Tea Strainers

I am sure you have seen tea strainers in action during a Chinese tea brewing session. You may be using one yourself when you brew your tea at home.

When you are a teashop sampling tea, almost of these tea sessions will employ the use of a tea strainer.  The tea is your teacup would be free of mini bits of tea leaves and you can examine and sample the tea 'in more detail'.

Most teashops would use a simple strainer as the one in the 1st pix.  It is simple to use.  The tea is poured through the strainer into a cha he (server) before the tea is poured out into the tea cups.  

There are now more fanciful strainers.  The 2nd pix show a bamboo strainer while the 3rd pix is simply a dried leaf.  That leaf, I was told, is called a pu ti leaf.  From Taiwan.  You simply pour tea over the leaf into your tea server.  The leaf stays 'strong' - it does not wobble or spill over when tea is poured through it.  A marvellous conversation piece to have in a tea session.  

Silver Kettle

No, I did not buy a silver kettle.  I was at a tea drinking session at a tea buddy's house last month and a silver kettle was used in our tea session.  This was my 2nd experience drinking /brewing tea using a silver kettle and I would like to share my thoughts on such kettles with my readers.  

Silver kettles are very expensive.   I remembered seeing a similar Japanese made (about the same size as pix) with a price tag of a few thousand dollars.  Silver kettles are very pretty.  The 'bling bling' shine did made me stare at the kettle a few times during the tea drinking session.  

Boiling water in a silver kettle makes the water softer.  Some tea friends call it sweeter.  Personally, I find that this is good for newer tea like pu erh.  The astringency and 'roughness' of a new raw pu erh tea is much reduced making the tea easier and pleasant to drink.  However, when the kettle is used on older tea,  the flavours of the tea, in my opinion, seem subdued.  I had also tried drinking older tea from a silver cup and also experience this 'subdued' taste in the tea.  

When I used an iron Japanese tetsubin for my tea brewing sessions,  there wasn't  a drastic change in the taste of the tea when compared to using a silver kettle.  I personally think that clay and iron kettles are better in this instance.  This is my own opinion.

Buying a silver kettle is an expensive proposition.  I recommend you try out a few teas with one, if possible, before you decide on a purchase.