Chagama Kama

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rainy
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Sat Oct 31, 2020 2:43 pm

Thoughts / experiences with Chagama Kama? It seems like a classier way to do a tea ceremony vs. a kettle, and water ladles are cheap and widely available even on amazon (are they good, did anyone try them?) [Edit: and they seem to be quite cheap on jauce!]
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Victoria
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Sat Oct 31, 2020 3:20 pm

Those work well with Japanese teas that prefer water at cooler temperatures. The act of ladling the hot water from the Kama to the Kyusu, or the Yuzamashi, further cools the water. I don’t think this would be ideal for yancha and other teas that need off boiling water. Aesthetically they really are attractive though.
rainy
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Sat Oct 31, 2020 3:34 pm

@Victoria You mean the opening and closing of the lid, right?

I'm not sure about Yancha, but it's also fairly common to use less than boiling temp for young Shengs and for practical reasons, for long sessions, water cools down anyway even if you are drinking aged Sheng or Shou that ideally needs boiling water. For example, if I'm having a 2 hour session, I would normally put the water into a glass thermos, and by the end of the session my guess is it's around 190-195F. Even with semi aged Sheng I don't find that this degrades the taste enough for me to notice.

So my feeling is that with a Chagama Kama, I can have a good Sheng session if I speed it up somewhat and if I put more water into the Chagama than I would put in a kettle, so that it cools down slower. I think I'm going to order a Chagama as they're fairly cheap on jauce, and I can resell it locally if it doesn't work for Sheng as that's all I drink.

Of course I will post my experiences here!

[Edit: just want to add that i doubt a bamboo ladle would cool the water by itself, rather than opening and closing of the Chagama lid, which is indeed a concern for me.]
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Victoria
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Sat Oct 31, 2020 3:53 pm

rainy wrote:
Sat Oct 31, 2020 3:34 pm
Victoria You mean the opening and closing of the lid, right?

I think I'm going to order a Chagama as they're fairly cheap on jauce, and I can resell it locally if it doesn't work for Sheng as that's all I drink.

Of course I will post my experiences here!

[Edit: just want to add that i doubt a bamboo ladle would cool the water by itself, rather than opening and closing of the Chagama lid, which is indeed a concern for me.]
Please do share, hopefully you get one from a reputable source, given that there are so many Chinese knockoffs. Regarding water temperature dropping, I just checked pouring boiling water into a cedar sake cup (to mimic wooden ladle), it went from 212F to 195F in under 10seconds. The sudden drop was more than I expected.

Edit: in under 10 seconds
rainy
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Sat Oct 31, 2020 4:04 pm

@Victoria That's probably due to loss via surface though, I think with ladling from Chagama what would happen is you immerse the ladle inside Chagama, which heats up the ladle, then you ladle it into your teapot in 1-2 seconds if you are quick, and so I would expect the only loss would be through surface radiation of heat from ladle, so perhaps under 1F loss in that time can be achieved! I think I would find up to 5F loss acceptable, and 5-10F I would have to experiment with, and more than 10F loss is probably not acceptable for semiaged Sheng and Shou.
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Victoria
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Sat Oct 31, 2020 4:09 pm

I recommend you try a few experiments, wood doesn’t hold heat the way iron or porcelain does, it cools off very fast. Maybe they make cast iron ladles (hishaku) that hold heat better, although that could get pretty heavy with water added.
rainy
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Sat Oct 31, 2020 5:23 pm

@Victoria, well, in this case holding heat well would mean it steals a lot of heat from the water, so that wouldn't be good. Ideally you want something that transfers almost no heat so that within that one second, water goes from kettle to ladle to teapot with no thermal change. Wood may be one of the best materials for that.

But now that you brought it up, I thought that a cast iron ladle that's being heated up, e.g. on a candle, or a lowest setting hot plate, would have the added benefit of heating up the water in the Chagama. After a quick search, there are some cast iron ladles that are meant for smelting (e.g. bullets), but didn't find anything meant for food; and there are also some hand forged ladles but material is not specified. I guess a heavy stainless steel ladle might work just as well.

Another concern is longevity of a wooden ladle. I don't know if they were traditionally used to handle boiling water. I feel like they may degrade and crack very quickly if used for gongfu sessions a few times a week. And they aren't so cheap from my searching, but perhaps they can be sourced in bulk for a few bucks.
faj
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Sat Oct 31, 2020 6:38 pm

Victoria wrote:
Sat Oct 31, 2020 4:09 pm
I recommend you try a few experiments, wood doesn’t hold heat the way iron or porcelain does, it cools off very fast.
In the context of teamaking, there is a lot of confusion around "heat retention", and it might be worth being discussed a bit.

Roughly speaking, materials are characterized by how well they insulate, and their total potential to absorb heat. The two are different things : you can have a material that will absorb heat fast, but will not absorb much of it, and vice versa.

Relative to wood, metals can absorb more thermal energy, and they are poor insulators (heat transfer is quicker). To the best of my knowledge, There is no way a wooden spoon of the same geometry as a metal spoon, starting from the same temperature (for the spoon and water), will cause more heat loss.

A room-temperature metal spoon will impact water temperature more, and quicker. If you preheat the metal spoon, then it might well be the other way around.

