Japanese Clay pairings with Chinese/Taiwanese teas

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Baisao
Posts: 1397
Joined: Mon Dec 11, 2017 5:17 pm
Location: ATX

Sat Mar 28, 2020 2:04 am

Bok wrote:
Sat Mar 28, 2020 1:26 am
Baisao “animal like Kamairicha” sounds intriguing!
It’s a Yabukita cultivar. It’s peaty, with animal musk, the saltiness of kombu, and the scent of seared scallops. I nicknamed it Sasquatch.

I can’t remember who but someone else mentioned a Yabukita with seared scallop aroma so maybe it’s a property of the cultivar in certain conditions.

It’s by far the strangest tea I’ve had and yet it’s addictive. I find myself craving it over others. It’s certainly not a tea for neophytes. In discussing it with a tea buyer— over cups of it— neither of us could imagine people buying ounces of it here in the US. It simply wouldn’t be profitable here.

I guess it was popular enough as Thés du Japon no longer has it.
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wave_code
Posts: 575
Joined: Wed Nov 21, 2018 2:10 pm
Location: Germany

Thu Oct 29, 2020 7:49 am

Bumping this back up with some questions for those who may have been trying out these combos longer than me...

I've been experimenting a bit with a cheap banko pot I had on hand. I re-set it, pulled the cheap filter out, and started trying it out with different teas and have found it works pretty well for a few different teas. The thicker clay offers good heat retention, the flatter shape seems to let less broken up leaves open up more, and the clay seemed to have a pretty favorable effect on the flavor although it seemed that maybe was a bit muting for some pu. While not particularly special clay I think maybe the combo of the dense clay, thicker walls, and shape, allowed especially the longer/later infusions to produce better results. So far its performed better than pots I've paid substantially more for and its a very 'entry level' Japanese pot. Then again, shu and other hei cha seem to me to rely more on heat retention than necessarily being super picky about the character of the clay... so far....

So while I'm looking to go further down the rabbit hole here and I started looking at pots I ran up against the typical Japanese pot sizing issue. I'm drinking solo 80% of the time so I'm not looking for 300ml of shu per brew. While I do see some Japanese artists making smaller side handle kyusus, as well as a lot of artists also experimenting with more Chinese influenced shapes as well as plenty of other exciting stuff like making their own clays, sometimes finding the right combo of size, clay, and availability is very tricky. For those making non-Japanese teas do you tend to exclusively hunt down small kyusus, or do you just fill them part way like you would with sencha? So far I've been using a 130ml pot where the usable capacity is closer to 120 at absolute max, but I'm eyeballing it at around 100, so size wise I'm not so off here for starters but thats just this particular pot. Like many kyusus there also isn't any sort of skirt on the lid, and it just rests on the lip of the pot. I'm wondering how much effect this volume has either positively or negatively on everything. larger leaves or even just compressed teas in general seem to open up more with its flatter shape, but I'm wondering if by not being able to fill the pot to capacity and create any sort of vacuum seal with the lid means I could also be losing something there too compared to say a flatter/wider rear-handle style pot.

So - size up and just use partially full pots, or hunt down smaller kyusus? Anyone found one way works better for some teas over others?
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