Is Yixing more porous than CZ??

[Trusar]

Just saw this claim on Meileaf. This is exactly the opposite of what I understand to be the dif b/w Yixing and CZ clay. Could this be right?

"The porosity essentially determines how much the tea will be affected by the minerals in the clay. Yixing clay is very porous and so has a very pronounced effect but Chaozhou red clay seems to be less porous (perhaps because of higher temperature firing rather than primary porosity). This means that the mineral effect is more subtle which can be a good thing for brighter and lighter tea."

https://meileaf.com/teaware/master-wu-c ... -clay-pot/

I got mine from yunnan sourcing and the clay is the same as mei leafs.
this type of CZ hongni is not porous.
please take a look at a pics of my CZ hongni and Zini yixing side by side.

IMG_20181128_224748.jpg (113.4 KiB) Viewed 6527 times

IMG_20181128_224738.jpg (147.68 KiB) Viewed 6527 times

IMG_20181128_224720.jpg (167.56 KiB) Viewed 6527 times

[Trusar]

Mei leafs one is a little more red, but the feel of the clay is the same as mine,

Does so well with bai mu dan, other wise i don't know if it even has a big impact on the tea at all.

i cleaned it out with an electric toothbrush, still not sure which tea to use in it.

been using it for everything up till now, no problems.

I think i might use it for white teas.

[Trusar]

Trusar CERTAIN Yixing are more porous than certain CZ. There are many kinds of Yixing clays, all with different properties in terms of porosity. The way they are fired further determines how porous they are.

Or are you saying a Zhuni clay Yixing is porous? You’d be the first to say so... hongni is less, or not porous than Zini. Etc. The list is long and full of exceptions.

Furthermore clays of vintage or antique pots adds even more variety. CZ as well has very poorly produced pots which can be very porous.

I would be careful to say everyone is wrong, especially with an experience based on two teapots...

As often, everything depends.

Its true, most people just read what somebody else write and just quote the same thing,
but your right, its not correct to say every body is wrong base on just two pots.

Don from mei leaf said CZ Hongni is less porous and i agree based on a CZ teapot i bought from yunnan sourcing,
so I am not the only one or the first one to say it is less porous than yixing (not including zhuni). He's not the type of person to say something for no reason or with the lack of info or experience. If you watch his videos you know he does a lot of research and testing and trying before either purchasing an item or stating things on his video.

but there are different factors like firing, manufacturing etc

so far the first CZ hongni i have seen that seems to be porous are the pics you put up, but i am not that experienced with teapots.
All i know is the sources i have are trustworthy and the teapot i have is not porous.

Both yunnan sourcing ad mei leaf use either masters or very reputable guys to make there CZ hongni teapots from what i have read, so i doubt the quality of the clay and manufacturing is gonna be poor.

[.m.]

I got mine from yunnan sourcing and the clay is the same as mei leafs.
this type of CZ hongni is not porous.

Scott says "The clay is highly porous but without allowing water to escape or soak in deeply."
I am certainly not questioning your assessment of the pot, you own it so you know the best how it brews. But i find the talk about porosity a bit problematic. Unless the pot is visibly soaking up water, or unless one can microscopically map the surface, it's not clear to me how to judge porosity. Yes, there is the effect on tea, but the mineral composition and firing (oxidation/reduction) plays also a big role. It is perhaps better to talk simply about muting rather than porosity to avoid confusion.

[Trusar]

I got mine from yunnan sourcing and the clay is the same as mei leafs.
this type of CZ hongni is not porous.

Scott says "The clay is highly porous but without allowing water to escape or soak in deeply."
I am certainly not questioning your assessment of the pot, you own it so you know the best how it brews. But i find the talk about porosity a bit problematic. Unless the pot is visibly soaking up water, or unless one can microscopically map the surface, it's not clear to me how to judge porosity. Yes, there is the effect on tea, but the mineral composition and firing (oxidation/reduction) plays also a big role. It is perhaps better to talk simply about muting rather than porosity to avoid confusion.

hi

im not sure if this is correct or if i am misguided, but the way i do it is if the pot absorbs a lot of flavour and taste when you brew tea in it, it is porous.
when i first brewed tea in my zini yixing it took all the taste out of the ripe pu erh (ALL THE TASTE). it also felt granular to the touch.
the CZ which i bought from scot, didnt absorb any taste at all, and is very smooth to the touch. I'm not sure bout the water soaking part. i left some water in it over night to try and loosen the black staines it have from the black i brewed in it, and 24 hours later the water is still there. there was only about 10ml of water in it to start.
i guess your right im talking about muting (which i take a porous - maybe im wrong here).
but then why would it matter, if one pot is porous and another is not porous, but bother are either thirsty or both not thristy ,why would people talk about it and care?

affect on tea - bai mu dan work very well with scott's CZ ( enhances taste and thickness) , black tea i dont think is bad but is better in a gaiwan i think. oolongs im still not quite sure.

but no muting at all, just enhancing and maybe thicker.

