Pots and Tea: Clay

Showing posts with label Clay. Show all posts

Sunday, April 18, 2021

Boiled Tea in Sidehandle teapot

Boiling tea is one of the oldest ways to prepare tea. As almost every book on tea starts with “Tea was used as medicine in ancient China for thousands of years”, there are also legends as well as researchers by historians which talk about boiling the tea leaves, both with other herbs and ingredients as well as boiling tea alone to get the healing, medicinal liquor. These methods are not forgotten but compare to other tea preparations, boiled tea is almost unknown.

Over the past couple of years, boiled tea has become more popular and to the tea lover’s ears, the idea does not sound so exotic anymore. I was amazed by the idea of boiling from the first time I heard about it, there is something archetypal in the process of boiling plants. So I naturally started to develop some teaware for such magic. In this short article, I would like to share with you my sidehandle teapots which were created for boiling tea, few tips on boiling in such pot, and how to take care of them.

A Guide to Boiling Tea

If you would like to know more about the boiling method itself, I would recommend reading this issue of the global tea hut magazine Global Tea Hut Archive - April 2018 Issue

I if you would like to dive deeper, I would really recommend taking the Boiling course from Global Tea Hut There will be everything you need to know :)

Flameproof clay

First: Not all teapots are for boiling! I received this picture from my customer with kind of “what I did wrong” question. The pot he purchased from me a while ago was not made of flameproof clay. Actually, most of the pots are not suitable for boiling. So be careful.

BEFORE YOU START, PLEASE MAKE SURE THAT YOUR POT IS MADE OF FLAMEPROOF CLAY AND MEANT TO BE USED FOR BOILING. ASK THE MAKER OR YOUR SUPPLIER IF NOT SURE. If it is the pot from me, send me a picture and I will confirm

It took me a while to develop the clay with the proper composition. Literally a few dozens of cracked pots and tons of testing. As you can maybe see from the pictures, it is the same clay (or variations of it) which I use for making kettles. It can handle charcoal as well as gas and electric heat sources.

To give you a better idea how such pot works, here are few lines from the user manual I sending with my flameproof teapots:

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

THIS TEAPOT:

....was created for boiling tea or herbs, but can also very well serve as a kettle, for heating and boiling water

......can be used over electric, gas, alcohol as well as charcoal heat sources. If used over infrared (IR) or gas, please use it together with the flame diffuser I send together with the pot. Flame diffuser protects clay from the too intense thermal shocks. You don't have to use the diffuser when heating over the charcoal or using an alcohol burner to maintain the heat

......I recommend filling it up to around 3/4 of its volume . Boiling tea creates foam and bubbles and can easily overflow if the pot is full. Low fire is usually enough for maintaining the boil.

....over stronger heat sources, the ceramic handle can get a bit of the heat as well. Be aware of it and keep the handle away from the direct fire/heat. If the handle get hot, use a tea towel to hold and pour comfortably

.....if empty but still hot from boiling, please let it cool down for couple of minutes before refilling with cold water

.....When the tea session is over, empty the teapot while it is still warm, clean well with hot water and let it dry. Before closing and storing the pot, be sure it is clean and dry.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I do them mostly unglazed inside. On one hand, glazing inside would make it more smooth, and easier to clean, more user friendly. But I found out the glazing create more tension in the clay and the thermal shock resistance is better if the glaze is not used. And I am choosing resistance over confort :) If you would like to keep your pot clean and without aromas stuck in the clay, I recommend to clean it after you finish your tea session right ahead, and boil inside clean water for a bit, pour it out and let it dry. It works for me very well.

If you went through the videos I shared or you are learning from GTH boiled tea course, you will receive tons of tips on how to boil and what teas are great to prepare this way. What I could recommend is not to be afraid and experiment with what you have right now. You can boil literally any tea after you brew them in your regular way. More the leaves from your teapot, shiboridashi or gaiwan you are using to any clean pot suitable for boiling, glass, or stainless will do. And you will see. Sometimes just heating up to 100°C and a short boil will release an unexpected flavor, sometimes you can boil it for 30min or more. Some teas will be terrible or hardly enjoyable. But some will show their full potential under the longer boil and open their magic for you.

Wednesday, September 24, 2014

Sun Moon Lake Teapots

I have spend this year April on Taiwan, you know, pots and tea. It was amazing time and to call it rich and joyful month would be understatement. It was inspirational on so many levels and it is still live. To give you a glance into it, here is one story...

The Lake from Tea research institut, where new clones and tea varietals are developing for decades now...

Sun Moon Lake...for many years it was a symbol of Taiwanese hong cha for me. Red tea, which I love for its unique flavor and energy and which often came to me labeled "tea from Sun Moon Lake area". I did know much about this terior or what to exactly imagine under this name. But when I bought my air ticket to Formosa, the 日月潭 was already on my have-to-see list. If you give a quick search on google images, you will see wonderful lake with mountains around, hotels and tourists but not tea fields. Well, there is a lot to see (and taste) for tea enthusiastic around that place when one drive up from Nantou. But tea finally was not the most precious thing, which I was carrying from that place this time. Nor teapot from local artist. Just ball of wet, yellow, greasy (and bit smelly) clay.

note: for those who would like to read more about background of Taiwanese hong cha I would like to recomment this post on Taiwan Tea Craft blog

How it all have happened? It is so simple. Take three open minded/open hearted friends traveling together for days, combine those with a lot of tea and magical experiences around Sun Moon Lake, and you can bet that one of them is going to suggest swiming. It tooks us a while to find the right spot where "people will be not too many and jungle not too tight". But we did it and with a lot of laughter we were baptized (and refreshed) in Zintun (as Taiwanesse originally call it)

One of my friends then just reach the bed of the lake (ok, on the edge of bank and water). With words "Petr, this looks like something for you", he give me a small piece of Formosa island. At first touch I knew: I am going to take it with me, I am going to give it a try in fire. It can be slip glaze, it can be body for some small cups, we will see...

