Easy Cleaning and Storing | Taking Care of Teaware

dposkin5
Jan 12, 2023
5 min read

1. Cleaning your teaware

Chinese Teaware is very different from western dishware. First of all, dishwashers are very rare in China; and secondly, dish soap is never used on Teaware, even vitrified porcelain! Lets get into why this is, and how we can clean our Teaware without soap.

Three things that should NEVER touch an unglazed teapot: dish soap, hand soap, detergent

Tea is a delicate drink with some very slight and subtle aromas and flavors, thus when sommeliers taste test tea (as they do with wine) they refrain from wearing any type of cologne, perfume, skin cream, or any other artificial fragrance. In this same way, the tea vessel should be a naturally unaffected medium to hold, serve, and present the truest expression of the tea. We have personally experienced drinking a fine green tea from a porcelain cup that had been washed with dish soap and all we could taste was the citrus saponin flavor of the dish soap.

In China, boiling water and steam are king when it comes to cleaning Teaware.

Before serving tea, rinse every piece of Teaware with boiling water

This step is as easy as it sounds. After heating up the kettle for tea, pour the boiling water into each piece of Teaware to be used. This not only heats up the ceramics, but also washes out the dust, and blasts any bad bacterial with a flood of boiling water! After the first rinse, then being adding the dry tea to the brew cup or teapot and brew tea as usual.

2. Storing your teaware

When it comes to storing teaware, it seems that everyone has their own preferred method, be that stacked three deep on the ledges of a bookshelf, carefully packed like eggs in a drawer, bubble wrapped in Tupperware in a cabinet, or just out and about within easy reach, there is no wrong way to store your teaware, but we will offer a few suggestions to help guide you on your path!

Dust collects in the open (if you're using a piece of teaware less frequently than once or twice a week, consider storing it away)
Out of Sight, Out of Mind (if you can't see a piece of teaware, it's easy to forget you even have it. Be sure to make some quick visual note of what is stored where to see at a glance)
One Small Nudge (all it takes is a small bump to send a piece of teaware fatally falling to the floor, be sure to keep its location sturdy and stable)
Easy Habits (if you want to drink more tea, after you finish a gongfu session, consider setting up your tea table for the next session right away, and leave it all out for the next time)
Don't Ditch the Box (we keep all the original boxes our teaware comes in, why get rid of such a great place to store the teaware in a safe way.

Our storage system might be a little different from yours, as we are a teaware company, but we keep our long-term storage pieces in the boxes they came in with a small written note on the visible side so that we can read at a glance what they each are. We also keep two or three brew vessels and a few sets of cups out around our tea table as well, for immediate brewing!

3. Packing your teaware

Traveling with teaware can be quite a big concern to the newly initiated, after all, you're likely going to need to bring enough teaware for everyone to enjoy. With the use of tea towels and the teaware boxes we saved, we have found some pretty easy ways to pack up and bring along any type of teaware on our travels.

This is the easy way to pack up a Brew Cup and a Tea Cup for safe and sound easy transport. Below is how we pack up a teapot and teacup!

4. Seasoning your teapot

Seasoning, or preparing a new teapot for brewing, is only useful for unglazed teapots, (e.g. yixing, nixing, jianshui). When you get a new unglazed teapot, it is important to clean it with boiling water before brewing to remove any residual dust or clay powder from the porous body. In addition to cleaning a new teapot, if you so desire, you can season the teapot for use with a single type of tea. This seasoning is primarily useful for the lower-fired (more porous) styles such as Yixing and Jianshui. The higher-fired teaware like the semi-vitrified Nixing or glossy Chaozhou Zhuni teapots will absorb less flavors, so are rarely seasoned.

Let's talk about how to clean and season a new teapot.

Cleaning a new teapot

Cleaning a teapot is different from Seasoning a teapot. All new unglazed teapots should be cleaned with boiling water before use.

