Teapots

[ItsKarl]

I would love to have loose leaves tea. But, I'm lazy. And I don't drink my tea fast enough for it to keep warm. I do with tea bags knowing it on the lesser side of the civilized companies.

Why don't you buy disposable tea bags? No more hassle than with regular tea bags, and you can load up - or mix - how much loose leaf tea you want. Purists who claim the bags impart taste are imagining things.

 

[orlandofurioso]

Which I sometimes do. But this a thread about the appreciation of applied art

 

[AJL67]

Being a semi obsessed fan of old martial arts movies, i love the old old old school tea cups that you just put the leaves and hot water in the cup and use the lit to sweep back any floating leaves while you sip, then place the lid back on to keep it warm until you sip again and you repeat the process.

 

[craiginthecorn]

As an fan of loose leaf tea, I have a small number of teapots. But the design of the traditional teapot is very poor in my opinion.

So here is a list of some features that would be on my ideal teapot. A teapot that doesn't seem to exist.

- A large opening at the top. Big enough to get your hand in with the scouring pad to give it a good scrub (although some say never clean a teapot. I'm not one of those).

- No lip around the aforementioned large opening. So you can easily tip the pot upside down and the loose tea easily slides out without getting stuck on the lip.

- A spout that is either large, or better still has no top. (like a jug has no top to the spout generally). I find smaller grades of tea will all come out of the spout and land in my tea strainer. But larger leaves get stuck in the small spout. This really annoys me. Why do all teapots have such a small hole for the tea to come out of?


So basically my ideal teapot is a squat jug with a lid that holds one cup of tea.

Or I could use one of these (below). But I did have one of these. I lost the built in metal strainer a few years ago, and I broke the actual pot today whilst trying to enlarge the hole in the spout with a drill. (DIY is not my speciality)

Does anyone else have a teapot with a large opening spout?

View attachment 290260

That's the pot I had in mind as you described your criteria. I think we had one in every AirBnB we rented in Ireland and also in a few cafes. Forlife brand, IIRC.

 

[craiginthecorn]

Being a semi obsessed fan of old martial arts movies, i love the old old old school tea cups that you just put the leaves and hot water in the cup and use the lit to sweep back any floating leaves while you sip, then place the lid back on to keep it warm until you sip again and you repeat the process.

View attachment 311946

These are designed to use very large tea leaves and multiple very short brews from the leaves. Most loose leaf British teas are too small for convenient use. These are also only about 6oz in capacity and intended for brewing tiny.servings.of 1.5 to 3 oz.

 

[AJL67]

These are designed to use very large tea leaves and multiple very short brews from the leaves. Most loose leaf British teas are too small for convenient use. These are also only about 6oz in capacity and intended for brewing tiny.servings.of 1.5 to 3 oz.

Yah i actually looked that up because it seemed crazy they would use the typical tea we are used to, I made friends with the couple that own a local chinese restaurant, one of the nice ones, anyway i used to give her husband cigars (Partagas shorts) all the time, he loved them but i told them about my tea obsession from those movies and they gave me a pound of chinese tea made for that, i still haven't opened the package because i never bought the cups, but i understand it's very good tea.

A funny tea story, when i moved to Boston as a teen i first worked at the Charles Hotel in Cambridge, it's a top notch hotel (at least it was) right off Harvard Square, a lot of celebrities stayed there and working in room service i met every one from Jack Nicholson to Jimmy Paige and Robert Plant to Lucy and everyone between. Anyway when Sting was doing his Dream of the Blue Turtles tour he stayed there, I brought up his breakfast one morning and tea was the beverage.

That night i had tickets (well my brother bought them for us) to see him at the Garden, great show, then he pulls out a tea bag and starts going off on how we dumped tea in the harbor and of course knew nothing about tea, complained about the tea he got with breakfast all while swinging the tea bag around. Yah the tea I brought him .. then he broke into Englishman in NY but changed it to in Boston for the show. I got a kick out of it!

 

[huntertrw]

Back when I still drank tea I purchased a small but lovely antique brown-and-cream-colored Sadler (Burslem, England) teapot, which I still have. It was the ideal size for two cups.

 

[Flatfish]

That's the pot I had in mind as you described your criteria. I think we had one in every AirBnB we rented in Ireland and also in a few cafes. Forlife brand, IIRC.

I had a Forlife one. But I lost the filter. Without the filter I was left with a tiny little spout which blocked all the time when I would pour.

 

[mawnansmiff]

ovely antique brown-and-cream-colored Sadler (Burslem, England) teapot,

Burslem/Stoke on Trent is famous for its bottle kilns where literally millions of teapots, plates, cups etc etc were made over the centuries mainly due to the red clay that is found in the vicinity in massive quantities.

Burslem/Stoke on Trent is for pottery like Sheffield is for steel and cutlery, both places were at the very centre of the industrial revolution and their products are to be found all over the world.

Jay.

 

[Briarcutter]

I've always used Yixing clay pots, filtered water, never wash the interior except by flushing with hot water.