Teacups, Gaiwans, and Pitchers (oh my!)
- Thread starter sid3000
- Start date
The pitcher is meant to uniformily mix the tea and allow you to pour off the tea to serve at a later time without allowing it to continue steeping. If you will be pouring all of the tea out into multiple cups at the same time, then some people instead of a pitcher will gradually fill each cup in turns to help uniformily distribute the tea. For yourself, as long as you are pouring all of the tea into your cup at once then you don't need a pitcher. If you are pouring only some of the tea into your cup you may want to use a pitcher as well.
Depends on how much tea you have in the GaiWan, the forgivingness of the tea you're brewing, and the technique you use to pour into the cups. If you're using a GaiWan in a gongfu manner (really full of leaves), you'll have problems with the last cup poured being stronger than the first cup. Many people solve this problem by lining up the cups & quickly pouring a little bit in each going up & down the line until everything's poured, so each cup gets a little bit of each part of the brewing. If you're brewing less formally with a smaller amount of leaf, you can just pour each cup without much worry--in fact, many people just drink straight from the GaiWan while it's infusing if they're keeping it all to themselves. I don't like that as much myself, but it is what I use at my desk at work.
Of course, a pitcher (often called a "fair cup" or "justice cup") can solve another problem--if you've got more tea in your GaiWan than space in your cups!
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I go straight from Gaiwain through a strainer to my cup. My cup holds as much tea as my pot. All works well.
