Friday, December 10, 2010

Do ceramic tea strainers brew better tea than stainless ones?



Some people prefer teapots with a ceramic strainer rather than stainless one. They say that the irony taste gets mixed in the tea and they don't like that. I’ve heard about it and thought it might be true, but I wasn’t so concerned about it myself. I use both teapots with ceramic and stainless strainers at home. I thought it is time to check the fact of the matter myself (^-^)

Here are 6 teapots. Three of them (A, B and C) have the stainless strainer, and the other three (D, E and F) have ceramic or plastic.

A: Mounted stainless strainer



B: Removable stainless strainer



C: Mounted stainless strainer



D: Regular-mesh ceramic strainer



E: Fine-mesh ceramic strainer



F: Removal plastic strainer



I thought it may be easier to notice the irony taste in plain water rather than in tea. So before brewing the tea, I poured just hot water into each teapot and left them for a while and tasted it later with blindfold. Do you think I could tell the difference in taste between the water in each teapot?


Well… I smelled the water but I could not tell the difference. I took a sip and tasted the irony taste! The hot water in Teapot F had the worst flavor and thought it was the water with stainless one. The F is the teapot that I’ve used for the longest and brewed not only green tea but also English teas. I think it has some stains from the plastic strainer, and they affected the taste. I could not tell perfectly, but I think people can tell the irony taste in the water.



On the next step, I brewed sencha with these six teapots. I smelled the brewed teas first. You know what? I could not tell the difference with the water, but I could slightly notice the irony smell in the brewed teas. I don’t know why, but it is very interesting. For the taste, Tea pot F made it tricky to tell the difference, again. I could not tell them perfectly, but I could still tell most of them. Here I didn’t like the taste with the teapot “A” the most. “A” is a brand new teapot, so maybe that’s why. It was more difficult to tell the irony taste in tea than in water.



In conclusion, you can say that ceramic strainers can brew better tea than stainless ones. Maybe, I’ll use ceramic-strainer teapots when I brew expensive tea, but I’ll keep using my teapots with metal strainer for daily tea. I think it is not a big deal.
There are some advantages of stainless strainers. They are usually reasonable and the mesh is finer than ceramic ones. Stainless-strainer teapots are actually sold many in Japan, and a lot of people are using them. I don’t want you to be paranoid too much about it. Brewing tea should be fun and easy (^-^) Right?

10 comments:

  1. Hello Kohei-san!
    Good test. I do not like when samoene is too much paranoid in this case. My opinion in this is probably the same as yours. My experiences speak that stainless strainer-teapots are very good practical and reasonable for deep steamed cha until ceramic built-in strainer-teapots make great job with expensive and regulary steamed cha! I think the teapots with stainless strainer are the best choice for green tea novice. For green tea skilled persons in green tea is stainless strainer hate only psychical problem I think.
    All the best in new year.

    Tomas

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hi, Tomas-san,

    Thank you for your comment. You are right. I think stainless strainers work fine for deep-steamed tea, mecha or konacha, which are small-grain teas v(^o^)v

    ReplyDelete
  3. Where is that fine mesh ceramic tea strainer from? That is amazing!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hi, Jules-san,
      It is made in Tokoname, Aichi.
      You can find it here >>> http://www.everyonestea.com/product/131

      Delete
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