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Saturday, October 15, 2011

Seeing Triple

What else can I say other than when looking for decent quality on a budget, in a size that is rarely offered in stores that cater to English speakers, options get quite limited quite quickly.  While I honestly do not know how many of these little 50ml brown yixing's Zen8Tea has sold, but quite a few people I know that have bought one have not stopped at just one.  I recently purchased two more bringing myself up to 3 of these little guys.  They might not be the greatest quality but they seem to work wonderfully with stuffed pots of roasted oolongs.

My biggest problem was how would I keep these straight, as one was to be used with high Quality Yancha, the other to be used with High Fire TGY, and the 3rd a switch hitter who is to fill in the gaps if I ever want to do a side by side brew/comparison.  I realized a simple wrapping around certain parts of the handles could greatly help.  So while I currently do not have string available, I did mark one in an interesting fashion with some dental floss.

Having used them quite a bit,I will say they do not hide what they are, but for giving you the ability to brew in a teapot, and one that does pick up a little bit of patina, instead of a gaiwan.  I love gaiwans but the ones I have are absolutely horrible in terms of heat retention and even when having the gaiwans half submerged in hot water, I feel like I am fighting a loosing battle with heat. Not to mention fighting a loosing battle in terms of water.

I must say this is the first item of teaware I have ever bought multiple of that is not a cup to create a matching set.  I am still unsure how I feel about that.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

The pots are definitely a good price. However I would be more concerned about what actually is in the clay being used. I've heard about Lead and all kinds of other things being thrown into these cheap Yixing pots.

Unknown said...

Cloud mountain, I would be more concerned with that, if the clay was not a pretty standard brown color. It isn't labeled as such, but it appears to be Zini, which in my understanding is a pretty plentiful and inexpensive clay even these days. In short the production value of these pots are good enough to be usable, but every pot tends to have some pretty apparent defects.

While everyone has their right to be concerned, I think certain widespread news reports about chinese exports, such as toys with lead paint, give the false impression that everything inexpensive in China contains lead. I raise the question, for what reason would someone add lead to a teapot that is pretty standard color?

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