Is it okay to clean ceramic teapot with baking soda?

[gunbuster363]

I am tight on budget so I only use the same teapot for different tea.

Actually, I have two ceramic teapot, both of them are Japanese tokaname teapot. I have reserved one teapot for Japanese green tea, and the other one for other tea.

I have noticed after I brew some different tea( black tea, oolong, dancong ) in the teapot, I couldn't get the best flavour from first flush Darjeeling tea with that teapot.

Then I had been looking for resolution to clean this teapot and I used baking soda on it. The result was quite good. Of course I had read that ceramic teapot have micro holes on it and it would absorb everything in it. But then I thought that the teapot had already been contaminated with different tea, I would lose nothing to clean it with baking soda.

What do you think? Is it okay to clean ceramic teapot with baking soda?

[tingjunkie]

Some people say yes. I vote no. You're far better off just pouring boiling water in the pot and letting it sit for a minute or two, then discarding. If you're still getting ghosts of flavors from previous teas after that, you're either drinking some odd teas, or you have the sensitive palette of a top sommelier.

[Pig Hog]

I did once but wished I hadn't. Mainly because I like the appearance of a well used pot. Plus the Tokoname kyusu I did it to has dark clay and I found it left some white residue until subsequent tea staining hid it again.

Personally I wouldn't do it again (screw the budget, but another pot). If I did, I certainly wouldn't make a regular habit of it.

[miig]

I did that with a Tokoname pot because the filter (metal) was so stained that it drained only very slowly. That worked out fine, but I did that once after using this thing (exclusively for Japanese Greens) for years!

I wouldn't do this on a regular basis, I suppose it would be the best solution for you to get a glazed porcelain pot. A pot which looks ok but works fine is really not that expensive and then, you can drink all kinds of tea with that pot.

[debunix]

I've done it, because it's really the only cleaner I want to use on unglazed ceramic, but it sometimes takes a couple of times boiling water in it to get the last of the soda taste out. I prefer to use a glazed pot or shiboridashi or gaiwan in those situations where I need to brew many different teas in one vessel--and I clean those glazed vessels with soda with no worries.