@ Lamppost, that really depends on the infusion time you set for your top drop.
I’ll use my own practice to explain it here. When I choose to top drop for an infusion, I normally have decided that I would give it a full infusion duration, i.e. 5m for smaller vessels, 7 to 10 for large ones. To sustain a good temperature throughout such length, the vessel has to hold heat quite well. (other readers pls note: heating with a candle under the pot won’t work unless it is a very basic quality tea) In your case, the Yixing pot would have to be very thoroughly preheated. I would also use a slightly higher temperature in because I know it will get cooler. In bigger vessels, this is a lesser worry.
To me, a balanced amount of astringency in the tea is important. So is aroma. Both have to be brought about with heat. The trick is knowing how much over that mean of 85°C. It varies with the heat retainment properties of that pot you are using and the immediate environment, and your personal preference, of course.
If your Yixing teapot is giving you the same infusion quality as a gaiwan, there are things that you may want to ask:
Is the pot a genuine Yixing clay or an imitation? Certain clays continues to absorb the substances in tea.
Is the pot too thin or too small? Heat retention is a key factor in good infusion. Thinness of material and smallness in size are not good in heat retention. One way round it is by introducing a hot water bath for the teapot during infusion. The original meaning of chahai, before the intermediate teapot was popular, refers to that container for the hot bath. And the original intent of the Shuiping teapot style was exactly for submerging into the hot bath. However, that’s a lot of work for a small cup of tea.
Another way is to use a shorter infusion time for smaller pots, say 2-3 minutes. To make sure you have a full enough body, you may have to break some of the leaves before dropping. That way you have more surface areas for infusion, but that also means easier release of bitterness and astringency. Milan Xiang is certainly not the easiest tea in the world for this technique.
One good way to experiment with your own setup is to use less tealeaves in the beginning and very gradually increase the amount the other time you make tea. Do the same with temperature and duration. Do them all separately though, ie, change only one variable in one series of experiment., otherwise, you never know which is the contributive factor to the taste effect.
Have fun.