What will cause most of the heat loss is water contacting a non-preheated vessel (either the spoon or the teapot). If you preheat the spoon and the teapot and transfer water quickly, you defeat most of the heat loss, and you can probably choose whatever material you prefer for the spoon.
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pedant
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Sat Oct 31, 2020 7:45 pm

not a good idea to simmer a wooden spoon. it'll get messed up.

likewise, leaving metal spoon in there to stay hot has problems. if the metal handle isn't insulated, it will probably burn your hand.

since you want lower temps for this kind of tea, it's much easier to just compensate for cooling by having the water in the kama a bit hotter.
i'd prefer a wooden spoon because it's lighter and easier to wield.
faj
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Sat Oct 31, 2020 8:03 pm

pedant wrote:
Sat Oct 31, 2020 7:45 pm
not a good idea to simmer a wooden spoon. it'll get messed up.

likewise, leaving metal spoon in there to stay hot has problems. if the metal handle isn't insulated, it will probably burn your hand.
I was not making a recommendation to do either, though I might have sounded like I was. I just wanted to point out that in many cases, people have an incomplete view of what "heat retention" means. It is probably the case that, for typical vessels used for tea (teapots, teacups, etc.), those that will cause the highest temperature drop when filled with hot water while they are at room temperature probably often are the best at keeping water hot if fully preheated first, because they act as heat sinks when cool, but as heaters when hot.
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Sat Oct 31, 2020 9:18 pm

@rainy you’re having a two hour session with thermos stored hot water?? Any particular reason you don’t regularly brew fresh hot water? Seems like a lot of good flavours lost in the process...

While you might not notice it in a negative way, I’m sure you would find it more positive if you’d always used properly heated water.
rainy
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Sat Oct 31, 2020 10:10 pm

Bok wrote:
Sat Oct 31, 2020 9:18 pm
rainy you’re having a two hour session with thermos stored hot water?? Any particular reason you don’t regularly brew fresh hot water? Seems like a lot of good flavours lost in the process...

While you might not notice it in a negative way, I’m sure you would find it more positive if you’d always used properly heated water.
A few reasons, one is that I often go to the park with a thermos. Another is that I often do some work while doing a session so having one large thermos prepared simplifies it and reduces distractions. Sometimes I do boil a fresh half a thermos but I haven't noticed it tasting noticeably better. The reason I do a fresh boiled water is when a session extends longer than 2 hours and water falls to perhaps 160F or below. I should check the temp next time to see when it becomes less tasty.

Another reason is that when I'm doing a long steep like 5-8m when leaves are exhausted, if the water starts at lower temp, at the end of steep it's lukewarm and I prefer my tea at least a bit hot.

Also my understanding is that reboiling water reduces oxygen content and makes tea less tasty, so I avoid reboiling. If you boil a large amount of water, it will keep its temp longer, but it will also take you longer to drink it, but if you boil a small amount of water, you can go through it quickly, but it will also cool down faster, so there is no perfect solution, just different trade-offs.

I'm also reluctant to throw away cooled water because I buy spring water for tea.

If you do a 2hr session (assuming you ever do), how many times do you reboil the water?
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Bok
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Sat Oct 31, 2020 10:24 pm

rainy wrote:
Sat Oct 31, 2020 10:10 pm
Bok wrote:
Sat Oct 31, 2020 9:18 pm
rainy you’re having a two hour session with thermos stored hot water?? Any particular reason you don’t regularly brew fresh hot water? Seems like a lot of good flavours lost in the process...

While you might not notice it in a negative way, I’m sure you would find it more positive if you’d always used properly heated water.
A few reasons, one is that I often go to the park with a thermos. Another is that I often do some work while doing a session so having one large thermos prepared simplifies it and reduces distractions. Sometimes I do boil a fresh half a thermos but I haven't noticed it tasting noticeably better. The reason I do a fresh boiled water is when a session extends longer than 2 hours and water falls to perhaps 160F or below. I should check the temp next time to see when it becomes less tasty.

Another reason is that when I'm doing a long steep like 5-8m when leaves are exhausted, if the water starts at lower temp, at the end of steep it's lukewarm and I prefer my tea at least a bit hot.

Also my understanding is that reboiling water reduces oxygen content and makes tea less tasty, so I avoid reboiling. If you boil a large amount of water, it will keep its temp longer, but it will also take you longer to drink it, but if you boil a small amount of water, you can go through it quickly, but it will also cool down faster, so there is no perfect solution, just different trade-offs.

I'm also reluctant to throw away cooled water because I buy spring water for tea.

If you do a 2hr session (assuming you ever do), how many times do you reboil the water?
I think the degradation of taste of reboiled water is overrated... it matters more for the first few infusions of a tea, after that I have no quarrels to rebook once or twice. Adding a little fresh water on top is usually more than enough to refresh the water anyways.

If I do over two hours sessions I’ll probably need a few kettles worth of water... in two hours I will drink at least three to four different teas with maybe 6-12 infusions each. So a thermos wouldn’t get me further than maybe one tea and some more. For first infusion really hot water is crucial for me, so a thermos would only yield good results for one tea no matter how much water would be left.

I understand the distraction part, for me in this circumstance I just don’t have tea or have a tea which is not requiring attention or is not too nice to be wasted by being distracted.

In a park I’d just bring a camping stove(assuming it’s permitted).
rainy
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Sat Oct 31, 2020 11:53 pm

@Bok I drink much slower than you, I might do something like 10-15 infusions per 2 hours, sometimes I start a new tea in the middle of a session (with lower temp water), but other times I can do a 2 hour session with one tea and then continue the same session with 4-5 more infusions on the next day. I also do the thing with topping off with some fresh water and a single reboil.

Even when not working I tend to read a book in a foreign language while drinking tea, so it's still a bit distracting.. occasionally though I just focus on the tea and do nothing else.

This is quite interesting though, I will try to measure temps tomorrow and record exact temp where it start to feel off to me.

Stove is a neat idea, I had a stove but threw it a way when moving recently; however the nice part of the park with a lake that i like is around 25 blocks away so I always either skateboard or bike there, so lugging a stove wouldn't be practical.
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