I really dont think the pot absorbed anything when i left a small 10ml worth of water in it. when you feel the pot youll probably come to the same conclusion i did.

mei leafts CZ pots are a lot more expensive, but i remember them being a lot thicker and chunkier, definitely more clay was used.


ill need to check the differences between porosity and muting when i get time. up till now ive been classing them as the same thing.

[Baisao]

I wrote a lengthy reply but it didn't post. So here's the gist.

The samples above look like clays fabricated to look like their namesakes. If I compare the zini sample to my F1s from the 60s, 70s, 80s, there is only a very superficial resemblance. to the real things. I have a modern, fully handmade Chaozhou "zhuni" teapot and it is as porous as mid-century to modern shudei from Japan in that it weeps when water sits in it overnight. None of my F1 zini or F1 hongni samples do this.

Not to knock Mei Leaf and Yunnan Sourcing, but the pots they sell are mass produced at a volume so large that the real clays could not be procured. Indeed, some of clays have been mined to extinction years before either company was in business. I've seen made up names for clay formulations that never existed until modern times, and pots marketed as being made from clays that are no longer available. I don't think we can take clays from these teapot sellers/makers and state that they are paradigms of their respective type.

[Bok]

That is the problem these days, people take their own limited experience to make general statements.

In the way of: I know this guy from xyz-origin, he is a bad person, so all xyz-origin must be bad people!

See the problem here... ?

[.m.]

Going back to my previous post. According to Wikipedia "porosity is a measure of the void spaces in a material, and is a fraction of the volume of voids over the total volume." A dual porosity structure then refers to connected porosity (measured through the volume of gas or liquid that can flow into the rock) and unconnected porosity (encapsulated spaces).
It seems to me that the unconnected porosity should not play a direct role since the liquid cannot enter there. But i'd go further to say that neither the connected one matters: the exchange of liquids from inside the walls of the teapot to the interior is likely very slow as the liquid will tend to seep deeper rather than to come back. It is likely that the reaction between the tea and the teapot happens on the inner surface of the teapot and what matters most is the surface area, that is the fractal structure of the surface and obviously also the mineral composition, the form in which the minerals are available, and how are they binded in the structure, etc.
Admittedly there is some correlation between porosity and surface area, higher porosity (connected or unconnected) may often translate into higher surface area, nevertheless these are different concepts. It's just a matter of language but it may lead to all kinds of confusion. Personally, i'd talk about "porosity" of teapot only in the situation when the teapot is actually porous (for example for some chaozhou clay or some shudei as Baisao pointed out). Otherwise i'd talk simply about the effect on the tea. In the end that is what matters most. Enough of my rambling. Cheers!

[Trusar]

I wrote a lengthy reply but it didn't post. So here's the gist.

The samples above look like clays fabricated to look like their namesakes. If I compare the zini sample to my F1s from the 60s, 70s, 80s, there is only a very superficial resemblance. to the real things. I have a modern, fully handmade Chaozhou "zhuni" teapot and it is as porous as mid-century to modern shudei from Japan in that it weeps when water sits in it overnight. None of my F1 zini or F1 hongni samples do this.

Not to knock Mei Leaf and Yunnan Sourcing, but the pots they sell are mass produced at a volume so large that the real clays could not be procured. Indeed, some of clays have been mined to extinction years before either company was in business. I've seen made up names for clay formulations that never existed until modern times, and pots marketed as being made from clays that are no longer available. I don't think we can take clays from these teapot sellers/makers and state that they are paradigms of their respective type.

you cannot be talking about the texture, because the texture i think is how yixing should be, white dots, black dots, bumps here and there from the firing and rough texture. so the texture from my zini is all there, you can only be talking about the colour, is this correct?

there are probability different shades of zini, so how can you tell by colour?

dont forget i have been pouring tea wash over the exterior to my teapot so it will not look the sames as it was when it was new.

I think think this porosity business is not just about firing but also how fine the clay particles are. the finer they are the less porous it is.

i cannot say about yunnan sourcings CZ hongni, but mei leaf only had 10 made especially for them by master wu, so their ones are not mass made at all, and as i said yunnan sourcing CZ hongni teapots have the same feel, just slight color difference.

please put some pics of your zini up for me to compare. please put close ups if you can as well as distance shots.

