Teaware Preferences
Plastic steepers, glass teapots, ceramic, porcelain, cast iron, yixing/clay, gaiwan….. There are so many different types of teaware for different styles of brewing and types of tea. What teaware do you prefer for each type of tea, and what do you find yourself using most often?
(forgive me if there was already a thread on this, didn’t find it)
Cast iron pot is my favourite. Just something about making tea in one of these – all about the act of making it and enjoying it afterwards.
For convenience in a morning and its early and time isn’t on my side then its my Inginuitea device.
I do like having various methods to make tea with – my wife doesn’t understand but once we have a bigger house i’m going to have a chill out room with all my tea in there.
Fine bone china. For everything. Except if it’s a large pot to share with Husband in which case it’s ceramic, primarily because I haven’t got a good china pot in that size. (I’ve got one, but it’s not very good. It’s designed in such a way that the leaves are difficult to clean out.)
I just find china far more pretty and appealing than any other option out there. Those plastic brewing devices don’t appeal to me at all. I don’t care how awesome people think they are, I don’t want one in my house. Far too… gadget-y.
You probably have but weren’t aware it was china at the time. :) I favour Roy Kirkham’s designs. http://www.roykirkham.co.uk/categories/teapots_retail.php?startpos=0 The spouts pour well with little dripping and I like the designs on them. :) We have two tea-for-one set, one with butterflies and one with garden birds. I also had a please shut the gate tea-for-one set as well, but the pot cracked. I’ve still got it looking cute on a shelf, though. The Louise model mug fits the small pots exactly. :)
I have a teapot that looks kind of like that. I thought it was cermaic. Ha. How can you tell the difference?
If you hold it up to the light, bone china is ever so slightly transparant. You should be able to see the shadow of your fingers through it. This is because it contains 25% bone ash (hence bone china). The bone ash makes the china stronger and whiter. If you tap the rim of a cup lightly with your nail, it also has a little ring to it, a bit like crystal glass does, but it can be difficult to hear. I can hear it on my mugs, but not on the pots.
If your pot has some sort of production stamp or label or something on the bottom, if it’s bone china, it’ll likely say so there, since it’s generally a pricier material than ceramics. :)
At the moment, I only have the electric kettle (which isn’t technically mine). I wish to acquire a gaiwan in the future.
Sturdy ceramics. I have glass pots and ceramic ones (and one 65+ year old pot from my grandmother) but the thicker ceramics with built in infusers and used the most often. I have bone china teacups but they aren’t very big so they don’t get used often. Also the cat broke the handle off one and hubby won’t touch them so it seems a pain to use them just for me. We have a cupboard full of various mugs that we use all the time.
When I have time I go gongfu with my gaiwan. Lately there is no time though. Leave home at 5 am, get home at 5:30…or 7:30…or 9:30. Yuck.
Oh, I drink primarily black tea with occasional herbals or flavoured. Puerh tends to go in the gaiwan. I am not a fan of plastic gravity steepers, have no need for cast iron and don’t drink the same tea often enough to get yixing.
I feel like I cheated – by omitting my cheating. I often use my perfect tea mug at work or if i am having tea alone at home. I also use T-sacs quite a bit at the moment while I get my tea routine down pat at my new job. I’m okay with both although I prefer the mug for less waste. The t-sacs are GREAT for some sensitive teas that go bitter if over-steeped though.
I have a new Yixing teapot on it’s way to me and have no experience with yixing so far so cannot comment on that. Want some gaiwans too which I don’t have. What I do have and use a lot of are tiny ceramic teapots. I used to use my little stainless steel Henley teapot a lot. It was the perfect size for one and kept the tea really hot but the infuser basket was tiny. It was a tight fit for most teas to infuse and couldn’t be used for whole leaf teas. I found two tiny ceramic Chinese teapots at Value Village and have been using them a lot! Great for whole leaf tea. For 2 people I have a glass teapot that has a plastic lid and a good size infuser basket. It’s not perfect but it does the job and I like to see the tea opening up. I have a cast iron teapot that’s about 2 1/2 cups. It’s good for two people too. The other teapots I have a just too big for everyday use. I’m still searching for a perfect teapot for one.
Then there are times when I don’t use a teapot at all and have a few cups with an infuser basket. They are pretty convenient.
Anywhere from 6 to 10 oz. The smaller the better since I drink too much tea anyway. If I can keep my cup size down that means less tea.
Most of the time I use gongfu glass teapots various sizes 100ml, 150ml, 200ml with spring filter. I also use easy gaiwan 150ml. Have Yixing pots, didn’t season them yet. I plan to use one for sheng puerh and one for shou puerh. I use ceramic pot if I make tea for family and friends with stainless steel infuser basket ForLife. I use SS basket in a cup for western brewing. I also have fancy gaiwan fr Verdant, use it on special occasions.
eBay fr Dragon Tea House, other various sellers, yunnan sourcing, and Aliexpress also has them. They are very inexpensive. Make sure they have stainless steel spring as a filter inside. It’s removable and easy to clean.
