TeaChat

In attached picture I am showing a tea pot made in China which is cheap and very functional. I have 2 of different design, the one in the picture holding 350 ml and the other 450 ml.

They have a metal strainer which reaches all the way to the bottom and can therefore be used for small amounts of tea leaves as well as water. The handle gives one a firm grip with a place for the thumb on top. The spout is big and therefore pours fast.

The smaller one I use mainly for my black teas with 4 infusions of 250 ml each. The teas taste great out of those pots. Now they cost me only $5.00 and $7.00 each respectively. On close look there are some flaws in the design which does not desturb me since overall they are pretty.

I am writing this to show that to enjoy a good tea one does not have to have necessarily something very expensive. Where to get? That will be the question. I buy mine at a weekly market. May be such or similar can be found in a Chinese store if one looks around.

I like the look of that pot! I'm a struggling student, so my teawares come from the Goodwill and eBay for the most part. It is lovely to look at/read about folks' custom and artisan wares, but I am not in that economic spot currently.

Yeah, my main beef with teapots folks get me is that the strainer only reaches halfway down, and I'm the only person who drinks tea (usually) so it makes it quite difficult for me to brew a single cup.

Nowadays I use my tea taster that I found for a few bucks at Goodwill:

I do love the functionality of my nice kyusus, and my handmade yunomi do make me very happy, but really the vast majority of my tea is made with either a $10 kamjove 'kung fu art' filter pitcher, and $3.99 gaiwans from my Chinatown shops. The teas are not cheap, but highly functional teaware can be.

I am very fortunate to have many teaware choices, but I have to chime in here and say that I use a simple glass pot every day at work and sometimes in the mornings at home too. Glass is inexpensive and shows off the color of tea so beautifully. Especially the teas I drink which are green oolongs a lighter black teas.

I do love how the glass teapot shows off the teas so beautifully, but after breaking several at work, I figured I was making too much work for the janitorial staff, and got the plastic kamjove. If I could figure out how to never break it, I would prefer to go back to the glass pots.

debunix wrote:I do love how the glass teapot shows off the teas so beautifully, but after breaking several at work, I figured I was making too much work for the janitorial staff, and got the plastic kamjove. If I could figure out how to never break it, I would prefer to go back to the glass pots.

Glass teapot is must-have, drinking from plastic kamjove, how dare you ?

donaldosborne wrote:how dare you

I have dared early in the morning, middle of the day, in a rush, at leisure, with puerh, with oolong, for one or for many, many different ways....

I use a similar teapot (sans metal infuser, no metal touches my tea) for greens/oolongs/fu zhuan/testing new teas--I have a set of four teacups and a large teacup in the same pattern to match the teapot. Mine has holes in the porcelain near the spout to serve as a filter.

I haven't used the teapot recently, but I am using the large cup as it is good for drinking the entire contents of my Yixings in one go. Mine is plain white porcelain with printed flowers a la Jingdezhen.

I feel the pot cools down faster than my infuser mugs, however, because of the large space around the lid; I feel it cools down even faster than my gaiwans.

For heavier teas like aged sheng, shu or high roast oolongs, I much prefer to use my Yixings as the flavor is incomparable; I keep two pots at work specifically for pu erh and high fire oolongs because I feel the results I get from porcelain never compare and leave a certain harshness to the tea, especially with the funkier HK and Guangdong pu erh.

If you're looking for a simple ~16oz pot, Old Amsterdam makes a good one. I picked mine up in a local tea shop but it's available for $6 on Amazon. It comes in plain white and lots of solid colors. Built in ceramic filter.

http://www.amazon.com/Tea-Pot-White-Cla ... pd_sim_k_6

The only thing which make those convenient tea vessel more functional, would be if they were a bit thinner walled. That makes a big difference for the tea. Those Chinatown pieces are often a tad too thick.