Wednesday, August 3, 2016

Grandpa Tea In A Cylinder Porcelain Teapot







Grandpa tea? What is that?

The phrase 'grandpa style tea' was coined by the Hong Kong tea guru and friend, Lawrence of Hong Kong who writes a very informative tea blog
 (linkthat is followed by many Chinese tea readers around the world. He explained 'grandpa tea' as follows :

"Grandpa style is a term that I coined a few years ago while talking about drinking tea casually, and it has since caught on, it seems, in the blogosphere for tea. In a nutshell, grandpa style means the brewing of tea in a large cup, with no filters or teaballs or bags or anything else in it, with water constantly refilled without much regard for infusion time or temperature. The only three things necessary for grandpa style brewing are tea leaves, water, and cup, preferably a large one. I named this grandpa style, because this is how my grandfather drinks his tea, and is one of the first memory I have of people drinking tea."

Grandpa style brewing was a very common sight in my part of the world as well especially from the 70s thru 90s. I recalled that, instead of large cups as mentioned by Lawrence, large teapots were used for grandpa brewing instead. Basically, a couple of spoons of tea was dropped into a porcelain teapot (see pix) and hot water is poured into the teapot filling up the teapot. When there is about a fifth of tea left in the teapot, hot water is poured into teapot again. There may be 2-4 refills of hot water in an entire day. Sometimes an extra spoon of tea is added during a refill when the tea gets weak.

There are also tea baskets used to keep the tea warm. The last 2 pix show such a tea basket. I had even seen extra compartments in another basket that could store a couple of teacups as well.

So how does grandpa tea taste? Any good? You can grandpa any Chinese tea but usually Liu bao, oolong and red tea were the more common teas brewed this way. As the tea leaves were allowed to 'infuse' in the hot water for a longer time, the tea does taste strong and aromatic even though the ratio of tea leaves to water seem weak compared to regular kungfu tea brewing. Grandpa tea is drank more as a thirst quencher than a tea appreciation exercise. 


I recently bought another cylinder porcelain teapot (see pix 1-3). About 5 inches in diameter and standing at about 6 inches tall, this teapot is decorated with gorgeous phoenix and dragon motifs. The plastic cap you see in pix 2, is a tea accessory which acts like a dust cover. This unused vintage teapot was made in the 80s/90s.

Grandpa tea time!

1 comment:

Hector Konomi said...

That seems like it can carry a lot of tea!