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Dear Sir Kwan and others,
Recently I accidentally broke my japanese porcelain teapot :cry:.
As a student I am not exactly swimming in money. In the meantime I intend to use a soup bowl and a cotton (organic and unbleached, bettertea.dk/info2-page.html) tea filter (wich looks a bit like a sock). What is your opinion on the use of such tea filters? I hope the cotton fabric won’t absorb (too much) of the healthful and flavourful ingredients of my loose teas? This seems to be the only option where the loose tea can float freely in the water as it is quite big (being able to let it float freely in seemed to be important from what I have read on this website).
Other options would be much smaller paper filters (probably too tight?) and iron tea balls (wich are maybe also not big enough and maybe iron isn’t so good?). In the meantime I’ll be saving money for a new proper tea pot.
I hope Sir Kwan and/or others can help me out. Many thanks in advance.
Yours Sincerely,
Herendil
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Hi Herendil,Basically any container that holds heat for a while can be used as a “teapot”. I have used ordinary mugs, water jugs, bowls, drinking glass, saucepans, and even those glass candle holders to steep tea in. They are far from ideal, but those that allow good convection and holds heat well can be surprising effective in rendering acceptable infusion quality.If I use a bowl, the one thing that I need in addition to it would be a lid, not an infusing bag. The one that you have posted the link of looks like one of those used in Hong Kong style diners for making Ceylon fanning grades in a tall tin teapot. It’s an understandable solution for the setup for a few reasons, one of which being that the tea bar tender can make use of the length of the cloth to squeeze out the strong infusion by twisting the bag.In a bowl, however, I think it kind of interferes with the much better convection pattern the inside of a bowl offers. I rather put the leaves directly into the bowl and strain them during pouring with a lid or a strainer. It’ll take some practice, but not that difficult. The most popular teaware in gongfu infusion style is a gaiwan — lid bowl — after all. If you use wholeleaf tea, that’s definitely the way to go.You wouldn’t know how poor I have been and the kind of bad situations that I had to make tea in. Deprivation of materials sometimes can be seen as a fortune: you are rich in opportunities to understand the nature of things and to improvise. And to understand who you are. Enjoy the moment.Happy holidays,Leo
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Hello Leo,
Thank you for your kind reply! The soupbowl I actually make it in is: https://www2.marindex.nl/popup_image.php?pID=1173&image=0. I tried it today gaiwan style with a small plate like object wich has
the size of my hand palm (used to put teabags/strainers on after sufficient steeping) but the tea didn’t go where I wanted it to go and the bowl and its shape combined with the particular lid doens’t seem to work :-(. Then I tried pouring it from one into a second bowl through a just large enough tea strainer to filter out the leaves, could make a mess but with enough practise it should go flawless in a few days though. ;-)At least the leaves can ‘swim’ freely in it!Although I am most likely not as poor as you, my family isn’t that rich either. My mom and dad always tell me: “Deprivation builds character!” ;-).
Thanks for your informative website and kind reply!
I wish you happy holidays as well!
Herendil
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