[Trusar]

That is the problem these days, people take their own limited experience to make general statements.

In the way of: I know this guy from xyz-origin, he is a bad person, so all xyz-origin must be bad people!

See the problem here... ?

im not being that general, im just agree with some who know a lot more than me, my local tea vendor, Don.

there are many people who may have a teapot and have some knowledge of them, and then there someone who know more about teapots than the average person and who go to china many time a year (my local tea vendor).
if i were to listen to both of them and then buy a teapot from a totally different vendor across the world. i find that i agree with the person who know more about tea and teapots is correct, well then my hands are tied, my experience and theres states that it is less porous.


as i said people just copy each other, up till now even people who don't have CZ hongni teapot say that it is more porous, how do they know?

experience or not, people who say CZ hongni is more porous (muting) than zini are clearly not correct. I know because i have them both and i am telling you, from my personal experience, we can't both be right with totally opposite answers, and i know im not wrong because i use them both.

in the same way you should go and argue with people who say CZ Hongni is more porous full stop, and telling them its not (always the case) and to stop making general statements.

[Trusar]

Going back to my previous post. According to Wikipedia "porosity is a measure of the void spaces in a material, and is a fraction of the volume of voids over the total volume." A dual porosity structure then refers to connected porosity (measured through the volume of gas or liquid that can flow into the rock) and unconnected porosity (encapsulated spaces).
It seems to me that the unconnected porosity should not play a direct role since the liquid cannot enter there. But i'd go further to say that neither the connected one matters: the exchange of liquids from inside the walls of the teapot to the interior is likely very slow as the liquid will tend to seep deeper rather than to come back. It is likely that the reaction between the tea and the teapot happens on the inner surface of the teapot and what matters most is the surface area, that is the fractal structure of the surface and obviously also the mineral composition, the form in which the minerals are available, and how are they binded in the structure, etc.
Admittedly there is some correlation between porosity and surface area, higher porosity (connected or unconnected) may often translate into higher surface area, nevertheless these are different concepts. It's just a matter of language but it may lead to all kinds of confusion. Personally, i'd talk about "porosity" of teapot only in the situation when the teapot is actually porous (for example for some chaozhou clay or some shudei as Baisao pointed out). Otherwise i'd talk simply about the effect on the tea. In the end that is what matters most. Enough of my rambling. Cheers!

The CZ i have really has little effect on blacks and oolong (i think), but really is good for bai mu dan. I think the firing and fine part size and as you said the lower surface area gives it less of an affect on the a lot of teas. but it works well on bai mu dan. I think the people who are saying it is more porous than zini must have larger surface are and not a finer clay particles.

[Baisao]

you cannot be talking about the texture, because the texture i think is how yixing should be, white dots, black dots, bumps here and there from the firing and rough texture. so the texture from my zini is all there, you can only be talking about the colour, is this correct?

there are probability different shades of zini, so how can you tell by colour?

dont forget i have been pouring tea wash over the exterior to my teapot so it will not look the sames as it was when it was new.

I think think this porosity business is not just about firing but also how fine the clay particles are. the finer they are the less porous it is.

i cannot say about yunnan sourcings CZ hongni, but mei leaf only had 10 made especially for them by master wu, so their ones are not mass made at all, and as i said yunnan sourcing CZ hongni teapots have the same feel, just slight color difference.

please put some pics of your zini up for me to compare. please put close ups if you can as well as distance shots.

I have viral bronchitis at the moment so I am not going to put much effort in to this.

What I am responding to with the zini is the texture. It's not just the color or the large amount of grog in the clay. There's just something that looks odd about it. Maybe it has something to do with pouring your wash over the teapot. If you want to compare my zini to yours, lookup late 1960s F1 zini shuiping teapots. There are plenty of examples in Professor Liu's book. I can refer you to page numbers if you have it.

You are right about the Mei Leaf CZ being handmade. The site shows some textures not apparent in your posts above. Surprisingly, it looks slip cast or press molded. Perhaps there is a component in his clay that is creating a kind of over-glaze or the particle size is extremely fine. I haven't seen this before on handmade CZ teapots.

Anyway, the NyQuil is saying I don''t care anymore.

[Trusar]

I wrote a lengthy reply but it didn't post. So here's the gist.

