Not fully filling an yixing with water

[yanom]

Does anyone have any views, for puer in an yixing, on pouring in water only up to around the three-quarters level? My hunch is this would result in the same tea as if the teapot was 25% smaller.
Thanks

[Tead Off]

If you're a gongfu brewer, I'm sure it would not be the same, using a larger pot but only filling up partially. Why not get a pot that is smaller for your needs? I'm a firm believer in using the right tools for a job. But, maybe you're not that particular or can't afford another pot.

[yanom]

Why would it not be the same? The only thing I can think of is that it would retain heat a bit better because air conducts heat less well than clay.
As for gongfu: surely it would take an extra bit of gongfu to get the water level right!

Edit: actually, I don't think the air/conducting idea would make much if any difference because there's air free under the lid of even a full teapot anyway.

[steanze]

IMO for puerh it's totally fine. I do it sometime when I feel like using one of my larger pots for 1-2 people.

[impromptuandy]

Interestingly, I learned this way of filling up the pot from Master Lim Ping Xiang this past May, in Wuyishan. I think he gave two reasons... First, to let the tea "breathe." Second -- if you fill the pot up all the way so that it overflows, you're wasting the best part of the tea.

I've been experimenting with this way since. I'm not sure about Master Lim's reasons, but I've had good results. My hunch is that is has something to do with the way the leaves expand and absorb water.

On this view, it wouldn't actually be the same as if you were using a smaller pot, because to get the same volume you'd have to fill that pot all the way.

[yanom]

steanze, nice to know it works for you.

Very interesting about Lim Ping Xiang. Out of interest, was he referring to puer or wulong (or both)?

[impromptuandy]

I think he was referring to all teas. At the time we were focusing on pu-erh, yancha, and liu bao. I didn't ask his view on brewing greens, say, in a yixing pot.

I should add that he didn't specify three-quarters full as the rule across the board -- the shape of the pot was important in this regard. He also suggested to use as little leaf as possible. (The idea is that the flavors come out less muddled this way.) So, as you might expect, you probably wouldn't get good results filling up a pot partway with water if it's bursting with leaves.

[kyarazen]

Why would it not be the same? The only thing I can think of is that it would retain heat a bit better because air conducts heat less well than clay.
As for gongfu: surely it would take an extra bit of gongfu to get the water level right!

Edit: actually, I don't think the air/conducting idea would make much if any difference because there's air free under the lid of even a full teapot anyway.

i do that in my office where i use a 500ml yixing pot. i usually fill it 3/4 full or depending on how much i want to drink.

it doesnt matter too much if you are going with slightly longer steeps, smaller amount of leaves, and going for fuller extractions of the leaves, i.e. grandpa style or gramma style whatsoever. but if your pot is big, and you are going to throw in like 5g of leaves into a 500ml pot, and use 100ml water to steep, you will probably lose heat fast as opposed to a 100ml pot fully filled.


the aim of using a small pot (whether yixing or not) with a smaller volume to tea leaf ratio i.e. 10ml to 1g leaf, is to utilize property of the pot shape/size being able to constrict the leaf and control the swelling/water absorption by the leaves, and inevitably affect extraction. this is one reason why 7grams of yancha in an yixing of 80ml, steeped to the brim (maybe 50ml of water?), will be dramatically different of 7 grams in a 500ml pot and adding 50ml of water.

the other parameter is the thermal loss coefficient

[steanze]

Why would it not be the same? The only thing I can think of is that it would retain heat a bit better because air conducts heat less well than clay.
As for gongfu: surely it would take an extra bit of gongfu to get the water level right!

Edit: actually, I don't think the air/conducting idea would make much if any difference because there's air free under the lid of even a full teapot anyway.

i do that in my office where i use a 500ml yixing pot. i usually fill it 3/4 full or depending on how much i want to drink.

it doesnt matter too much if you are going with slightly longer steeps, smaller amount of leaves, and going for fuller extractions of the leaves, i.e. grandpa style or gramma style whatsoever. but if your pot is big, and you are going to throw in like 5g of leaves into a 500ml pot, and use 100ml water to steep, you will probably lose heat fast as opposed to a 100ml pot fully filled.


the aim of using a small pot (whether yixing or not) with a smaller volume to tea leaf ratio i.e. 10ml to 1g leaf, is to utilize property of the pot shape/size being able to constrict the leaf and control the swelling/water absorption by the leaves, and inevitably affect extraction. this is one reason why 7grams of yancha in an yixing of 80ml, steeped to the brim (maybe 50ml of water?), will be dramatically different of 7 grams in a 500ml pot and adding 50ml of water.

the other parameter is the thermal loss coefficient

+1
you can reduce heat loss in a large pot by preheating it with boiling water (on the outside if the leaves are already in).

You also want to consider the fact that aroma might be lost in the air inside the pot before the tea is poured in the cups. This is less of a concern for teas low in aromatics so that's why IMO with puerh it's ok

[miig]

hm, question is why you'd want to do that - if the pot is not too large, you won't get so much more tea if you fill the remaining 25% too

I'm not an expert or anything, but I'd presume that if you were to follow a perfectionist, or should I say, gong-fu way of preparation, this could be seen as a problem. But from a pragamatic point of view, it is not likely to cause any drastic changes in you tea.
Also, the more spherical the pot, the smaller the area in the upper part - if you fill a pot which is 4 centimeters in height with water until the 3cm mark, it will be filled to a significantly larger extent than 75%.

[yanom]

It's interesting that people seem to feel this would be fine for puer but not for wulong. I agree. I guess it's because the 'gong fu' style of tea used to be only for wulong? And puer wasn't normally drunk the same way? Puer seems to be a lot more forgiving than wulong.

Basically, for years I've used a 110ml teapot for aged puer but often -- if I'm just drinking regular stuff -- I find it a bit of a faff. Yes, you might miss out on detecting some different flavours between steeps but, to simplify things, I was pouring two consecutive steeps into the same cup before drinking and it still tasted fine!

So that's why I ended up getting a bigger teapot. Except it's probably a little bigger than I might always want. I figured it might make sense to keep the option of sometimes not filling to the brim, depending on the how a particular tea seemed to be brewing on a particular day.

That's to say, water amount being a variable you can control just as much as steep time.

[miig]

Ah, ok, thanks for the clarification.

I personally have been drinking wulongs for much longer than pu-erh, and I would not know why a not-entirely filled pot would be more problematic here. I mean, it depends of course: Phoenix wulongs can be very delicate to prepare, and I'd say that neon-green wulongs behave drastically different from traditional, heavier-rosted/oxidized varieties.

Still, think that it won't matter so much if you fill a pot to 75% or completely - but if you leave it half-empty or so, it probably will cause water temperature to drop relatively quickly.

[chrl42]

Totally fine, unless you test a sample.

[steanze]

+1 if you are testing a sample I'd go with a gaiwan rather than a yixing

[yanom]

Totally fine, unless you test a sample.

chrl42, do you mind me asking, why does a sample make a difference? Is it just for consistency?