I've noticed that tea brewed in porcelain vessels (with temp, tea, and
time equal) will generally taste sweeter and lighter than tea brewed
in Yixing wares. I've tested this phenomenon with various oolongs and
green puerhs and the results have been constant, for me at least.
With the Yixing ware the lower notes and "yan" are emphasized whereas
porcelain tends to bring out sweetness and floral qualities.

My only hypothesis thus far is that zisha, being a better insulator,
has a very different cooling curve than porcelain thus the brewing
difference. I tried to test this by using hotter water intially in
the porcelain and preheating the porcelain while starting the zisha
cold. The difference between zisha and porcelain was still noticeable
(which may invalidate my hypothesis, but I'm still rather uncertain).

Has anyone else noticed this effect or am I alone? Any ideas as to
the cause?

Regards,

Cameron

On 6 Jul 2004 16:45:05 -0700, (Cameron Lewis) cast
caution to the wind and posted:

I've noticed that tea brewed in porcelain vessels (with temp, tea, and
time equal) will generally taste sweeter and lighter than tea brewed
in Yixing wares. I've tested this phenomenon with various oolongs and
green puerhs and the results have been constant, for me at least.
With the Yixing ware the lower notes and "yan" are emphasized whereas
porcelain tends to bring out sweetness and floral qualities.

Very interesting. Excuse my ignorance but what is "yan"?


My only hypothesis thus far is that zisha, being a better insulator,
has a very different cooling curve than porcelain thus the brewing
difference. I tried to test this by using hotter water intially in
the porcelain and preheating the porcelain while starting the zisha
cold. The difference between zisha and porcelain was still noticeable
(which may invalidate my hypothesis, but I'm still rather uncertain).

Temperature could be a dominant variable here. If all things are
equal, particularly steep times, have you measured the temperature
after the steep time was up? It would be interesting to see if there
was a detectable difference.

You tried compensating the porcelain to make up for your perceived
difference, have you tried mimicking the porcelain results by
compensating the Yixing pot?

Is the porcelain vessel a gaiwan or a similarly sized teapot? I am
finding myself wanting to go out and get gaiwan now! It might be
interesting to see 2 different faces of the same tea!



Mike Petro
http://www.pu-erh.net
remove the "filter" in my email address to reply

Cameron,

Interesting observation. I have not been brewing my oolongs in porcelain
lately; I have been using exclusively yixingware, and the lack of sweetness
I've noticed is something I've been ascribing to my current batches of these
teas. In fact, I've been changing temp and time parameters to try to bring out
different taste elements.

You've encouraged me to experiment with porcelain.

I'm interested in your interpretation of "yan" as well.

Joe Kubera

Cameron 7/6/04


I've noticed that tea brewed in porcelain vessels (with temp, tea, and
time equal) will generally taste sweeter and lighter than tea brewed
in Yixing wares. I've tested this phenomenon with various oolongs and
green puerhs and the results have been constant, for me at least.
With the Yixing ware the lower notes and "yan" are emphasized whereas
porcelain tends to bring out sweetness and floral qualities.

My only hypothesis thus far is that zisha, being a better insulator,
has a very different cooling curve than porcelain thus the brewing
difference. I tried to test this by using hotter water intially in
the porcelain and preheating the porcelain while starting the zisha
cold. The difference between zisha and porcelain was still noticeable
(which may invalidate my hypothesis, but I'm still rather uncertain).

Has anyone else noticed this effect or am I alone? Any ideas as to
the cause?


It's a very worthwhile experiment, to be sure. YiXing clay pots of different
qualities are recommended for different teas -- wall thickness, porosity,
size. Wuyi wants a very thin wall, while Pu-erh wants a thicker more porous
walled larger pot. Based on your comments, Cameron, I'm going to try
preparing some Wuyi teas in a porcelain lidded cup to compare.

Meanwhile, have you used your clay pots a lot? Have you dedicated each one
to one type of tea, or are they generalists? I'm just wondering if this
might be a line of enquiry, realizing that a well used clay pot used for one
tea only ought to refine the taste. Who knows. Thanks for opening up the
question.

Michael

It's nothing new to me that the same tea taste different enough in
teapots of different materials. In my case, blacks in stainless
steel, oolongs in porcelain, and greens in clay. There are other
factors such as size, glaze, eddie viscosity. I don't like the taste
of any new teapot till it develops a patina. That even includes
stainless steel. I always boil water and find porcelain pots cooler
than clay. If someone wants to make a case that glass is the best
material for making tea because the leaves brew better exposed to
light who can argue? You'll need a glass pot to understand eddie
viscosity. I think what makes the Brown Betty (bowed body) such a
great teapot is the 'big splash'. The leaves are thrown up on the
sides and tumbled with the infusion like a front loading washer.

