How many yixings do you need?

[zicheng]

Allow me to introduce myself to members of this internet forum,

I have been interested in tea for about a year and a half, and doing gongfu tea for all of that time. Since I live in China I have access to a lot of good tea and even more tea ware. I have learned about gongfu tea from a combination of internet sources in English and going to a lot of tea stores and watching the store owners make tea and drinking with them.

My question is not about the limits of your teapot materialism, but rather about the oft repeated wisdom that one shall limit each yixing teapot to one kind of tea.

I don't want to have one teapot for each variety of tea (e.g. Da Hong Pao), but let's say I have enough space and money to devote several teapots to oolong tea, and a few more to pu'er.

But how to divide the class of tea (e.g. oolong) into smaller categories, without spliting them up into individual varieties (e.g. Da Hong Pao)? Pu'er is easy: one for young sheng, one for old sheng, one for shu.

I don't have enough oolong drinking experience. Should I have one pot for yancha, one pot for tieguanyin type teas? Or one pot for for heavily roasted teas (yancha and roasted tieguanyin) and one pot for lightly roasted (high-mountain taiwan oolong, lightly roasted teiguanyin)? I'm sure others have similar decisions to make, who can afford to have so many yixings? Besides, I want my yixings to build up some nice patina within my lifetime, so this means using them frequently. I can't do that if I have 50 yixings in my collection, so I want to reduce the number to something manageable. Say, 6.

[Herb_Master]

It is easy to go overboard and I DO GO RIGHT OVER the Top

I split them as follows - with collections for 5 types of oolong

Wuyi - Darker roasts
Anxi - Greener roasts
Guandong - fragrant teas
Taiwan - high mountain
Pouchong and Bhao Zhong

1 collection each for
Pu-Er
Black Tea

I like to have different sizes in each collection
I like to have a rough and ready version to try any new tea in that I am unsure of
I am a novice for Pu-Er and may one day split my collection for different uses
I have a different pot for Lapsang Souchong to other Black teas and reserve one for Yunnan and one for Fujian

But then I am excessive

[chrl42]

How many yixing needed must be depend on someone's preference, I personally like to test my favorite tea (Yancha) in different types of clay.

I've bought many pots before, but what I actually use can narrow down to few,

For Oolong, I seperate TGY and Wuyi (don't drink any else )

[finddream2020]

if you use yixing teapot, the best is one tea one pot, because yixing clay can Absorpt tea, because the clay is Porous.

generaly, i only drink my favorate tea using yixing teapot, for example, yixing red tea, biluochun etc. others i use porcelain like gaiwan.

[zicheng]

Herb Master, chrl42,

do you brew light and dark roast TGY/Anxi oolong in one teapot or do you only drink one (dark or light) roast?

finddream,

I've been to Yixing. I was last there last Saturday in fact. I had the local red tea. It's quite nice.

I'm wondering if anyone thinks lightly roasted and dark roasted TGY are different enough to justify two separate teapots. I can't imagine that brewing both in the same teapot will have a negative effect on either. The last time that I had Taiwan high-mountain oolong, I thought it was close enough to TGY for them to be brewed in the same teapot. I would think that it would take a few years or hundreds of uses for a yixing teapot to be stained so much on the inside for the tea-stains themselves (as opposed to the clay) to have a noticeable effect on the tea.

One of my teapots have been used to brew TGY dozens of times, and I also kept some dry leaves in it when I wasn't using it for a few months. It smells very faintly of the tea when there is nothing in it. However, I'm pretty sure hot water that's been poured into it would still taste like plain water.

[TIM]

for me, its like asking how many cup of tea do you need to drink.... until my wife start closing my personal credit card accounts

[Herb_Master]

Herb Master, chrl42,

do you brew light and dark roast TGY/Anxi oolong in one teapot or do you only drink one (dark or light) roast?

For me, I (would) prefer to try and seperate my teas and pots into light, medium and high roast

BUT

that is presuming you can tell the difference, some vendors specify the roast, many do not! And my tasting skills are not at an advanced stage where I can tell immediately - it is mainly a collector mania type approach

BECAUSE

if decades of use by an avid drinker can imbue a pot with it's own taste - when cycling round 100 teapots it would take many centuries

I like to have a workhorse pot or 2 in each category, that I can happily brew anything from that category in.

[chrl42]

So far, only one (light). Thanks for questioning.

[Oni]

I think it depends on how expencieve youre teapots are, but one thing is for sure the collecting never stops, it is like a drug, sometimes you will just need to buy another one, take in to consideration that TGY is a brees that has similar taste no matter the degree of roasting, now I use more roasted and TGY along with light roasted, generally all tea that is made out of the TGY bush I use the same pot.
But regarding puerh, if you dedicate one for sheng, you cannot avoid a great mixture of aromas, because puerh teas can be from 26 mountain regions, all with diffrent tea breeds, some are wild and old tea trees, and it would be impossible to dedicate a teapot for each and every type of sheng puerh in general, I think as long as one avoids mixing taiwanese high mountain oolongs with Wu Yi yancha, it is fine.

[zicheng]

I don't taste too much difference between different varieties of teas that are made very similarly. For instance, very lightly oxidized and roasted, floral TGY, and similarly made Taiwan high mountain oolong. There is probably more difference between a light TGY and a dark, heavily roasted TGY.

I know that I will probably continue to buy tea ware as long as I drink gongfu tea. I'm trying to decide how many teapots I should buy to take back to Canada with me, since I am in China, very close to Yixing and Shanghai.

I bought two in Yixing recently, and three back home. I probably won't buy anymore this time around.

[hop_goblin]

for me, its like asking how many cup of tea do you need to drink.... until my wife start closing my personal credit card accounts

Tim, I would figure this post would not sit well with you!

Btw, the Ming Guo is doing lovely!

[TIM]

for me, its like asking how many cup of tea do you need to drink.... until my wife start closing my personal credit card accounts

Tim, I would figure this post would not sit well with you!

Btw, the Ming Guo is doing lovely!

Of Course Hop. It's tax day today Nothing will sit comfortably.... besides peeping at your new tea acquires. They are a really functional good setup. Congrats!

[jackdaniel]

So, if I were to get three different teapots (one for shu pu, one for sheng pu, and one for oolong), which type of clay and shape/style of pot would be best?

shu pu -- ???
sheng pu -- ???
oolong -- ???

[Tead Off]

zisha for Puerhs.
2 zhuni for oolongs, roasted and green should be in different pots. Older, great clays, will last a lifetime. Don't skimp.

[wyardley]

I don't need any, but I sure have a lot.