Help me save my teapot, please.

[brandon]

I don't have a dish washer, so I wash most of my dishes with soap and hot water and leave them in a drying rack. It has a few hooks to hang cups upside down to dry, but lately I have been hanging my pots spout down after rinsing.

[bambooforest]

I always lay my kyuusu's spout down after rinsing. I have heard that this is recommended as "gunk" can build up otherwise. I just a big cup, and set the kyuusu spout down in it. Works well.

[Wesli]

You all could just move to Oregon.

[Chip]

It is recommended that you allow your kyusu to dry with the spout down, thus allowing any remaining water to drain out of the spout. I put mine in an eating utensil dryer to drip dry. Unfortunately, pourous clay does not totally drip dry.

Also, I recently noticed tea stained scale on the inside of my kyusu spout. It was pretty substantial. I used a squared off toothpick to scrape it off. So, while I have no scale inside my kyusu, I ended up with it in my spout anyway.

Conclusion, there is no conclusion except, we will have SCALE. It is a fact of life for us. So, we deal with it as best we can.

I read somewhere that scale, which this appears to be, condenses from hot water onto cooler surphases, such as teaware. The teaware is generally cooler than the liquid. But then why does it adhere to the bottom of my electric tea kettle. Does it simply settle here because it may be more dense than water??? Or is formed by the exteme heat, adhering to the closest thing it can find. Or am I thinking to hard because I feel a little more caffinated than normal.

[Wesli]

Scale is just hard mineral deposits that are left behind when water evaporates, because they are too 'heavy' to evaporate with the water.

[Ed]

Baking soda is what I use for my kyuusu, as well. It gets the job done and doesn't seem to leave behind any funky flavors.

[Space Samurai]

Thanks Ed, I'll keep that in mind if the problem progresses.