Has anyone every drunk tea from a well seasoned yixing?

swordofmytriumph
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Thu Feb 20, 2020 6:47 am

carogust wrote:
Thu Feb 20, 2020 6:26 am
IMHO the piece of teaware that matters most is the cup. Trying the same tea side by side with different cups will reveal a huge difference between them.
Yeah I never do a side by side with different cups cause of that. Ironically, I am 99% certain that the biggest part of that isn't the cup itself but my perception of that cup that influences my impression. Tea drunk out of my favorite cup will always taste better than if I drunk it out of another cup. The same holds true for any liquid actually. Milk drunk in my favorite milk cup tastes better than another cup. Dunno why?
theredbaron
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Thu Feb 20, 2020 7:08 am

swordofmytriumph wrote:
Thu Feb 20, 2020 6:47 am


Yeah I never do a side by side with different cups cause of that. Ironically, I am 99% certain that the biggest part of that isn't the cup itself but my perception of that cup that influences my impression. Tea drunk out of my favorite cup will always taste better than if I drunk it out of another cup. The same holds true for any liquid actually. Milk drunk in my favorite milk cup tastes better than another cup. Dunno why?
To get over that perception factor, you might try to concentrate on definable aspects when doing side by side comparisons. Such as where is the taste recognizable first - on the tip of the tongue, or deeper in the mouth. How is the flow of the tea - stocky or fluid? Does the tea point downward, or expands upward rapidly and into the sinus cavities (preferrable). Which aspects of the taste does the cup highlight?
swordofmytriumph
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Thu Feb 20, 2020 7:13 am

theredbaron wrote:
Thu Feb 20, 2020 7:08 am
To get over that perception factor, you might try to concentrate on definable aspects when doing side by side comparisons. Such as where is the taste recognizable first - on the tip of the tongue, or deeper in the mouth. How is the flow of the tea - stocky or fluid? Does the tea point downward, or expands upward rapidly and into the sinus cavities (preferrable). Which aspects of the taste does the cup highlight?
That's a really cool thought, for some reason it never occurred to me to be scientific about it. Also how it feels in my hand factors into things too.
theredbaron
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Thu Feb 20, 2020 7:21 am

swordofmytriumph wrote:
Thu Feb 20, 2020 7:13 am


That's a really cool thought, for some reason it never occurred to me to be scientific about it. Also how it feels in my hand factors into things too.
Thank you :)
I just communicate what i was taught by my teacher about cups.

I would not exactly call it scientific, just a way to train your senses. I am somewhat opposed to too scientific approaches to tea, such as using scales to determine the amount of tea, or thermometers for water termperature. Reason is that a large part of the tea experience, in my opinion, is about using and training one's intuition.
swordofmytriumph
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Thu Feb 20, 2020 7:28 am

theredbaron wrote:
Thu Feb 20, 2020 7:21 am
a large part of the tea experience, in my opinion, is about using and training one's intuition.
My mom is always asking me how long to steep her black tea and I can never tell her because I always do it by smell.
theredbaron
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Thu Feb 20, 2020 7:34 am

swordofmytriumph wrote:
Thu Feb 20, 2020 7:28 am


My mom is always asking me how long to steep her black tea and I can never tell her because I always do it by smell.
That is the Gong Fu of tea - years and years of experience by trial and error until the mechanics of it become an automatic process :)
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Youzi
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Thu Feb 20, 2020 8:57 am

theredbaron wrote:
Thu Feb 20, 2020 6:15 am
Youzi wrote:
Thu Feb 20, 2020 12:58 am
It's easy to compare how the tea stains on the inside of your pot changes the taste of something.

Just add boiling distilled water into the pot, then keep it in for 1-3 minutes, your max infusion time. Meanwhile add the same water into a glass cup too. After the time is up pour the water into a similar cup as the other. Then let both get to room temperature, and taste it.

To eliminate water, from the equation, try using distilled or RO water, aka, pure H2O.

The difficulty with water however is that water for tea needs some minerals to bring it alive, just not too much of it not to flatten the tea.
Sure, you shouldn't use RO or distilled water for making tea, But we are not talking about tea here, but testing the effect of an yixing teapot.

To test this, you need to remove all variables, which could skew the result.
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mbanu
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Thu Feb 20, 2020 10:07 am

From my limited understanding, the stuff that coats the interior of a seasoned unglazed teapot is mostly made up of what the Brits have elegantly named "tea scum". This is mentioned in passing in an article trying to figure out what the shiny coating on the outside of a seasoned unglazed teapot is made of: https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/82514808.pdf

Also, a similar article (I think) in Chinese, that I think was from the same experiment: http://ir.lib.nchu.edu.tw/bitstream/114 ... 5466-6.pdf
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Baisao
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Sat Feb 22, 2020 10:10 pm

swordofmytriumph wrote:
Thu Feb 20, 2020 6:19 am
theredbaron wrote:
Thu Feb 20, 2020 6:15 am
The difficulty with water however is that water for tea needs some minerals to bring it alive, just not too much of it not to flatten the tea.
See this is what I'm curious about. How do people who steep their tea in RO water not have really boring flat tea?
They have suboptimal tea even if they may believe otherwise. Using clinical tasting water, as RO/distilled tastes, will have a detrimental affect on the final product. Despite what people may say, you cannot make a purse from a sow’s ear.

Good tea is the sum of all its parts and processes. A break in this chain will result in suboptimal tea.
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Baisao
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Sat Feb 22, 2020 11:27 pm

Something that I do not think has been mentioned is that the tea residue inside teapots is mostly composed of fatty acids and these can 1) be unhealthy to consume, apparently in even minute amounts, 2) become rancid, and 3) create a barrier between the tea and the clay.

Of these issues, 2 & 3 concern me the most.

This may cause some people to wince but I reset my pots after 15 years of seasoning. I reset all but the zini teapot I use for aged sheng and shou. I have sentimental reasons for this.

I figure that if I spend a lot of money on a teapot because of the clay— though every teapot has its own mind and this is hard to determine without being first used— I do not want anything getting between the lauded clay and my tea.
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