My Clear Glass Teapot

Teapot with mug for size reference

Enjoying Tea Description:
This beautiful teapot made entirely of heat resistant borosilicate glass is the perfect tool for enjoying loose tea. The roomy removable filter allows tealeaves to expand and provide full infusion of the leaves. This is a good glass teapot to show off the beautiful color of your tea. It is also an excellent vessel to display the blossoming of art tea.

My Review:
Welcome to today's review of my new crystal teapot. This is the Calming Sea Filtering Glass Teapot by Vistabello Glassware. I bought it on sale from the Enjoying Tea website. I purchased this at the same time as my yixing teapot. Each were well wrapped in their own boxes inside a single larger shipping box.

I have wanted something like this for a while to properly prepare blooming teas. My French Press is short and wide, so either the blooms lack sufficient depth for a proper display or I am brewing more than I want to drink at one sitting. I have been afraid to use a dinner glass as I was concerned the shock of the near boiling water would cause it to shatter. Until now our best choice has been my wife's 4 cup Mr Coffee carafe but it is not very pretty to look at. This teapot is very nice looking.

Teapot with lid and glass infuser

The Calming Sea Teapot is made of borosilicate glass, just like my press, so I feel safe using it. The website says this is dishwasher and microwave safe. I'll take their word for it as I won't be doing either. It has a clear glass infuser for use with loose tea though I likely will not use the infuser and instead strain the tea as I pour.

The teapot is very lightweight. So much so, at first I checked to make sure it was glass. It is also very small. The website lists it as 450 ml or 15.3 oz. For ease of handling and pouring, I think 12 oz is more realistic leaving a little airspace at the top. This teapot is the perfect size for my needs.

The opening is just large enough that I can clean the interior will relative ease. The spout is nicely shaped. I spilled some the first time I used it as tilted it too quickly causing it to leak around the lid. If I pour slowly and evenly at first, not a drop is lost.

So far this has performed very well and I am quite pleased with the results.

A word about ordering - when you buy a teapot or teaset from Enjoying Tea they include a free sample of tea. It is randomly selected and placed in the shipping box. The box is filled with shipping peanuts. Don't be a doofus like me and not look through the box carefully. Fortunately I did not throw away the box full of peanuts. Once I realized there was supposed to be a sample (OK Enjoying Tea told me so in an email response to my query about the free tea offer) I was able to find the two neat little tins that came with my two teapot order. It is a good day when you find free tea in your order.

Enjoying Tea, Cinnamon Black Tea

Enjoying Tea Description:
This tea is made from top grade orange pekoe Ceylon with cinnamon flavoring. The Ceylon tea is grown at the altitude of 7000 feet above sea level from the Sri Lanka region. When brewed this tea produces a bright coppery color liquid with a sweet cinnamon flavor and with touches of mild astringency. A fantastic tea, great for relaxation.

Price: $5.99/4 oz

My Review:
This tea was included in the package with a recent teapot purchase. I nearly missed it. The packing box was filled with packing peanuts. When the package arrived my wife removed the boxes my two new teapots were in and didn't know to search through the peanuts. In her defense the tea comes in a tiny, tiny, but cute one ounce tin.

I opened the tin and was met with a fresh cinnamon scent. Looking in the tin there are obvious cinnamon pieces throughout. The black Ceylon tea base is powder coated in cinnamon, turning it brown and looking more like a wet Yunnan black tea leaf. The leaf pieces are pleasantly large for a Ceylon black tea. This is not dust.

With the leaf in the press, I added boiling water and steeped for three minutes. The brew is a deep orange/red. It is bright and clear.

My experience with cinnamon black tea runs two extremes. My first encounter was also one of my very first purchases as a teen. It was Bigelow Cinnamon Stick. The scent of the Enjoying Tea version brings back memories of Bigelow. It was bagged and a bit two dimensional as I recall. My other experience was with Harney & Son's Hot Cinnamon Spice. That one is very sweet and very potent. It is like drinking liquid Red Hots.

Sipping this is very different from either of my earlier experiences. The cup smells richly cinnamon and that is just how it tastes up front. It never reaches extreme levels and quickly gives way to an earthy Ceylon base. I don't recall Ceylon ever emoting earthy to me before. It does have a good bite to it. Adding a bit of sweetener mellows it out. It has some degree of cheek tingle.

I am pleasantly surprised. Cinnamon black tea is not something I would think to pick out on my own. I found this to be an enjoyable cup that sits squarely in the middle of my previous experience. It is not too flat and it is not so over the top. Nice cup.

Enjoying Tea, Lemon Ginger Black

Enjoying Tea Description:
This tea is made from top grade orange pekoe Ceylon with natural lemon and ginger flavoring. The Ceylon tea is grown at the altitude of 7000 feet above sea level from the Sri Lanka region. When brewed this tea produces a bright coppery color liquid with a fruity spicy flavor and with touches of mild astringency. A fantastic fruit tea.

Price: $5.99/4 oz

My Review:
I received a one ounce sample of this tea when I bought a teapot recently. The tin is a cute little fellow. When I removed a scoop of leaf I was surprised that it was barely missed in the tin. An ounce of tea is really quite a lot.

I really wasn't sure what to expect based on the price. As you can see the leaf is actually very nice looking. I am assuming the square chunks are pieces of lemon. There is also yellow safflower petals to add a pretty touch. This actually smells a little like bergamot while dry.

