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although if you're picking the knob up with three fingers, that seems far more dangerous to me than picking it up just with two, or with two fingers plus one holding the edge That might be it. When not supporting the rim, three fingers on the knob feels more stable than two, but now that I think ab...

Xishi pots were originally meant for drinking out of rather than for making gongfu tea. I had no idea! Do you know if other classic designs, like shuiping 水平, dragon egg 龙胆, or others, have similarly unexpected backgrounds? Knob-shaped lid handles seem popular for most of them, but I can imagine th...

I almost always put my middle finger up against the lid's rim as I'm picking the lid up. And, over the course of some years, my fingers have learnt that it's better to sustain a light burn than to drop something. I probably subconsciously use a lighter grip while sustaining the burn, which works we...

Many classic teapot designs have a knob for the lid handle: https://yunnansourcing.com/cdn/shop/products/DSC_9313_e926e0fb-5ff3-4ba7-892e-2a3faa78624a_2400x1600_crop_center.jpg Even with my slender fingers, I find it difficult to get a firm grip, at least the one on the particular pot I have. If som...

Interesting replies, thanks! From the China end, they originally wanted to make a British-style tea-with-milk to compete with Indian teas, but weren't able to do it. I didn't know that the goal was to compete with "Western" black teas. Where can I read more about that? If Yunnan producers were unifo...

In my experience, assamica teas grown to target the Western black tea market have similar flavours, regardless of whether they're grown in India, Sri Lanka, Kenya, etc., even when they are unblended and in whole-leaf form. On the other hand, I find that black teas from Yunnan have flavours distinct ...

My point about the hagiyaki coffee cups is that they don't appear to craze or have a surface glaze for flavors to accumulate. Thanks, that's interesting. I originally imagined all Hagi ware would behave in the same way, but this means that a yunomi that does craze will react to something like coffe...

I have coffee cups made by Bertil Persson; I've not used them but they seem to have a more dense glaze. I don't see why they wouldn't be acceptable for tea if one prefered. I mean, if they've been used a lot for coffee, do they stain and/or pick up coffee aroma which will carry over to tea? Pieces ...

I understand that Hagi ware will change colour as it absorbs tea over time, and I've also seen warnings about absorbing strong aromas. I'm curious about how prominent this effect is. Yunomi are obviously meant for teas like sencha or hojicha, but does anyone have experience with darker teas, like bl...

While it's fermented, I'm not sure I would call it a take on shu. It's very different. If you're already familiar with most of the "normal" types of tea, I'd say it's definitely interesting to try for its uniqueness!

Back to that processing chart (which isn't intended as a last word, even as presented on that page) I agree, some classic green teas like biluochun are rolled, but according to the chart it wouldn't be a green tea. I guess it's not trivial to fit all the variations of tea processing into simple gro...

The heating step (fixation, called here, or sha qing, kill green) seems the crux. The guy in the video seems to think so as well, but that's the thing: I've seen "white" tea that has undergone both kill-green and rolling , which AFAIK is how green tea is produced. The result is indeed very similar ...

I've seen some vendors sell "white" teas that look and taste more like green tea. Some of them are described as in-between, like this Jade Needle from Yunnan Sourcing , and another vendor admitted that their "white" (but very green-tasting) tea had undergone fixation (kill-green). I thought white te...

I can't recall seeing the 'same' sencha in all attributes though with different levels of steaming. I also haven't found something like that from any of the suggested vendors. I can usually taste the difference in steaming levels regardless of other attributes. Certainly fukamushi stands out as qui...

Thanks all, this has given me some things to ponder!