Season naturally or artificially?
So I finally bit the bullet and bought a higher-end Xi Shi pot. Words cannot describe how excited I am about it (yay the little things). My taste has evolved drastically over the past year, and I’ve pretty much ignored anything but pu erh. I love it, and it’s my new daily driver after finding the right types.
Combining the new Xi Shi pot that’s inbound with my love for high-end pu erh and you end up with a seasoning dilemma. In the past, I would season in a pot of water with whatever tea I am dedicating to it, but I can’t stomach destroying a whole cake of delicious pu erh. So do you guys have any tips for seasoning this pot? Do I need to use a brush if I’m going the “natural” route?
Personally I’d just season gradually over time and treat the process as another journey of tea discovery. That’s what I’m doing with a newly acquired yixing pot at the moment. I just started it off with boiling water and then did a series of infusions before using it in anger, leaving each to go cold before repeating. The early brews after that require a little extra material but there’s nothing wrong with them.
This Verdant, David Duckler, YouTube video is frequently recommended on this topic:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=0wzsBNHO6C4
I clean the pot thoroughly and scrub it out with my fingers. Rinse with boiling water several times. Make tea in it and leave it to overbrew. I do the tea thing once or twice, then proceed as normal
Why would you have to destroy a whole cake for seasoning? If you are dedicating it to young/aged puerh, you use a few gram of any young/aged puerh for the initial seasoning. Brush is optional for natural seasoning.
We use this process for the inside: hot water rinse, use spent leaves to lightly scrub clean the inside (& outside) pot, hot water to rinse again and leave spent leaves (of whatever tea you plan to use it with) to steep for several hours/overnight. Repeat. After a few times, we will then steep fresh tea in the teapot and on final steep, leave it steeping until cleaning time and then rinse out with hot water.
For the outside, either a tea brush or tea cloth soaked in tea soup is fine. Remember to brush and wipe evenly and don’t scrub too hard if using cloth. Wipe clean with a damp tea cloth afterwards. Doesn’t take more than a few sessions to get a nice bright shine on good clays.
My go-to method is to fill the pot completely with the type of tea I’ll brew in it, then add boiling water and put the lid on. Take your pot and place it on an electric mugwarmer overnight. :-)
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