Jim

(Cameron Lewis) wrote in message om...
I've noticed that tea brewed in porcelain vessels (with temp, tea, and
time equal) will generally taste sweeter and lighter than tea brewed
in Yixing wares. I've tested this phenomenon with various oolongs and
green puerhs and the results have been constant, for me at least.
With the Yixing ware the lower notes and "yan" are emphasized whereas
porcelain tends to bring out sweetness and floral qualities.

My only hypothesis thus far is that zisha, being a better insulator,
has a very different cooling curve than porcelain thus the brewing
difference. I tried to test this by using hotter water intially in
the porcelain and preheating the porcelain while starting the zisha
cold. The difference between zisha and porcelain was still noticeable
(which may invalidate my hypothesis, but I'm still rather uncertain).

Has anyone else noticed this effect or am I alone? Any ideas as to
the cause?

Regards,

Cameron

Space 7/7/04


It's nothing new to me that the same tea taste different enough in
teapots of different materials. In my case, blacks in stainless
steel, oolongs in porcelain, and greens in clay. There are other
factors such as size, glaze, eddie viscosity. I don't like the taste
of any new teapot till it develops a patina. That even includes
stainless steel. I always boil water and find porcelain pots cooler
than clay. If someone wants to make a case that glass is the best
material for making tea because the leaves brew better exposed to
light who can argue? You'll need a glass pot to understand eddie
viscosity. I think what makes the Brown Betty (bowed body) such a
great teapot is the 'big splash'. The leaves are thrown up on the
sides and tumbled with the infusion like a front loading washer.

Jim


Jim,

Who's eddie?
Or perhaps I should ask, What's eddie?
Eddie viscosity?

Michael

Mike Petro writes:

On 6 Jul 2004 16:45:05 -0700, (Cameron Lewis) cast
caution to the wind and posted:

I've noticed that tea brewed in porcelain vessels (with temp, tea, and
time equal) will generally taste sweeter and lighter than tea brewed
in Yixing wares. I've tested this phenomenon with various oolongs and
green puerhs and the results have been constant, for me at least.
With the Yixing ware the lower notes and "yan" are emphasized whereas
porcelain tends to bring out sweetness and floral qualities.

Very interesting. Excuse my ignorance but what is "yan"?

Literally, rock or cliff, referring to the crags in the Wuyi mountains
of northern Fujian where much-loved oolongs originate. It's a word
that connotes the qualities of high-grown Da Hong Pao, Bai Ji Guan,
etc., and it's open to interpretation, to say the least.

/Lew
---
Lew Perin /
http://www.panix.com/~perin/babelcarp.html

(Cameron Lewis) writes:

I've noticed that tea brewed in porcelain vessels (with temp, tea, and
time equal) will generally taste sweeter and lighter than tea brewed
in Yixing wares. I've tested this phenomenon with various oolongs and
green puerhs and the results have been constant, for me at least.
With the Yixing ware the lower notes and "yan" are emphasized whereas
porcelain tends to bring out sweetness and floral qualities.

My only hypothesis thus far is that zisha, being a better insulator,
has a very different cooling curve than porcelain thus the brewing
difference. I tried to test this by using hotter water intially in
the porcelain and preheating the porcelain while starting the zisha
cold. The difference between zisha and porcelain was still noticeable
(which may invalidate my hypothesis, but I'm still rather uncertain).

Has anyone else noticed this effect or am I alone? Any ideas as to
the cause?

I haven't noticed it, but that's because I use the same little glazed
pot for everything that a purist would brew gongfu (no room for lots
of kit in our tiny apartment.)

But I'm puzzled by one thing: you seem to be ignoring the possibility
that the difference you've noticed is because of the fact that zisha
interacts chemically with the liquor, while vitreous porcelain is (I
*think*) inert.

/Lew
---
Lew Perin /
http://www.panix.com/~perin/babelcarp.html

Lewis 7/7/04

Mike Petro writes:

On 6 Jul 2004 16:45:05 -0700, (Cameron Lewis) cast
caution to the wind and posted:

I've noticed that tea brewed in porcelain vessels (with temp, tea, and
time equal) will generally taste sweeter and lighter than tea brewed
in Yixing wares. I've tested this phenomenon with various oolongs and
green puerhs and the results have been constant, for me at least.
With the Yixing ware the lower notes and "yan" are emphasized whereas
porcelain tends to bring out sweetness and floral qualities.

Very interesting. Excuse my ignorance but what is "yan"?

