. Basically i tested the tea side by side in both the yixing and my gaiwan. Heres what happened...
I didn't do a rinse, I just heated everything up and did a 30s first infusion and went from there. The aroma of the tea from the gaiwan had much more of a green quality to it in the first infusion. Color seemed to be pretty much the same. Both tasted really good but had some noticeable difference. The tea from the gaiwan seemed to have its flavors more up front and it seemed to be even a bit sweeter. The tea from my yixing however had much more of a rounded flavor and it seemed to have a much nicer mouth feel and body. It may sound funny, but the best and closest way I can explain it was that the yixing hit the flavor more toward the back of my mouth, while the gaiwan gave me flavor much more toward the tip of my tongue.
I did a second 30s infusion. Each again pretty much the same color, I can only say that perhaps the tea from the gaiwan has a slightly clearer hue to it. Both had a nice nutty aroma, but the yixing tea had a very interesting different type of nuttiness that I can't explain. It seems much deeper like roasted nuts perhaps. They tasted really good again, the yixing tea was just short of a cinnamon note and again the gaiwan was a bit sweeter.
The third infusion was 50s. That cinnamon note was somewhat there in the aroma of the gaiwan tea, however the flavor of that one was pretty much gone while the tea in the yixing still had some nice flavor.
I quit after the fourth infusion because there seemed to be nothing left from either tea. It was quite interesting to find, although not major differences, that there was infact a taste difference that I could notice.
It's always worth trying the same tea in different brewing vessels. Some teas just seem to do better in porcelain, and others in yixing. I have some yancha that just plain won't come out right in anything but my porcelain gongfu pots, and the difference can be striking with some of the teas like bei dou (it comes out lightly floral and fruity until you get the right brewing vessel and then it comes out with a deep cherry pipe tobacco and plum base).
