Are your brown/purple clay pots also lonely?

[Kale]

I usually try to make sure I give every pot a session or two every week or so, but find it increasingly hard with the brown/purple ones ( a couple of neizis and a dark zini).
Setting a side shou (which I rarely drink) and hongcha (which I almost never do), I find that the only tea that actually benefit from it is sheng, aged in very humid storage. But today its so easy to find cleanly/dry stored sheng, so I really find myself neglecting them...I really don't remember the last time I had tea that was stored so bad that I needed a zini…the same goes for roasted oolongs (unless you are really on the heavy roast end). Do you really feel that you need a zini for a roasted DD? Especially for one that rested for a couple of months?

Do you relate to this? what does your zinis and qsn's are brewing?

[OCTO]

Do you really feel that you need a zini for a roasted DD? Especially for one that rested for a couple of months?

Do you relate to this? what does your zinis and qsn's are brewing?

Most of my ZiNi pots are DiCaoQing in nature. Have you tried pairing ur ZiNi with wuyi rock tea?

My QingShuiNi brews an array of teas... again, no hard rule to pair QSN with a specific tea. I have a ROC period QSN which brews up an awesome cup of fresh green TieGuanYin, and another that QSN that whoops up raw puerh like no other..

My take is to try with other tea. Sometimes the matches you end up with might amaze you.

My 2cents.

Cheers!

[Kale]

Most of my ZiNi pots are DiCaoQing in nature. Have you tried pairing ur ZiNi with wuyi rock tea?

My QingShuiNi brews an array of teas... again, no hard rule to pair QSN with a specific tea. I have a ROC period QSN which brews up an awesome cup of fresh green TieGuanYin, and another that QSN that whoops up raw puerh like no other..

My take is to try with other tea. Sometimes the matches you end up with might amaze you.

My 2cents.

Cheers!

Thanks.
As for yancha, I guess that depends what you want to get out of it. I usually like the aroma and punch that some yancha gives so I would mostly prefer a less porus red clay to bring it out. My dark zini just sometimes fades it. But I can see why others may prefer otherwise.

[OCTO]

Thanks.
As for yancha, I guess that depends what you want to get out of it. I usually like the aroma and punch that some yancha gives so I would mostly prefer a less porus red clay to bring it out. My dark zini just sometimes fades it. But I can see why others may prefer otherwise.

You can also try high fired DCQ.

[gatmcm]

Only own dark zini post as of now I find my thin walled one doesnt mute that much so I have had a varitety of teas in it apart from high fired oolongs as originally intended. You can feel some smoothing on young sheng but its welcomed sometimes even if at cost of some high notes.
Thick walled one actually mutes a lot more, use it for semi aged sheng and some shu here and there.

[tingjunkie]

Sounds like you might own a few lower quality zi ni pots unfortunately.

I have zisha pots that can handle the higher notes of gao shan and green TGY admirably. In general, I have come to appreciate many of my purple clay pots over red clays. I do have a couple very dark zini (almost hei ni) white label Factory pots that are somewhat muting though. They would be excellent for traditional Chaozhou gongfu tea if using a "rougher" grade of roasted oolong. Or for some shous and liu baos that might have slight storage notes.

[.m.]

I love my QingShuiNi pots. I use them most of the time, for middle aged sheng, hongcha, roasted oolongs. Admittedly i care more about mouthfeel and aftertaste than about aroma. And i should probably do some side by side testing soon.
My dark zini/heini pot doesn't get much use lately.

[Bok]

Just got the first Zini that I purchased myself apart from a batch of 80s Zinis I have been gifted before and admittedly never really used... mine is a ROC era Zini, which is more of a rich cocoa brown. Looks quite delicious actually! Have not done many tests yet, yesterday it performed really well with a 1990s Rougui!

I think with all Yixing clays it tends to be the same rule: Always test with a variety of teas before writing them off, they might be the exception to the generally accepted consensus! Can be frustrating and confusing at times, but the more I try, the more I come to accept that as far as Yixing is concerned, there are almost no certitudes as to how a pot will perform.