Literally, rock or cliff, referring to the crags in the Wuyi mountains
of northern Fujian where much-loved oolongs originate. It's a word
that connotes the qualities of high-grown Da Hong Pao, Bai Ji Guan,
etc., and it's open to interpretation, to say the least.


We could be talking that flinty resin beneath the other neat fruit floral
tastes moving mysteriously through your mouth. Now about that red robed
rooster crossing the road, anybody see my turtle?

Michael

Lewis 7/7/04

Mike Petro writes:

On 6 Jul 2004 16:45:05 -0700, (Cameron Lewis) cast
caution to the wind and posted:

I've noticed that tea brewed in porcelain vessels (with temp, tea, and
time equal) will generally taste sweeter and lighter than tea brewed
in Yixing wares. I've tested this phenomenon with various oolongs and
green puerhs and the results have been constant, for me at least.
With the Yixing ware the lower notes and "yan" are emphasized whereas
porcelain tends to bring out sweetness and floral qualities.

Very interesting. Excuse my ignorance but what is "yan"?

Literally, rock or cliff, referring to the crags in the Wuyi mountains
of northern Fujian where much-loved oolongs originate. It's a word
that connotes the qualities of high-grown Da Hong Pao, Bai Ji Guan,
etc., and it's open to interpretation, to say the least.


We could be talking that flinty resin beneath the other neat fruit floral
tastes moving mysteriously through your mouth. Now about that red robed
rooster crossing the road, anybody see my turtle?

Michael

Michael Plant writes:

Lewis 7/7/04

Mike Petro writes:

On 6 Jul 2004 16:45:05 -0700, (Cameron Lewis) cast
caution to the wind and posted:

I've noticed that tea brewed in porcelain vessels (with temp, tea, and
time equal) will generally taste sweeter and lighter than tea brewed
in Yixing wares. I've tested this phenomenon with various oolongs and
green puerhs and the results have been constant, for me at least.
With the Yixing ware the lower notes and "yan" are emphasized whereas
porcelain tends to bring out sweetness and floral qualities.

Very interesting. Excuse my ignorance but what is "yan"?

Literally, rock or cliff, referring to the crags in the Wuyi mountains
of northern Fujian where much-loved oolongs originate. It's a word
that connotes the qualities of high-grown Da Hong Pao, Bai Ji Guan,
etc., and it's open to interpretation, to say the least.


We could be talking that flinty resin beneath the other neat fruit floral
tastes moving mysteriously through your mouth. Now about that red robed
rooster crossing the road, anybody see my turtle?

To get to the other side, silly!

/Lew
---
Lew Perin /
http://www.panix.com/~perin/babelcarp.html

Yan is a complex set of tastes the Chinese ascribe to certain teas.
Yan is the unique flavour found in the "rock" teas of WuYi (yancha)
and tastes very much like limestone smells, though I tend to include
certain sorts of woodiness, steely and mineral tastes as yan also
(which may or may not be correct).

I've used both a gaiwan and a porcelain teapot of similar size and
fairly similar shape to my yixing pots. Since the volumes of the
vessels involved differ slightly I simply maintained the tea:water
ratio. In all cases the porcelain brewed teas were similar as were
the effects of the yixing. So far, the teas I've tested have been
various green puers, tiguanyins, dancongs, a wulong, and a yancha from
WuYi.

When you said I should try compensating the yixing pot did you mean I
should try and increase its cooling rate? I suppose that some cool
water poured over the pot should do the trick.

I think I'm going to have to arrange a double-blind test for this.

Cameron

Mike Petro wrote in message . ..
On 6 Jul 2004 16:45:05 -0700, (Cameron Lewis) cast
caution to the wind and posted:

I've noticed that tea brewed in porcelain vessels (with temp, tea, and
time equal) will generally taste sweeter and lighter than tea brewed
in Yixing wares. I've tested this phenomenon with various oolongs and
green puerhs and the results have been constant, for me at least.
With the Yixing ware the lower notes and "yan" are emphasized whereas
porcelain tends to bring out sweetness and floral qualities.

Very interesting. Excuse my ignorance but what is "yan"?


My only hypothesis thus far is that zisha, being a better insulator,
has a very different cooling curve than porcelain thus the brewing
difference. I tried to test this by using hotter water intially in
the porcelain and preheating the porcelain while starting the zisha
cold. The difference between zisha and porcelain was still noticeable
(which may invalidate my hypothesis, but I'm still rather uncertain).

Temperature could be a dominant variable here. If all things are
equal, particularly steep times, have you measured the temperature
after the steep time was up? It would be interesting to see if there
was a detectable difference.

You tried compensating the porcelain to make up for your perceived
difference, have you tried mimicking the porcelain results by
compensating the Yixing pot?