I have gaiwan for my fresher green teas, a Jian Shui, a couple cheap molded red Yixing pots and a lidded mug. These are really necessary for the teas I spend time looking for, curated recommendations. But really I prefer a lot of my inexpensive vintage mid century Japanese ceramic or stainless steel pots and pitchers (either for tea wash or to brew up a quick refill to take to my room). This tea ware is stuff I find in thrift stores or on EBay, it is mainly stuff acquired by servicemen when posted to Japan, stuff they brought home as souvenirs or for the mother-in-law, there is a lot of this stuff around to buy. I am not terribly interested in new tea ware, I just ordered a new Yixing only because another I seasoned cracked on me.
Really interesting reading everyone’s responses. Thanks everybody :)
Please write more about yourself, your tea ware, interests, brews, anything. I have really enjoyed your posts on other topics, you seem to be a young person who found your deep interest in tea by yourself, you have something that others around you don’t share. I have a feeling that your experiences and insights will be very interesting. Someone who spends their graduation money on tea ware is unique!
Thanks :) I’m 23 years old, no one I know in real life is knowledgeable about tea, so I’ve learned everything I know from Google, Wikipedia, Youtube, tea vendor websites, and Steepster. My mom always kept peppermint and chamomile tea in the house when I was little and I liked drinking them, but it was an occasional thing for me. She also made fresh ginger tea for me when I was sick, but I never liked it because it was very strong and too spicy for me. We don’t keep real tea in the house because we are Seventh-day Adventists and our religion discourages the use of caffeine because the view is that it’s addictive and bad for your health. So because of that I drink herbal tea basically 95% of the time.
When I went to college I really wanted to grow my hair so I started buying herbs like nettle, burdock, lavender, and horesetail grass to use as hair rinses. I tasted all of them individually out of curiosity but didn’t like them because they tasted so medicinal. I didn’t have any steeping tools and decided that loose tea was a pain. However, I did enjoyed making iced tea out of the decaf green and black tea from the dollar/grocery store so I started making quite a bit of that. Every now and then I would try a new bagged tea from the store, but it wasn’t really a big deal.
Last fall I was on Pinterest a lot and started making infused waters because I knew I wasn’t drinking enough h20. While I was looking for fruit infuser bottles on Amazon, I stumbled upon Adagio’s InginuiTEA steeper and was fascinated by it, so I bought it and a tin a fruit tea. I bought a pound of rooibos tea on Amazon and starting making up my herbal tea blends with things from around the house and started really getting into it. Soon it was black friday and I ordered a bunch of samples from Adagio because I wanted to try some new loose teas. I liked reading the reviews on Adagio’s website and wanted to find reviews for David’s tea, and I stumbled upon Steepster, which led to me expanding my tea cupboard even more.
As far as teaware goes, I’m still in the experimental phase. As I said earlier, I started off with the Adagio InginuiTEA, but it started leaking so much that I no longer use it. I found a ceramic teapot and used that. I bought a cast iron teapot and used that. I bought an in-mug infuser. I found a brand new “tea sock” in the kitchen drawer. I bought disposable teabags when I got my traveling tea box back because it made it easier to try a bunch of teas at once. Each thing I’ve tried has their pros and cons. I recently learned about yixing teapots and bought a few of those, but they’re still in the mail (except the one I got from Teavana). I’m also waiting for a gaiwan gonfu set to come in the mail. So right now I’m not sure what teaware or tea brewing method is best for me. I’m still learning, which is why I started this thread. I want to learn more :)
Knowledge of herbs and infusions is excellent knowledge to have. At your age I was a RC nun and herb lore was part of my study. The only real caffeine tea I drank back then was kukicha, boiled Japanese twig tea, taken for an herbal health benefit and food digestion with a vegetarian macrobiotic diet. Most of my herbs and bulk grains were purchased from a food store run by a Seventh Day Adventist gal. All of the knowledge I gained in those years has been incredibly valuable, herb lore is well worth the time, it is a discipline that involves deep knowledge of the body. Experienced tea tasters will taste with their body, not just nose, tongue and throat. Those with knowledge of herbs go into tea tasting already working with the body’s response, they don’t need to arrive at this after years and years of tea.
I have an 8 oz glass teapot with built-in Stainless strainer, which I use almost exclusively. I’ve been using it for a year and a half, and just love it. When I was working, I had an 8 oz Teavana mug with a cover and lift-out strainer that was very convenient.
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