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Scouring a Yixing Teapot



Materials You Need There's not a lot of information on how to scour your Yixing teapots in English, and it is one of the most asked questions around here, so we thought this issue was the perfect opportunity to share our method. This method could be applied to teaware for bowl tea, but it's ideal for gongfu tea.

Whether you have a new or used Yixing teapot, or one of unknown origin, it's often a good idea to scour it before using it. If the pot is heavily used, you may have to repeat the following process several times. This will remove the oils of any tea prepared in the pot, which may not have been organic or fine tea, and will negatively influence your own sessions. Scouring is necessary, as we want to thoroughly clean out anything that would influence the tea steeped in the pot, like organic matter, mustiness, dust or tea oils from other steepings caught up in the pores of the teapot.

When a new pot is fired, all the organics in the clay become dust. Potters also use silica in the firing process to keep the lid from adhering to the body. All of this dust and sediment clogs the pores of the Yixing pot. The double-porous structure of an Yixing pot is what allows for capillary action: the pot breathes, in a way of speaking. This is one of the reasons that Yixingware preserves heat so well. Also, we want the pores open to absorb the oils of the tea we will prepare, seasoning the pot over time. It will then improve our tea and begin to glow with a brighter, more beautiful shine over time, much like the way our prayers polish our malas.

Scouring your pot is also a necessary treatment for a teapot that you plan to use for multiple types of tea. This will be the case for many of you, if you only have one or two teapots, which you use for different teas. In the beginning, if you only have one gongfu teapot, then use it for all your teas and simply scour it every six months to a year, depending on how much you use it. This is because your pot will accumulate oils from the various teas you brew in it, which will influence all of your tea sessions, noticeably as time passes. It's nice to enjoy tea in its purest form, not influenced by other teas. You can "reset" your pot, in a manner of speaking, by scouring it. However, it is always ideal to collect enough teapots to assign them to all the types of tea you enjoy.

We'd also love to hear about your successful scourings! Let us know your experience on the app. Make sure your cooking pot and lid are clean and washed completely of any soap. You never want to wash your teaware with soap. (We devote a pot just to scouring pots, so it never touches food, dish soap or any other contaminants. This is, of course, the ideal for the serious Chajin.)