Yixing Tea Pots

Video Transcript

"Hi. Today we're talking about tea and now I'm going to give a brief overview of the Yi Xing Tahou, or the purple clay teapot from Yi Xing, China, which is used to make Kung Fu cha or Kung Fu tea. Which is the traditional way of making tea in Taiwan and China. And here I have a collection of Yi Xing tea pots. Each one has a different property and a different type of clay and it's fired at a different temperature and each one is then used for making a different kind of tea. So there's a incredible variety of the Oolong tea or maybe puer tea, and so what this clay that is used to make this pot is not glazed. And so what it is, is it's a very porous inside, and it has nothing to protect the actual clay so, when you make the tea in these pots. The pot will absorb the flavor of the tea and then over time it then enhances the flavor of the tea. So, tea connoisseurs and tea experts will choose one tea that they're going to use to make out of that pot. So this is a pot that I use for aged Oolongs, so all the aged Oolongs I made from this pot. And it has sort of a musty flavor to it, a musty smell, because it’s been used to make so much aged tea. This one here is a high mountain Oolong pot, and so high mountain tea is everything over a thousand meters, which is about 320 feet. So this, this pot was fired at a very high temperature, so it's good for making this high mountain Oolong. And then this is a, this is a pot that I use to make baked Oolongs. And this is a handmade teapot and it has a very vertical shape, and that's very good for the tea to expand so it will, it will just expand straight up in that vertical column cylinder of the pot. This is a pot that has a really great pour. As you notice all of these pots have a little hole in the top, even the one with the Yi Xing sign has a little hole here. And what that is that it allows the air to go into the pot when you pour it. So a really good pot will have a good suction and when you're pouring it if you put your finger on that, on that hole, it will, it will stop pouring. That's it, if it's a good pot that will, that will be, that's one indicator of a good pot. So this is the pot that I use to make some really expensive tea because you can, you just can use a little bit and it will make a lot. This is one of the pots that I use to make Iron Goddess. It's a dark color, a dark color pot will typically have a, retain a higher temperature. And so that's something that you want to make an Iron Goddess. And then this is a pot that I use to make a Formosa Oolong or Oriental Beauty or a Gui Fei Mei Ren. So this pot has a little bit of a fruit, honey smell to it. So many people when they see these pots they think that this type of pot is used for individuals, so this is a looks like it would make enough tea for one person. But in fact, the way the tea is made with these pots is you do several infusions and you do short infusion time and several infusions. So, brewing tea in one of these pots will actually yield quite a large amount of tea. Typically, one brew session will make anywhere from six to eight, eight ounce cups of tea. So, that's quite a bit of tea, it's more than one person, or it's a, or if you like to drink a lot of tea it's a good amount. But it's plenty of tea for two to four people to enjoy, and then you can also just switch the leaves and then start over if you want to drink more tea. In the pot, it's typically function over form and then the type of clay that's used is really important and then who made the pot. These are all things that are, influence the quality of the pot. And all of the teapots will have a stamp on the bottom from the person who made it, the artist. In recent, in recent years they put more and more stamps, like this one has a stamp here, which will have the artist’s name. Then it also has a stamp here, and a stamp here. And then a lot of times, they'll have a stamp inside on the inside of the lid there. So that's a little bit of the overview on the clay teapots used for making Guin Fu Cha."