While the tea tastes good and
smells fine in cup, there is a "funky" smell from the pot itself sometimes
that disturbs me. This pot is about 8 ounces, and is made of what appears
to
be rather porous clay, probably at a lower firing, judging from the
"clunk"
as opposed to "clink" of the tapped surface. It's a factory production. I
had bought it new and used it for Pu-erhs most of its life. This is a bit
discouraging.

There are so few things in life that one can afford to just get rid of if
one's expectations are not met, that if you have even slightiest dislike of
your chahu - throw the damn thing away and treat yourself to a better one.
Or boil it for couple of hours and see if it helps, if you are frugal, as a
true New Yorker should be (or a tinkerer). My guess you may have mold in
large-pore chahus. NYT is a humid place and mold has a better chance there.
BTW - its not precisely the topic, buy you may be interested to know what I
was told by serious yixing people in China. The true test of yixing zisha
pot short of chemical tests is the fact that yixing pot before it was ever
used has a sort of metallic clank. After it is brought to contact with water
the clank "muffles" a bit. If no such difference can be noted, suspicion
should arise. It is also interesting to know that zisha means not "purple
clay" but "purple sandstone" and raw zisha is a piece of clayey sandstone
that needs to be broken and crushed first. These quartz sand particles that
are very uniform in size are responsible for zisha's special porous
qualities and mecahnical sturdiness. Because of that, a large-pore pot most
probably cannot be made of yixing zisha. Your pot is probably made of other
variaties of red clays of China (there are several).

Sasha.