Any taste benefit dedicating a yixing pot to a green or even white?

Hi, ChaMei (btw, interesting name, “tea eyebrow”). You are very lucky to have seven yixing pots! You must be very anxious and excited to get them seasoned up with your favorite teas. I have also heard many conflicting suggestions regarding what teas to put in yixing teaware. Personally, I would never use one of these pots for a green or white tea. My reason is that yixings are made to retain heat, which is good for wulongs, pu’ers, and blacks, but as you probably know, green and white teas release a (subjectively) better flavor at lower temperatures. Because of this, I like to brew these teas in vessels that are better at releasing heat, such as gaiwans or glass pots. I would also never use a flavored tea in a yixing pot. It’s more of a personal preference, but I see pure/unadulterated teas and yixing pots as “growing up” together in history, and I like to keep it that way. No one is saying “no” to experimentation, though!

If I were you, I would do this with my pots: Have one for rock oolongs (preferably medium/thick walled), one for Anxi/green oolongs (preferably thin-walled), one for Dan Cong oolongs, one for Taiwanese oolongs, one for shu pu’ers, one for sheng pu’ers, and I would reserve one for only my favorite type of tea (Da Hong Pao, Snow Orchid, Shui Xian, etc.)

Hope this helps!

Helpful thread – bookmarking it for when someday I need this advice!

I’m a big fan of green teas. I do not own a yixing pot but I do love the way they look and have wanted to get one but everything I’ve heard and read says that they retain heat and that is not good for green teas. My question is, couldn’t you use a thiner walled yixing with cooler water with the lid off? That in my mind would make the tea not boil in the steam.

I don’t know, Invader Zim. You could always try it. It’s just that yixing pots were not made to serve that purpose. In addition, yixing clay is mainly used in places (in China) where oolong is the main tea of choice. If you ever use an yixing for green tea, I’d love to hear how it went.

use if yxing pots is far older than black tea. the pot retains heat….it won’t get hotter than what you put in. still the traditional method is gongfu…decant the tea after a very short brew to a serving vessel. at only 8-10 oz your tea isn’t likely to sit too long and suffer

ChaMei, since you obviously like collecting pots, I think for the time being, brew Dan Congs in your smallest glass or porcelain pots or gaiwans until you pick up a chao zhou pot for them. I wouldn’t use any of them for Earl Grey, Darjeelings or any Indian teas. You might allocate your existing 7 pots generally to daily drinking green oolong, dark oolong, tie qwan yin and pu-erh and leave the other three to back up or alternates (it’s nice to switch pots from time to time or season to season); travel or premium versions of the oolongs, or…..gasp….a suddenly necessary replacement.

I also have a zisha mug with lid which I am using for my flavoured black tea but it isn’t practical in that it’s a little heavy and gets super hot with boiling hot black tea. I do it anyway. These yixing tea ware are inexpensive – clearance priced at a Teavana that I popped into to check out the stoneware cups I saw on the website. I bought every yixing product on sale and it all came out to about $170. These are probably factory molded but at least it gets me started.
PS I ignored the GM’s efforts to sell me cast iron pots and tea in volume (“20% off with 5lb tea purchase”).

Yixing pot is Chinese traditional teapot, its original place is from Yixing, Jiangsu, also it has more than 2,400 years now. The most special characteristic of yixing Sand-Fired teapot is: do not take away the aroma of the tea, on the contrary, it can absorb tea aroma with the day went on. When using this vessel to brew teas, it can keep the tea’s original flavor and retain heat.

So this teapot is more suitable for high temperature tea, such as pu’erh and oolong teas. As for green tea or white tea, these teas need low temperature, so I suggest you can use Gaiwan or glass teapot, and it’s also very convenient to enjoy its beautiful appearance while brewing.