Feel along the inside of the teapot for any residual clay dust or other particles that can be gently removed with a wooden chopstick or spoon.
Rinse teapot with boiling water 2 to 3 times. Be sure to completely fill the teapot and pour the boiling water over the exterior as well. Be careful if the ambient temperature is too cold, for a new teapot, you'll want to ease this temperature transition as the clay has not yet been acclimated.
Using a clean cloth gently brush dry the teapot from the inside and outside. This will help remove any residual clay dust or ceramic particles.
After this, the teapot should be ready for use. While a slight clay flavor may suffuse the first few sessions, this quickly fades within the first week or two of use.

Seasoning a new teapot

After cleaning the teapot, if a single style of tea is going to be used, then you can season the teapot by simmering it in a tea bath.

Using fresh water, heat to a boil in a large pot on the stovetop.
Add 7-14 grams of the chosen tea (usually puer, or oolong)
Simmer tea for a few minutes until the tea soup darkens.
Carefully add the empty teapot with the lid off. Be careful when adding the teapot and teapot lid to the hot water, as you do not want to drop your new teapot against the hard bottom of the metal pot. We sometimes add a cloth first to cushion the ceramic.
Return tea soup to a light simmer and allow to simmer for 15 minutes.
Turn off heat and let the teapot absorb the tea bath until it returns to room temperature.
Take the teapot out of the bath and rinse again with boiling water.
Enjoy using your seasoned teapot with your select style of tea.

Extra notes on seasoning a teapot: If you're seasoning a lighter colored clay, such as a duanni, you might see a color change immediately after seasoning! There is no need to season a pot multiple times or for a longer duration, as part of the joy of raising a teapot is noticing the gradual patina for yourself. While you should try to use a single type of tea with your porous teapot, using a different tea type once or twice wont ruin the process, as whatever flavors it absorbs in that short time will be hardly noticeable due to the pot's long-term devotion to the original tea style. However, be sure to never brew teas with flavor additives, flowers, fruit, or any other strong flavor outside your chosen tea type, as the porous teapot will absorb these flavors. Finally, never ever wash your unglazed teapot with soap, or you will have many many soap-flavored tea sessions!

How can the teaware be clean if I don't use soap?

Speaking about brewing pure loose leaf tea, there shouldn't be an excess of sugars, oils, or other easy to spoil elements used in the teaware. Timely emptying out of tea and rinsing with boiling water is more than sufficient to clean any piece of teaware.

Can I use soap if I really want to?

Although we never use soap (and can taste it when soap has been used to clean porcelain teacups) you can use soap to wash any piece of vitrified teaware (porcelain or glass). However, we strongly suggest that you never use soap on any unglazed piece of teaware, and if this is against your inclinations, then perhaps unglazed teaware is not the teaware for you. Glass teaware can be cleaned with soap and performs admirably!

How can I child-proof / puppy-proof my tea setup?

While we love cozy sessions with floor cushions and a knee-high tea table, perhaps this isn't the best setup for a hose with a baby or puppy (or cat for that matter!). Keep your teaware far from any table edge, and be sure to have a rug or carpet under your tea table in case anything does fall.

I don't like the cardboard box aesthetic of packing up teaware, is there any other methods?

There are several local knitters and makers that create custom tea-carry bags on Etsy or other small local artisan markets. Additionally we have seen a friend use stackable Tupperware containers to pack and transport all their teaware.

What teaware needs to be seasoned?

Anything unglazed and unvitrified can be seasoned. Among these unglazed teapots, some are more porous than others, primarily the Yixing teapots are the most porous, while the Nixing are the least porous.

What if I brew the wrong type of tea in a teapot seasoned for one type of tea?

It's actually not that big of a deal if it is a one-time occurrence. Raising a teapot takes years and hundreds of sessions to get the most profound results. One session in the hundred of a different style of tea wont do much to detract from the cultivation.

Are there any teas that don't do well in an unglazed teapot?

A lot of teas don't do too well in a porous and unglazed teapot, primarily green teas, white teas, and lighter oolongs. This is due to the fact that the unglazed clay can mute some of the higher floral fragrances and bright fruity notes while providing a deeper more mineral mouthfeel. We also suggest not brewing anything with too strong a flavor like smoked teas, flower teas, or teas with any kinds of additives in them.