go along with that. Cups that are naked without chatakus, however, look funny, so you need those too.

Now we’re getting into the territory of accessories that are necessary, and the list here can only grow ever longer. For example, how can anyone make any tea without the aid of the toolsets that you see selling in Chinatowns everywhere for $14.99? Or, for that matter, what can you do without that tea tray of yours that holds all of your waste water? You also need a fairness cup, which will help you dispense the tea, especially if you have a lot of guests and you want to get your tea to them in a reasonable manner. Pouring each cup individually directly from the pot, unless you’re doing a traditional gongfu style pouring which is uninterrupted by lifting and moving, is going to be disastrous. So you need one of those chaozhou trays as well in additional to your regular tray. If you’re one of those people who are into setting up endless arrays of similar looking but slightly different tea settings (chaxi) then you clearly need many variations of teawares that do the same thing, otherwise it gets boring very fast. You may also find it essential to have items to hold the dry leaves, to showcase the dry leaves, etc

We haven’t even talked about implements that store leaves, or store water, or store teaware. But I think you get my point. After all, instead of having all that stuff, you can just do this

As I’ve mentioned long ago, teaware is probably the last thing you should be spending money on, given limited budgets, in terms of how much it can improve your tea. Once you’ve moved past the basics, such as getting a proper gaiwan or a yixing pot or some such, additional money spent on teaware is almost always a waste, if your goal is a better cup of tea. Now, of course, there are other reasons why one might want to buy teaware, as I know full well. However, don’t ever let anyone tell you that any piece of tea equipment is essential – it’s not. For example, I use a toothpick to clear my spouts when they’re stuck. I find those to be far, far more effective AND safe for my pots than the implements that come in those teasets and will damage your pot. I also rarely use many of the pots that I own. Sometimes, less is really more.

Patina

Posted on May 29, 2012 by MarshalN

There’s something about slowly using a yixing pot, and the accumulation of a patina after extensive use. I bought a group of five shuipings recently at a local shop, and have only been using one. After using it for no more than six or seven times, the one I use already looks different from the rest – its colour has changed a bit, and the surface seems smoother.

It’s not obvious – given the lighting and the inherent limitations of my poor photographic skills – that they’re all that different. The one on the left, however, is the one I’ve been using, while the one on the right has never seen any tea. I suspect at least initially, what happens is that the initial seasoning and usage of the pot washes away much of the residue of manufacturing. Also, some of the particles that may be attached to the surface loosely are also removed after having water poured all over the body of the pot. After a while, you have the patina building up, so much so that it forms a distinct surface on the pot itself.

Then there is the natural staining that happens over time, and which is hard to replicate otherwise. Fake pot dealers will normally try to mimic this by using all kinds of stuff – soy sauce, ink, or shoe polish. None quite work and will always look fake, lacking the natural lustre of tea. My lion pot, for example, was really dirty when I bought it. I cleaned it. Then, after a few years of use, it is now dirtier again – but at least this time I know it has been soiled by nothing other than tea stains.

I don’t really believe in spending too much time polishing my pots or rubbing them much – I just let the patina show up naturally, through use. I don’t even pour much tea at all on my pots. Eventually, with use, the pots will start to change and age. That’s part of the fun of using yixing pots, and with pictures, you can really see the changes that take place over time.

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