My pretty Yixing Zisha pot after 10 months of daily use (and cleaning off some nasty stains)
My pot had some very major stains around the spout, handle, main opening, lid, and bottom. Upon the recommendation of some serious zisha experts in China, I used baking soda to rub them off. It looks much prettier now without those isolated, heavily stained areas. I’m going to be a little more careful as I continue to use this pot, hopefully not having the problem of stains building up on those spots.
There’s nothing wrong with cleaning a clay pot up. It’s the hot water that really seasons the clay!
I never realized some people want their pots to be cleanish. I guess I’ve always embraced the stains as a sort of wabisabi. It’s definitely clean looking.
Here are some more pics, including pics of the inside: https://imgur.com/a/rq5ff it’s a little hard to capture good pictures of the inside. As you can see the inside is far from clean. I got into the bad habit of being really lazy about cleaning out the leaves. I’m better now!
That looks clean and shiny. I’m in Wonks camp on this one though, I like my pots looking old and stained.
Might want to clean the pot with bleach. If you were leaving leaves in overnight you may have fungal spores in there, especially if the tea got moldy
There are actually health concerns with a dirty pot apparently
No mold or fungal spores as far as I can tell. No off smell and the leaves never got moldy. I live in a super, super dry climate. If I leave wet tea leaves out they just dry out, never mold.
Gotcha, if I left leaves out for long enough I’d have some serious mold! Hasn’t happened yet
I’ve left a giant clump of totally wet heicha leaves in my gaiwan for two days, it just dried up. Same in my glass bottle, they just dry back up. I guess that’s one benefit of living in a well-heated apartment in an ultra-dry environment? Doesn’t really suit aging puer though, so I had to turn my room into a humidor! Haha!
I’ve come home to a ball of furry mold in an infuser mug! I’m much more careful with Yixing pots. Have you considered a pumidor vs turning your room into a steam room? ;)
I recently shipped all of my puer back to the states (minus a few cakes that I plan to drink in the next few months), specifically to the US South, so the humidity should be pretty good. I’ll store it there for probably another year or so before selling some of it.
I plan on moving back to the States for a couple years in the near future. Once I’m back here for the longer term I plan on building a pumidor. I don’t plan on begin super aggressive with humidity, but basically preventing them from drying out over the winter.
Gotcha. I let my tea age with natural cycles, and it got very dry in HK in the last few weeks (40-50% range), often with higher humidity at night. Back up to 70% now! Some people believe the natural wet/dry cycles are a good thing vs constant heat and humidity (e.g., HK/Taiwan/Guangdong vs Thailand/Malaysia/SG). I actually haven’t tried any dry stored pu from those places, but I suppose I should see if I can find some in Bangkok in April!
I’ve also been considering leaving tongs in Mumbai, but the bugs seem to get into everything there (I’ve had bugs eat a rattan stick and apparently rats ate through a steel air conditioner). Maybe leaving a tong of 8653 there would be a good experiment.
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