On Apr 27, 7:45*am, AK > wrote:
> How much water do you heat up at a time and how do you keep it hot?
> I almost never use gaiwan lately because it's too much hassle to go
> to the kitchen and heat up more water and I don't like the taste of
> water boiled with an electric kettle.. other than that I'd love to
> use gaiwans more often. I end up only drinking blacks, greens and
> yellows because of this. -ak

Often I do use an electric kettle, one of which has a temp hold
feature and one that does not. At work I use the water cooler/heater
which is a local PA spring water and I turn the thermostat all the way
up so I get ~195-200 degrees. I actually don't heat and reheat the
water very often, in fact because I drink many teas that take lower
temps i make the first brew and then just make subsequent brews with
the water at whatever temp it remains to be. Many swear by adding heat
for each subsequent brew, but with greens I find that it's not really
necessary for many... the descending heat does just fine, I may up the
steep time a bit but that's all. Yellows also do great like this.

Same thing could be done with a kettle on the stove, heat it up once
and keep using it. I often give the same treatment to oolongs and
blacks without a major issue. There is an art to it that took me a
while to perfect and to match to my tastes but it can be done with a
little effort. The big thing is to find a kettle that keeps the heat
really well or I'd imagine you could pour off to a nice glass vacuum
thermos and use that for each brewing after the first.

- Dominic