Can you use a yixing teapot for young and aged sheng puerh?
Does anybody know if you can use a single yixing teapot for young and aged sheng puerhs? I understand that the flavor changes slightly but it is still 1 kind of tea so I would assume you could use just 1 pot. In Davids article on verdant tea he says he just has pots for sheng puerh but makes no distinction between young and old. Any ideas?
The patina will take a while to develop, so i would give it a try and if it seems to be tasting better and better…. you have your answer, but if it taste bad… you would designate it to one tea and I’m sure it would saturate the other out as long as you keep…a tongue…on it. All great things come from trial and error, and its pretty hard to ruin a teapot beyond repair. Or you could just play it safe and do what is common knowledge.
On a side yet relative note, some drinkers refuse to mix even multiple variants of the same exact tea. You asking the question seems like you want to try it though, so i would.
Thanks for the response. I’m really not very picky and think it will be interesting to use the pot to test my teas as they age, so it will develop as the teas do. You’re right that if it does end up tasting bad I will just re-season and use it for old or young sheng. Do you have any experience with mixing young and old?
I have most experience with oolongs and had great results with using light and dark oolongs in my old yixing. I think some oolongs would screw up the good streak I have going, be it’s all in fun. I think that sometimes we get caught up in the orthodox rituals and common knowledge that we worrie too much (we’re all guilty of it at some point). Even if someone pops up and tells you it’s a bad idea you’ll still understand that it’s doubtful you’ll be using the same teas as them, have the same yixing…etc.
If you do it, however, keep this thread updated for future reference for someone else. We all like the crazy pseudo chemists ;).
Yeah I do it all the time. I’m very cautious about shu puerh and assign a “dirty” pot for it (and even that is not absolutely strict).
You may also want to try a porcelain gaiwan for young raw pu’er. I think in many cases, you will get better tasting results this way (more fragrance, less astringency). I don’t think there’s any need to be really strict about using pots, but I think storage type and overall flavor profile are a better thing to go by than some dividing line of age.
I thought that using a yixing pot for young sheng could actually help mellow it out? I guess I’ll try both and see what I like best.
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