Season a Kyusu?

swordofmytriumph
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Location: Seattle, USA

Fri Feb 08, 2019 7:51 am

So the seasoning on my Nosaka kyusu is coming along nicely. I’ve been drinking a lot of the same type tea, my Lishan in it. Now in the last few days, I’ve tried drinking other kinds of tea in it, and I’ve noticed that it makes them taste very much similar. Not completely of course, but still. Is this normal for clay pots in general, or is it just mine? What are your experiences regarding this? Does it just mean it needs more seasoning?
Teachronicles
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Location: SF Bay Area, CA

Fri Feb 08, 2019 8:13 am

I think it takes longer to season a pot where the tea that had been brewed in it would affect other brews. How have you been cleaning it? Do you leave the leaves in the pot for extended periods? That could speed up the seasoning. Some of us rinse our pots with boiling water to actually avoid seasoning our pots, as at some point the current tea being brewed is interacting with the tea built up on the inside of the pot instead of the clay itself. Why buy nice clay in the first place in that case. With clays of lower quality that maybe add some unpleasant character to the tea, seasoning would make sense. Just my two cents, I'm sure others will have different takes on this.
swordofmytriumph
Posts: 429
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Location: Seattle, USA

Fri Feb 08, 2019 8:47 am

So I’ve been rinsing it with cold water. For the first two weeks whenever I used it I brewed some tea and left the brewed tea in the pot—not the leaves, just the tea. You know that flavor that deeper fermented tea has? That fruity honey like flavor? All oolong has it to some extent but you usually can’t tell until the later steeps? Well, the pot lifts that flavor up and makes it obvious. Now I happen to reall like that flavor so that’s why I’ve been so happy with it, but now that I’ve drunk different teas Ive noticed it tends to eat some of the more delicate higher notes of the tea, so it ends up tasting a lot alike (because that deep fermenteded flavor is pretty similar, it’s the higher notes the flowers and citrus and so forth that set different gaoshan apart). Since I’ve been brewing the same tea in it until a couple days ago, I hadn’t noticed.

Edit: it’s also possible that it’s just the teas I’m sampling in the last couple days are really good teas. Maybe it’s just that the teas I’m using don’t really need any improvement? Maybe I should try the pot on some of my less complex teas. The Lishan I have been using is pretty good but it is getting a bit older and did kinda need a boost, another reason I liked it so much is because it was more complex in the teapot than in a gaiwan. So maybe it isn’t a matter of seasoning, but of finding the right tea for the pot? Not all gaoshan is created equal and all that?
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Bok
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Fri Feb 08, 2019 10:00 am

I would say good quality gaoshan is not that different in the end. For some it might be more obvious to taste, but certainly not that different that it would make sense to use separate pots. More difference between, low, medium and high grade in my opinion.

It also makes sense that your pot takes away high notes and gives more body in turn, that is how these kinds of clays would typically behave. I for one prefer that, I care little for those high notes, which is why I buy mostly Winter high mountain harvest, which has more body and less high notes to begin with.

All depends.
swordofmytriumph
Posts: 429
Joined: Sun Dec 16, 2018 5:19 am
Location: Seattle, USA

Fri Feb 08, 2019 10:04 am

Bok wrote:
Fri Feb 08, 2019 10:00 am
I would say good quality gaoshan is not that different in the end. For some it might be more obvious to taste, but certainly not that different that it would make sense to use separate pots. More difference between, low, medium and high grade in my opinion.

It also makes sense that your pot takes away high notes and gives more body in turn, that is how these kinds of clays would typically behave. I for one prefer that, I care little for those high notes, which is why I buy mostly Winter high mountain harvest, which has more body and less high notes to begin with.

All depends.
Thanks Bok, that makes a lot of sense. And yeah, I do really like my gaoshan to have a lot of body. It’s nice to know that’s normal. I’ll play around with it some more. I like to have my cake and eat it too! :lol:
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