Yixing clay gaiwan?

[rcs914]

So last Friday I stopped by Seven Cups here in Tucson to try some of their pu before I jump in feet first. It is a neat place, and I had an enjoyable cup of their own labeled shupu.

They also have a large number of Yixing pots on the shelves, and a number of porcelain gaiwans, but the one that caught my eye was a gaiwan made entirely of Yixing clay, with no porcelain lining. It was about $20, which seemed reasonable since they wanted $28 for a plain white porcelain gaiwan.

So when I got home, I looked to see if I could find one online that was made just from clay, and I struck out. I would think that in some ways it would give the best of both worlds, but that could just be the novice in me that has read a lot, but experienced little so far of this topic.

What are anyone else's thoughts?

Chris

 

[Born2bwire]

Ehhhhh.....

I stick with the Yixing pots and use porcelein for the gaiwan. The porcelein is nice for a few reasons. It doesn't take in the flavor of the tea so it is a good material to use when you are sampling a tea or you want to use it with different kinds of teas. Part of using the Yixing pots is the whole Gong-fu tea ceremony and a gaiwan doesn't really fit in to the routine. Plus, I think the pots are a little better with giving the tea room to bloom since they start out wide at the bottom as opposed to the gaiwan which widens as it goes up.

Was the pu-er you sampled a cooked or green pu-er?

EDIT: Oh wow... a number of posts on here about Yixing and Chinese teas... nice.

 

[Maitre_Tea]

clay gaiwan can be good for roasted teas or pu-erh since they have better heat retention. I don't know of any vendors that sell clay gaiwan, but you might have luck looking on etsy. A friend of mine has made clay gaiwan in the past so if you want maybe you can shoot him an email. His etsy store is here. You can see his past work in the feedback section.

 

[netsurfr]

A clay gaiwan would be good but has the same characteristics as a clay Yixing. It should only be used for one type of tea (ripe pu-erh, raw pu-erh, green tea, white tea, oolong, black). It will not tend to give you the truest representation of the tea that you are drinking since it absorbs the tea oils from all of the previous infusions and consequently may mute the profile of the current tea that you are tasting. It will tend to take the edge off of a young green pu-erh since the gaiwan has the tea oils of all of the previous tea infused in it. So, in summary there are some good things to be said for a clay gaiwan but you also need to understand the limitations.