Yixing and Green Tea
I need a definitive answer on this. Does Yixing have any affect on green tea, or is yixing strictly used for oolong and puerh?
You know, you don’t have to keep making a new topic everytime you have a question, especially if it’s related to a topic you posted previously. :)
Hehe, sorry if it’s annoying. I’m particularly antsy tonight with getting answers. Just in my past experience with Steepster, if you post a second question after the main question was answered, the second question rarely gets answered
You can use yixing for just about any type of tea.
Is it recommended for green tea? not really. Apart from taking a long time to season with green tea, yixing clay is unique in that it retains heat very well. Green teas, which are brewed at much lower temperatures than Blacks/Pu-erh/Oolongs, might get ‘over-cooked’ in the pot, unless you lower the temperature before hand.
My recommendation is to stick to ceramic/porcelain/glass gaiwans, cups, mugs, teapots etc., for green and white teas.
Further, I don’t think I’d go through the expense of a yixing for a flavored tea and I think that you had mentioned that your favorite tea is the pomegranate one? If I’m wrong, then please disregard. Yixing is probably better dedicated to the pure teas (I do have a yixing mug for jasmine, but jasmine teas are not flavored in the same way that a pomegranate tea would be).
Thanks for your replies, you’ve all been really helpful! Now I must ask, why wouldn’t yixing be suitable for a flavored tea?
Teas that are flavored are usually done so with flavoring oils (except scented teas, which are technically not flavored teas but … well, scented teas), and the clay can be affected by the oils. And unless you’re buying the same flavored tea from the same purveyor every time, you may not get the same quality of flavoring oil on your tea every time. Further, there’s no guarantee that even if you do buy the flavored tea from the same purveyor every time that they’ll use the same oil every time. Companies like Teavana that are more interested in their bottom line than their product could very well change the flavoring oil, switching to a lower quality oil and affecting the tea as well as your yixing.
The town of Yixing (which is, of course, the hometown of yixing teapots) is in a green tea region. Yixing teapot was used for green tea long before it was used for oolong. But overall, there is no strict rule. If you own the pot, use it for whateeeever you would like :-)
But as Mike said, a newer yixing clay pot could take flavor away from green tea, and that should be taken into consideration. And overcook problem should be considered too.
I sometimes use a yixing made of aged duan ni for green tea and keep the lid off for the first a few infusions.
Also I agree with Anne that I wouldn’t use yixing for flavored tea. But I don’t have much of flavored tea so it’s not based on personal experience. Besides it’s not illegal anyway :-p I use yixing too on jasmine tea :-)
No not illegal. Like you said, if one has a yixing they can use it on whatever they want… they could even use it on different teas if they want to, but that just seems like a crazy waste of a yixing.
I don’t really consider most Jasmine to be flavored, but rather scented. I think that there is a difference between the two. And I do have a yixing for Jasmine. Jasmine is one of my favorites. :)
Exactly! I would see jasmine tea as scented instead of flavored too. I use yixing for jasmine, but somehow never thought of let it touch flavored tea :-)
Are these jasmine teas you two use the basic pouchong base or a different tea base?
I typically drink pearls or silver needle base myself. I was curious how that works in a yixing pot. I have a yixing pot that I never seasoned yet because I haven’t figured out what I want to use it for. Now I’ve seen these threads that using green tea isn’t the best idea, but I never thought of using a jasmine scented tea.
I don’t have yixing pots, but I do have three yixing mugs. One of them is for my jasmine scented teas. I don’t know that it is necessarily having a positive effect on my jasmine teas, but I will say that it isn’t having a negative one that I can notice.
At least it’s not having a negative effect, that was my biggest worry. I can always try seasoning it with a jasmine tea and if I don’t like it I can always reset the yixing. Thanks!
Wow, you guys really know your stuff! You guys mention oils muddying the flavor of the tea in Yixing, but what if there are no flavor oils in the tea; just fruits? (unless of course by oils you mean the oils of the fruit)
Most flavored teas have flavor oils, otherwise it’s probably not a flavored tea. It’s a blended tea, which is a different thing all together. In which case, if you’re talking of a blended tea, I suppose you could use a yixing for that … heck, if you really wanted, you could use a yixing for a flavored tea, it just would be – in my opinion – a waste of the yixing’s qualities. If you bought a yixing for the flavor absorbing qualities of the clay, these are factors that you should take in to account, in my opinion. If you just want a yixing … use it for what you want. :)
Login or sign up to leave a comment.