I used just off boiling water (209 F) in my press for 3 minutes. The resulting liquor is as described -a bright coppery color. It is a very deep color. The aroma of the cup is really interesting. The lemon, ginger, and Ceylon, combine to produce an almost tieguanyin oolong scent with fruity lemon notes. It really does smell nice.

The sip has a little bite but it is Ceylon and ginger so it is expected. It is also a bit astringent, not that I mind that. Probably two and a half minute steep would be a little more civilized for those who prefer a milder cup. The lemon is not overpowering. I find it to be present more in the aftertaste. The ginger I am sensing up front and in the cheek tingle. Both flavors are well represented throughout the sip but it is the Ceylon that is most prominent.

I am surprised by this cup. For such an inexpensive tea it is much better than expected. The leaf of the Ceylon is not the typical CTC tiny pieces found in grocery store loose leaf and yet it is comparably priced. It has some real and interesting depth.

Visit Enjoying Tea.

My First Yixing Teapot

I will be the first to admit I have not been a teapot person. I first used a Mr. Coffee to brew tea. Then I 'moved up' to a tea ball. It wasn't long afterwards that a co-worker started using a French Press with his tea. Seeing it was an awesome steeping device, allowing one to watch the leaves dance and unfurl as it brewed, kept the leaves out of the cup, and was super easy to wipe clean, I bought one for myself. In fact I now have two. They have been my main brewing vessels for more than a few years.

Teapots are neat to look at but never really interested me because I tend to brew only a single mug at a time. British style teapots are a way too large for my tea drinking style. I became kind of interested in the yixing teapot once I learned they are generally very small. An American sized mug is considered huge by yixing standards. Of course the price of a purple clay pot is usually quite high. I just could not justify the price on an unconfirmed promise that it would brew better tea.

Recently I ran across the yixing teapots on the Enjoying Tea website. Their regular prices were about half the lowest prices I had seen elsewhere. Low end pots tend to be $40 and up on other sites. Here several of their already low cost teapots were on sale. One of them was the Traditional Purple Clay Bamboo Gongfu Teapot and it was on sale for $6.98. What? That couldn't be correct. But it was.

I had been looking for a small crystal teapot for display teas. They also had one of them on sale at the time for a reasonable price. So I ordered both. Honestly, I was expecting very little from such an inexpensive pot, but ordered it for giggles anyway.

When the pots arrived, I pulled the yixing box out of the shipping box first. The only English on the box says Yixing Ceramics Art. I opened the box and removed the well wrapped lid and pot. It was twice as heavy as I expected. The look and the feel impressed me. This one is rated at 350 ml or 11.9 oz. The perfect size for me and yet huge by Chinese standards. You can see my mug and French press in the background for comparison.

This picture looking inside the pot at the spout, shows the filter holes that keep larger pieces of leaf out of the cup.

I am well aware this is a machine molded pot. The etching on each side may or may not be hand etched. I have no idea how such things are done. I am also aware this may or may not be actual yixing purple clay. Based on what I have read on various sites it appears to be a legit machine molded yixing. In truth I don't care. I love this little guy!

It is actually darker than it appears in the picture. When I first took it out of the box, I ran several hot pots of water through it, wiped with a soft cloth, and let it air dry. No soaps touched this pot. Then I took a low end puerh I've had for years (terrible when I bought it but has aged into a pleasant drinkable tea) and prepared it in the pot. I let it set and steep for a several hours. Then I poured it out, wiped, and let the pot air dry. 

I know there is a good chance this is just my imagination, but the very first pot I brewed for actual drinking seemed more flavorful and alive. Real or imagined, I don't care. Having never been a teapot person, I suddenly found myself unable to wait for the next opportunity to use it again. 

When using, the belly of the pot gets and stays hot, but the handle remains nicely cool. It feels easy to control when lifting and pouring. The spout does dribble a little at first and the pour is kind of slow compared to my French Press. I do sometimes have to wipe up a small amount of tea after pouring. I need to get a tea towel and/or a tea tray to catch the spills. The strainer does keep large leaf out of the cup but small pieces do pass through. If that annoys you, pouring through a mesh filter would solve it. I quickly learned to ignore the bits in the bottom of the cup.

I have used my first yixing several times now for puerh. What I have read recently suggests this shape pot is better suited to oolong. For puerh it was stated the pot should be taller rather than wide. Again, I don't care. This is now my official puerh brewing vessel.

An experienced yixing user could undoubtedly give you many reasons why a more expensive pot would be a better choice. That's fine. This is like my first bike. It was a red 16" bike with training wheels. I remember the day the training wheels feel off and what hill I was coasting down at the time. I didn't think, "Man, I wish I had a better bike." Nope. I just enjoyed the pleasure of the moment. 

Bottom line: For what I paid, I have already had a hundred times more fun out of this pot.

An Update: I knew when I ordered my teapots that Enjoying Tea stated a free tea sample was included with each pot. When I opened the box I didn't see it and promptly forgot about it. In writing a soon to be published review of the second teapot I remembered the offer. So today I wrote Enjoying Tea. I got a reply back very quickly - yes samples should have been included. I still had the box of peanuts in the garage, so a search party ensued. Yep, In my excitement over the teapots I had overlooked the samples. One little tin of tea for each teapot. So a word of caution, if you order a teapot or teaset make sure to thoroughly dig through the package.