Is the porcelain vessel a gaiwan or a similarly sized teapot? I am
finding myself wanting to go out and get gaiwan now! It might be
interesting to see 2 different faces of the same tea!



Mike Petro
http://www.pu-erh.net
remove the "filter" in my email address to reply

My pots are all dedicated to fairly specific categories (green puer,
green tiguanyin/dong-ting, dancong) and with the exception of a new
pot for wulong/darker tiguanyin have been in use for months to years.

I'm quite careful to avoid unfortunate crossovers. In fact, I first
noticed the porcelain-zisha difference because I test new teas in
porcelain for compatibility before risking their use in a zisha pot; a
habit I picked up from pipe-smoking (corn cob before briar).

Cameron

Michael Plant wrote in message ...
Cameron 7/6/04


I've noticed that tea brewed in porcelain vessels (with temp, tea, and
time equal) will generally taste sweeter and lighter than tea brewed
in Yixing wares. I've tested this phenomenon with various oolongs and
green puerhs and the results have been constant, for me at least.
With the Yixing ware the lower notes and "yan" are emphasized whereas
porcelain tends to bring out sweetness and floral qualities.

My only hypothesis thus far is that zisha, being a better insulator,
has a very different cooling curve than porcelain thus the brewing
difference. I tried to test this by using hotter water intially in
the porcelain and preheating the porcelain while starting the zisha
cold. The difference between zisha and porcelain was still noticeable
(which may invalidate my hypothesis, but I'm still rather uncertain).

Has anyone else noticed this effect or am I alone? Any ideas as to
the cause?


It's a very worthwhile experiment, to be sure. YiXing clay pots of different
qualities are recommended for different teas -- wall thickness, porosity,
size. Wuyi wants a very thin wall, while Pu-erh wants a thicker more porous
walled larger pot. Based on your comments, Cameron, I'm going to try
preparing some Wuyi teas in a porcelain lidded cup to compare.

Meanwhile, have you used your clay pots a lot? Have you dedicated each one
to one type of tea, or are they generalists? I'm just wondering if this
might be a line of enquiry, realizing that a well used clay pot used for one
tea only ought to refine the taste. Who knows. Thanks for opening up the
question.

Michael

Cameron wrote:
When you said I should try compensating the yixing pot did you mean I
should try and increase its cooling rate? I suppose that some cool
water poured over the pot should do the trick.

I think I'm going to have to arrange a double-blind test for this.

Lew wrote:
the possibility
that the difference you've noticed is because of the fact that zisha
interacts chemically with the liquor, while vitreous porcelain is (I
*think*) inert.

Interesting discussion - thanks for starting it!

IMO, temperature and carryover effects are very likely the only major
factors. Simple pronouncements about thermal properties of various materials
are mostly wrong, as they fail to deconvolute heat capacity, thermal
conductivity, internal convection (is that what "eddie" means?) and
evaporation, direct or via transpiration. Without getting into all that, the
easiest way to control this is to preheat carefully, time carefull, control
swirl (a lot in a big pot, or none at all in tightly packed gong-fu) and,
mainly, do everything in a big water bath almost as deep as the pots. This
will nicely normalize all the temperatures.

I flatly don't believe in oxygen effects, not having seen even a speck of
credible data (which would be easy enough to generate) in several decades.
But there's no doubt that unglazed pottery is more porpous than glazed
porcelain. Neither is "inert" in the usual sense of the word, but both
probably passivate very quickly - note how few brews are needed to remove
the taste from even the rawest clay pot. (Steel is different. I can't
imagine making tea at home in stainless, but chacun a son whatever. I use
stainless screens, but keep them carefully crusted up with no metal
showing.) Anyway, even glazed porcelain has some porosity, but thousands of
times less occluded volume than Yixing ware. Not only can stuff carry over
between brews, but residues in those little holes can react slowly with air
and other things, absorb odors from the air, and otherwise store a lot of
unintended flavor. Adsorption (note the d vs. b) onto clean clay surfaces is
a dramatic, so a room with a little garlic, onions, fresh paint, soap, or
anything else smelly is likely to load tens of micrograms (i.e., a lot) of
smelly stuff into the pot to be released at varying rates into the tea.

-DM

Dog Ma /7/04
reply w/o spam


snip

...but residues in those little holes can react slowly with air
and other things, absorb odors from the air, and otherwise store a lot of
unintended flavor. Adsorption (note the d vs. b) onto clean clay surfaces is
a dramatic, so a room with a little garlic, onions, fresh paint, soap, or
anything else smelly is likely to load tens of micrograms (i.e., a lot) of
smelly stuff into the pot to be released at varying rates into the tea.

-DM


That's it! I give up.
So maybe *that* was Luk Yu's secret recipe?

M