After some intermezzos the clay finally land on my work table, in our studio. As intermezzo you can, for example, imagine me, carrying 900g of clay in my jacket, during 7 hours night break on Dubai airport as all my luggage were overweight. Real fun!!... I play with it for a while, thinking what to do with it and how to do it. The clay was very nice, plastic and quite clean (when we consider that it was grabbed from bank of a lake). So I decided to leave it as natural as possible. I just took of some bigger stones, some sharp, smaller ones and few chips of old wood, which I found in it.

First, I make just test cones and put them in to our wood kiln. Such cones, laid out around kiln, can tell us a lot about any new clay. Color, texture but the main thing: How it stands in reduction firing and temperatures.

After this first firing I was pretty sure: It is on the the edge, but there is big chance that this clay will survive in coldest part of our kiln.

So final decision was not to make slip glaze, not bother with small cups. But directly take a chances and make some teapots from that mud! Well, we were three friends on that swimming spot. And as part of this trip, I still had Philip Brook from TaiwansesTeaCraft in my mind, we were happy to meet that day too (he was responsible for the tea in our veins and for much more of the good stuff along the road). So let's make four teapots from bottom of Sun Moon Lake!

What to say more? All important you can see on pictures. The clay was very nice to work with and final teapots are very interesting. Color and texture of the body, "the feeling" is incredible. Because I did not cleaned that clay, there were still some small stones, which on one hand give something special to those small pots. On other hand those stones were my obstacles during throwing and finishing. Pot could be finer without them, losing the rural touch. Either way, these are really unique tea pots. Some Sun Moon Lake hong cha is on its way to my doors. Guess which teapot I am going to brew that tea in.

Bisque fired...

In the kiln...

...with others, before firing.

First peep in to the kiln...

Friendly tea chatting...

First water, first leaves...

Sun Moon Lake in the middle of Europe...

Thank you for reading!

Sunday, November 3, 2013

Two natural clays

When talking with a teaware enthusiastic, I can be pretty sure, some variation of this question is going to pop up: "How natural are your clays"? I can replay that clays are natural by nature. But this answer would not go to the point, would it? Clays can be mixed together and grinded to desired characteristic. Clays can be also enrich by natural as well as more or less artificial additives: river sand, quartz, grog, feldspar, iron scales, saw dust, oxides of different metals or other colorants and so on... the list can be quite long. Clay companies usually creates recipe of new clay by mixing several clays from several mines/deposits, then grind them to fine, seamless clay, add grog of certain grain size as bones of the clay and other additives, if needed. All is mixed again and "pug-milled" to plactic bags. Such bags are then waiting for potters as we are, ready to use. Or, in order to create our own recipe with special quality we are looking for, can be mixed and adjust again.

This practice have quite a few obvious benefits and most of our clays come to our studio this way (we pay attention to companies we buy from - clay have to be simple, without any artificial colorants or additions). Getting clays this way means less of the hard work, stable clay body and pretty wide range of different clays to work with. But there is few things missing and that is why we keep searching for really natural clays.

1) Clays, which you dig directly from nature are unique and you want that for special pieces. Even from the same deposit clay will vary, if you use clay from different spot or depth.

2) When one use natural clay then it is usually just sieved from too coarse particles. Such clay is not grinded, which means that there are grains of different materials in different sizes, the whole spectrum compare with uniformly grinded manufactured clay with added grog.

3) Using natural clays brings new live to potters life. Getting know a countryside, where clays are resting for thousands years, being close and familiar with material we work with - it all helps to give enegry to final pieces.

During the summer I was happy to meet two new clays, both clean and natural. One was given to me by friendly colleague, second one I found thanks to coincidence, when having a trip with friends, looking for summer swimming.

The yellow clay is more rough, my friend probably have not sieved it at all. The black one is more plastic, greasy like. When I started to make first pieces from those clays I already have a rough idea how they are going to look like. I have seen one piece from the yellow one (fire by my friend) and I make few test cones from the black one.

Both clays are very nice to work with, so nice that I decided to brake my plan. Instead few test cups, I end up with teapots, cups, yunomies and yes, a couple of jars.

You can see even after bisque fire (first firing to 1000°C), the black color disappeared. The original black
color was of organic origin and it burn out.

black clay after 1000°C

Thanks to these two new clays, the kiln opening last week was even more surprising then usually. Both clays work in whole range of temperatures which you can find in our woodkiln. The black one likes rather hotter parts and takes easily nice flame effects there. Some pieces were unglazed, on some of them I tried nuka and shino glazes. Take a look at pictures and you will know: We are already working on two trips to visit two interesting places of Czech countryside. Some barels, hoes and shovels are going to go with us...