Yixing

[DailyTX]

I bought this funky UFO pot from Yinchen (my love of oddly shaped wide pots knows no bounds). It brews wonderfully and it’s one of the most fun pots I have. Lots of pots work great and have the utilitarian features you need, but this pot is just fun to use. I’m curious about the surface imperfections though. They are matte when you angle the pot in the light.

@Darbotek
Lovely UFO, it has futuristic design with rustic texture.

[Bok]

Darbotek seems like unevenly blended clay of different colour.

Bok do you think the uneven blend is intentional or accidental?

Looks like an artistic choice to me.

[Kolleh]

Hello, folks! Before I say anything, a huge thank you to @Youzi, who helped me find some good vendors to shop at so I didn't buy more overpriced pots (hopefully). I didn't get the chance to actually go to Dingshan before we got hit with harsh lockdowns, but I did buy a pair of pots I love online at one of them before shipping got shut down.

A friend of mine just got her first zisha pot from her Japanese professor, who gifted it to her. I was wondering if anyone might be able to help her find out when/how it was made? I tentatively told her it looks like zini, maybe dicaoqing, but that's all I've got, other than the fact that the carvings and spout look odd to me somehow. (She also sent these pictures before I clarified what kind would be helpful, but said she was happy to take more if it would be useful.)

[Kolleh]

I bought this funky UFO pot from Yinchen (my love of oddly shaped wide pots knows no bounds). It brews wonderfully and it’s one of the most fun pots I have. Lots of pots work great and have the utilitarian features you need, but this pot is just fun to use. I’m curious about the surface imperfections though. They are matte when you angle the pot in the light.

From a laymen's perspective, I think the "imperfections" look quite lovely. That shape is just plain cool, too. I can see how it'd be fun to use.

[Bok]

Sharp lines in round shapes… inaugurating a new porcelain bowl I just got myself.

ROC Biandeng.

[Darbotek]

Thank y’all! I like the speckles, it was just weird to me that it’s matte in those spots.

I’ll take a video at some point. It has a very fast pour and the handle, that I thought would be a novelty, is actually very comfortable. The only problem is cleaning. It’s awful. I have a dehumidifier in a my office, I get the bulk of the leaves out and let the dehumidifier deal with the rest lol.

[LeoFox]

Thank y’all! I like the speckles, it was just weird to me that it’s matte in those spots.

I’ll take a video at some point. It has a very fast pour and the handle, that I thought would be a novelty, is actually very comfortable. The only problem is cleaning. It’s awful. I have a dehumidifier in a my office, I get the bulk of the leaves out and let the dehumidifier deal with the rest lol.

How do you use a dehumidifier to clean?

[Darbotek]

Thank y’all! I like the speckles, it was just weird to me that it’s matte in those spots.

I’ll take a video at some point. It has a very fast pour and the handle, that I thought would be a novelty, is actually very comfortable. The only problem is cleaning. It’s awful. I have a dehumidifier in a my office, I get the bulk of the leaves out and let the dehumidifier deal with the rest lol.

How do you use a dehumidifier to clean?

It dries out the leaves I can’t swish out with water much quicker than the natural ambient swampy east Texas air, so I can just shake them out of the pot later that day. I used to have a bunch of books in my office and live in an old house, so I bought a dehumidifier. Also works great for hand drying clothes!

[Kolleh]

The lighting in my apartment was finally nice enough to try getting pics of my new pots, although I haven't figured out how to make well-composed photos yet. I did want a photo of the shuiping's lid to show the carvings, though.

The pan pot is a 140 ml xiaohongni by Chen Wei, and the carved pot is a 220 ml zini by Xu Keqiang, both of whom are Arts and Crafts Masters. So far I've been using the xiaohongni pot mostly for black teas and the zini for shu puer, although it's a bit big for me to use when drinking alone without getting caffeine jitters by the third or fourth pour. The xiaohongni pot, on the other hand, is the perfect size, but it tends to dribble a bit.

[wave_code]

So far I've been using the xiaohongni pot mostly for black teas and the zini for shu puer, although it's a bit big for me to use when drinking alone without getting caffeine jitters by the third or fourth pour.

This is going to sound very overstated , but trust me I really don't mean this in a condescending way at all but... you know you don't have to fill the pot full volume
I feel like this also for whatever reason didn't come in to my mind for a while because when getting in to this style of brewing its really easy to get fixed on this prescriptive 5g/100ml, tiny pots filled to the brim splish splash wet brewing thing because you are learning, but of course that is just ONE way of doing things. I felt like my pots needed to be as close as possible to 100ml since it was my ideal size just for myself and anything else would cause problems. Plenty of people use bigger pots and fill them to half volume for example. I started doing it more and more, and now I prefer having at least a bit of extra room in my pot- gives bigger leaves a big of space to expand and I can choose to add more of less water based on how strong things are brewing up. As someone who was very fixed on this idea of wanting to do something 'correctly' I also got really stuck in a prescriptive brewing measuring and style for a long time that probably wasn't actually that good for my particular teas. Maybe its not going to be a good method or pot then for say traditionally brewing yancha, but thats fine and I've found what works well for me.

If you still want to keep things precise so you can develop points of reference for the strength or qualities of different teas by keeping things more constant measure out 100ml, pour it in your pot and try and remember about where it is filled to. Sometimes you get lucky and it hits right below or in the middle of the hole/filters and it makes it easy to remember, sometimes you just have to train your eye a bit. I've also found rounder shapes like you have are easier for estimating this too while brewing. It is also a nice way of stepping out of the precise measurement camp a bit at a time.

[Ethan Kurland]

... you know you don't have to fill the pot full volume
.... Sometimes you get lucky and it hits right below or in the middle of the hole/filters and it makes it easy to remember, sometimes you just have to train your eye a bit. I've also found rounder shapes like you have are easier for estimating this too while brewing. It is also a nice way of stepping out of the precise measurement camp a bit at a time.

Many of us find it difficult to leave space empty.
Good of you to provide ways to make it easier to do so.

Also people don't switch what they use for steeping in the middle of a tea session. I have been using a porcelain bowl lately. Looking at the uncovered leaves which after infusions take up noticeably more of the bowl's space, it's easy to see that less water can be infused subsequently. I've thought about moving the leaves to a larger bowl & measuring the hot water of each infusion to learn how much difference it might make. (I would try it if I did not stack infusions. As I almost always stack infusions & have a feel for how many are best etc. for each tea, I don't have a reason to do this. As a vendor I have wondered whether I mislead by mentioning a more expensive tea does not cost so much more per ml because it provides more infusions that cheaper tea. How many more ml of water does the better tea infuse than the cheaper tea? Time to go to work? No. I think most people on the forum are not looking for such detail & many don't think about economy so much.)

[Kolleh]

So far I've been using the xiaohongni pot mostly for black teas and the zini for shu puer, although it's a bit big for me to use when drinking alone without getting caffeine jitters by the third or fourth pour.

This is going to sound very overstated , but trust me I really don't mean this in a condescending way at all but... you know you don't have to fill the pot full volume

It doesn't come across as condescending at all, thank you! I tend to like my tea very strong so I use a lot of leaves, but perhaps I can experiment with using less and just letting it steep a bit longer instead.

[DailyTX]

I haven't had too much exposure to F1 and Antique Hongni, I recently acquired this little pot, about 40 ml. Does it look like 70s hongni?

[DailyTX]

Here are a few more photos

[.m.]

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