[OCTO]

I think with all Yixing clays it tends to be the same rule: Always test with a variety of teas before writing them off, they might be the exception to the generally accepted consensus! Can be frustrating and confusing at times, but the more I try, the more I come to accept that as far as Yixing is concerned, there are almost no certitudes as to how a pot will perform.

Bingo!! Have fun!

[Kale]

Well, personally, I would boil a 1990s RouGui . That’s my preferable way to brew aged yancha. Otherwise, I would only use a zini if there was something I would like to rid of - like storage flavors or recent roast aroma.... I mostly use zini for aged sheng and if it’s highfired then for roasted oolongs

Just got the first Zini that I purchased myself apart from a batch of 80s Zinis I have been gifted before and admittedly never really used... mine is a ROC era Zini, which is more of a rich cocoa brown. Looks quite delicious actually! Have not done many tests yet, yesterday it performed really well with a 1990s Rougui!

I think with all Yixing clays it tends to be the same rule: Always test with a variety of teas before writing them off, they might be the exception to the generally accepted consensus! Can be frustrating and confusing at times, but the more I try, the more I come to accept that as far as Yixing is concerned, there are almost no certitudes as to how a pot will perform.

[Bok]

Well, personally, I would boil a 1990s RouGui . That’s my preferable way to brew aged yancha. Otherwise, I would only use a zini if there was something I would like to rid of - like storage flavors or recent roast aroma.... I mostly use zini for aged sheng and if it’s highfired then for roasted oolongs

That's the thing, the more clays I get and play around with, the more those general rules fail and some pots do different things they are not supposed to.
Even more so with antique clays, which are from long extinct ores. So I just keep an open mind and break the rules from time to time.

See my recent post on a Duanni, which against popular belief is great with High mountain tea!

[steanze]

That's the thing, the more clays I get and play around with, the more those general rules fail and some pots do different things they are not supposed to.
Even more so with antique clays, which are from long extinct ores. So I just keep an open mind and break the rules from time to time.

See my recent post on a Duanni, which against popular belief is great with High mountain tea!

In my view, many old clays are not so different from modern good quality clays - but usually the quality of modern clays is low because of greater production.

ROC and Qing zini perform quite similar to 70s and modern zini. There is variation dependent on clay subtype, firing, and particle size, but that variation is also seen between zini pots made in the same period. For example, a fair amount of late Qing-ROC zini is processed into a finer grain size than the 1970s F1 qingshuini seen in green label shuipings, it is more similar to the finer qingshuini seen sometimes in larger pots; some of the darker zinis in Qing-ROC have similarities with the 60s and 70s ben zini.

There are a few exceptions: probably benshanlvni of which I have not seen good modern examples (although this might just be my lack of knowledge), and zhuni which was processed with the water filtering method (there is some modern zhuni mined from zhaozhuang but the outcome is a bit different).

It's great that you like to brew high mountain tea with duanni, however, perhaps the reason you like it with high mountain tea is not only because it's an antique clay, but also because we have different preferences. I have a few ROC duanni pots similar to yours and I still prefer hongni/zhuni with high mountain oolongs... this does not mean that one preference is correct and the other is not, everyone should experiment and follow their preferences But I think it might be a bit misleading to say that all old clays are fundamentally different from the modern clays... I have a good quality modern duanni pot and it does not perform so radically different from the ROC duanni (it is a little bit more porous, but I think this is due to the coarser grain). This isn't going to be true for all modern duanni. I think thin walls are really an important advantage for gaoshan, so that aspect is definitely in favor of the duanni julunzhus, rarely zini pots have similarly thin walls, but for example some hongni pots do. I think the ideal comparison would be between the ROC duanni julunzhu and a thin walled hongni or zhuni

Breaking the rules is good, I like to use different clays for the same tea on different sessions to bring out different aspects

[steanze]

The two bigger pots are 70s(the one on the left and the side handled one), the two smaller ones are late Qing - ROC...

IMG_20190117_012147390.jpg (54.91 KiB) Viewed 11301 times

Coarser grain processing: left: ROC or earlier, right: post 2000

IMG_20190117_012743177.jpg (49.49 KiB) Viewed 11301 times

[steanze]

Oh to respond to OP, my zini pots are not lonely, I used them very often for aged sheng

[Bok]

@steanze cheers for this extensive reply and putting into perspective!