The samples above look like clays fabricated to look like their namesakes. If I compare the zini sample to my F1s from the 60s, 70s, 80s, there is only a very superficial resemblance. to the real things. I have a modern, fully handmade Chaozhou "zhuni" teapot and it is as porous as mid-century to modern shudei from Japan in that it weeps when water sits in it overnight. None of my F1 zini or F1 hongni samples do this.

Not to knock Mei Leaf and Yunnan Sourcing, but the pots they sell are mass produced at a volume so large that the real clays could not be procured. Indeed, some of clays have been mined to extinction years before either company was in business. I've seen made up names for clay formulations that never existed until modern times, and pots marketed as being made from clays that are no longer available. I don't think we can take clays from these teapot sellers/makers and state that they are paradigms of their respective type.

you cannot be talking about the texture, because the texture i think is how yixing should be, white dots, black dots, bumps here and there from the firing and rough texture. so the texture from my zini is all there, you can only be talking about the colour, is this correct?

there are probability different shades of zini, so how can you tell by colour?

i have been pouring tea wash over the exterior to my teapot so it will not look the sames as it was when it was new.

I think think this porosity business is not just about firing but also how fine the clay particles are. the finer they are the less porous it is.

i cannot say about yunnan sourcings CZ hongni, but mei leaf only had 10 made especially for them by master wu, so their ones are not mass made at all, and as i said yunnan sourcing CZ hongni teapots have the same feel, just slight color difference.

please put some pics of your zini up for me to compare. please put close ups if you can as well as distance shots.

Ive taken a look at some zini pots which essence of tea was offering at some point and the texture is the same as mine, only the colour is different.

[steanze]

@Trusar you are making a lot of very confident statements, but I have the impression that you are not very experienced on teaware yet. May I ask you for how long you have used Yixing teapots and Chaozhou teapots?

I agree with you that it is a good idea to test for yourself the claims people make. I think it is a good idea to do that also for Mei Leaf's claims. Perhaps you might want to try 5-10 yixing pots and 5-10 CZ pots before making generalizations. I will make a couple of brief observations:

1) the pot you call "zini" looks more like hongni to me. Maybe it's just the lighting of the picture. Here are a couple of examples of zini, one from late Qing:



and two from Yixing Factory 1:



2) coarser texture does not always mean more porosity. For example, this teapot (Qing zini):



is not more porous than this teapot (modern Qinghuini):



It is possible that there are CZ pots now that are less porous than some Yixings. That can depend both on the material they are made of, and on the temperature at which they are fired. But saying that CZ in general is less porous than Yixing is incorrect.

With respect to how reliable Mei Leaf is, he seems like a nice guy but I don't have the impression that he is very experienced about teaware either...

[Trusar]

you cannot be talking about the texture, because the texture i think is how yixing should be, white dots, black dots, bumps here and there from the firing and rough texture. so the texture from my zini is all there, you can only be talking about the colour, is this correct?

there are probability different shades of zini, so how can you tell by colour?

dont forget i have been pouring tea wash over the exterior to my teapot so it will not look the sames as it was when it was new.

I think think this porosity business is not just about firing but also how fine the clay particles are. the finer they are the less porous it is.

i cannot say about yunnan sourcings CZ hongni, but mei leaf only had 10 made especially for them by master wu, so their ones are not mass made at all, and as i said yunnan sourcing CZ hongni teapots have the same feel, just slight color difference.

please put some pics of your zini up for me to compare. please put close ups if you can as well as distance shots.

I have viral bronchitis at the moment so I am not going to put much effort in to this.

What I am responding to with the zini is the texture. It's not just the color or the large amount of grog in the clay. There's just something that looks odd about it. Maybe it has something to do with pouring your wash over the teapot. If you want to compare my zini to yours, lookup late 1960s F1 zini shuiping teapots. There are plenty of examples in Professor Liu's book. I can refer you to page numbers if you have it.

You are right about the Mei Leaf CZ being handmade. The site shows some textures not apparent in your posts above. Surprisingly, it looks slip cast or press molded. Perhaps there is a component in his clay that is creating a kind of over-glaze or the particle size is extremely fine. I haven't seen this before on handmade CZ teapots.

Anyway, the NyQuil is saying I don''t care anymore.

when i first the got the , it was a maroonish colour , may be a little brown, but more maroon, it only got more of a brown color after i stared poring tea wash on it.

i only paid £50 for it, so i know its not top of the line, I only want the clay to be have decent. take a look at the website (wan ling teahouse)

PS look up essential oils of lemon myrtle, rosemary, eucalyptus and lavender for viral bronchitis. (lemon myrtle is very good at infections of the chest and lung).