What is the first thing you do after purchasing a Yixing Teapot? Brew tea with it? Definitely not! A new teapot need to be treated or "prepare" so that the tea brewed in it will be delicious rather than being overwhelmed by the clay smell.
The method describe below is known as the Wu's method of preparing teapots. It was devised by Wu Ju Lin of Taiwan and created a strong following since its introduction in Taiwan a couple of years ago.
To lower cost of production, zisha clay was pulverized into powder form with a machine and this helps to speed up its molecular integration process during firing. Despite this, air cavities unique to zisha are still present in the finish teapot. But because of the difference in molecular integration process of large and small clay particles, some of these minute particles got trapped in the air cavities. With the reduction of air cavities, the teapot will not be able to absorb as much tea particles and the cultivation process will be much slower. Another possibility of clay particles getting trapped in the air cavities is the result of insufficient curing time frame for clay prior to use.
After you have cleaned the surface of the teapot, including the internal, immersed the teapot in plain tap water for 3 days then put it into a pot of water and boil for an hour. Removed the teapot and let it cool down. Using the same pot of water, boiled the teapot again for an hour. It is best to invert the teapot in order to let the boiling bubble goes over the entire teapot, internal and external.
Removed the hot teapot from the boiling water and put it into the freezer section of the refrigerator immediately. Within half an hour, a layer of frost will form on the surface of the teapot. Put the frosty teapot back into a pot of boiling water and boiled it for an hour and then put it into the freezer again for half an hour before taking out to boil again. Repeat the entire process for 5 times or up to 7 times if time is available.
Using a new pot of water, add in some tealeaves and bring it to boil for about 10 minutes. Remove the tealeaves and place the teapot, after being freeze and boiled for 5 times, into the pot and boil for 3 hours. The process is complete once you have removed the teapot and clean it.
The method may seem bizarre or even dangerous for the teapot, but the reasoning behind it is pretty simply. When the teapot is hot, it expands and breaks the air cavities within the clay. The freezing process froze the minute clay particles within the air cavities and the repeated expansion and contraction process forces these clay particles out of the air cavities, thereby clearing it. The last step of boiling the pot for 3 hours in tea allows the emptied air cavities to absorbed tea particles which helps in cultivating the teapot and at the same time removed clay smell.
How much difference this method does in "opening-up" the teapot to absorb tea particles is not proven scientifically, but with its strong following in Taiwan, there may be some truth to it. On the other hand experts from other regions are divided over the effectiveness of this method and the principles behind it.
However, if you are game enough, why not give it a try?
However, one word of warning - if you treasure your teapots, do not experiment as teapots have been known to crack or break under such extreme measures. TRY AT YOUR OWN RISK!!!
For those of you who are interested in trying out this method but afraid of damaging your teapot, here is a true account by Logan who has subjected her teapot to the above treatment and emerged ............................Read on:
"Well, the process as described in your page on preparing a pot in the Taiwanese manner has been completed right through to the final rinsing after the 3-hour boiling and both the teapot and lid appear to be still sound. Obviously there's no way of telling whether the taste of the tea is improved without comparison to an identical teapot seasoned in a different manner.
There's no scientific reason why the alternative heat and freezing should damage the pot unless it was inherently flawed in the beginning. The usual assumption is that the frost caused by the freezing of the water left from the boiling would crack the pot as ice will break up concrete. This analysis is flawed though as the ice involved in such fractures is usually both thicker and in a crack that was larger at the beginning than should be the case with a teapot.
My experience is that the water on the outside of the teapot evaporates almost instantly as the pot is transported to the freezer simply because the pot itself is so hot when first taken out of the water. As a result, there is just a very bare haze of frost after half an hour of freezing -- certainly not enough to cause damage. On the way back into the boiling water, the pot almost warms up to room temperature on its path back into the water because the teapot has no water inside. This happened even though my freezer is no more than two feet from the burner with the boiling water.
Now, this preparation process has to be making a difference -- if it makes any difference at all -- on the virtually invisible level. If a pot is destroyed by this process, I'd almost prefer that result to spending months getting the pot ready for brewing to find the fault at that point.
The only visible difference that I see is that the teapot's original medium moss color has become somewhat darker. No change in color happened until the final 3-hour boiling. This darkening would occur just as readily with tea poured over the outside regularly as described in your cultivation page. The final boiling just accelerated the process"
Quoted from: http://www.terebess.hu/english/yixing1.html
The method itself makes sense but there is always a risk of cracking your teapot during the process and knowing that accessing Zisha pottery is not readily available to people living in the West (plus the high cost of purchasing quality material), it makes this system look quite radical.
Would you use it on $250+ teapots?
