Start with a gaiwan if you are new to gong fu brewing or drink many kinds of tea. It is cheap, neutral, easy to clean, and it shows you what the leaf is doing. Buy a Yixing teapot once you know which tea you drink most, because a pot earns its keep by brewing one kind of tea often. If you already drink mostly puerh, liu bao or cliff tea, starting with a Bronze-grade Yixing pot is a sound choice.
What is the difference between a gaiwan and a Yixing teapot?
A gaiwan is a lidded bowl on a saucer, usually glazed porcelain, sometimes glass. You brew in the bowl and pour through a gap between the lid and the rim. A Yixing teapot is unglazed stoneware made from zisha clay mined around Yixing in Jiangsu, fired dense, with a spout and handle. Most of both hold 80 to 150ml, which suits gong fu brewing.
The key difference is the surface. Glazed porcelain takes nothing from the tea and keeps nothing between sessions. Yixing clay is slightly porous. Over months of use it takes up oils from the tea and seasons, so it brews the tea it knows a little better each year. That is its great strength and the reason it needs looking after.
Which makes better tea?
For most teas, a well-made Yixing pot, because it holds heat better and more steadily. Heat is the core of gong fu brewing: leaves open fully in water that stays hot and does not swing between infusions. Thin porcelain with a wide, open top loses heat faster, more so each time you lift the lid. Dense clay also tends to soften and round the liquor, taking the edge off young sheng and sharp roasted oolong.
A gaiwan's neutrality is a strength of its own. It shows the tea exactly as it is, which is why tea is judged and bought using white porcelain. For green tea and delicate white tea, which dislike being held hot, a gaiwan is often the better vessel outright.
Why do we suggest starting with a gaiwan?
Because the first year of gong fu tea is about learning the tea, not the vessel. A gaiwan does that well:
- It is cheap. A good porcelain gaiwan costs a fraction of a real Yixing pot.
- It suits every tea. You can brew green tea in the morning and shou puerh at night with nothing carried over.
- It shows you the leaf. Lift the lid and you see how far it has opened and smell how it is changing. That is how you learn leaf amounts and timing.
- It is easy to clean. Rinse, wipe, done.
It has one real drawback: hot fingers. Fill it to about a finger's width below the rim, so the rim stays cool. Hold the rim with thumb and middle finger, press the lid knob with your index finger, and pour fast. A gaiwan with a flared lip is easier to hold. Most people stop burning themselves within a week.
Spend on tea before teaware. Better leaf improves your cup more than a better vessel does, and you cannot choose a pot well until you know what you want to brew in it.
When is a Yixing pot the right place to start?
When you already know your tea. If you drink shou puerh most mornings, or liu bao, or roasted cliff tea, a pot of the right clay will brew that tea better from the first week and keep improving. These teas like heat most, so they gain most from clay.
Buy Bronze-grade zini, 100 to 150ml, in a simple shape that pours fast. Bronze is real zisha at a price you can afford to learn on. Our Si Ting 145ml at $295 fits that brief. The Shui Ping 90ml at $135 is our least expensive, a little small but a good pot for one. The rest are in the Yixing teapots collection. For the full reasoning, see which Yixing teapot a beginner should buy. Avoid cheap pots sold as Yixing. Many are not zisha at all.
What does a Yixing pot ask of you that a gaiwan does not?
More care and more commitment. Never use soap. Rinse with hot water, empty the leaves straight after the session, and dry the pot with the lid off. More in how to season a new Yixing teapot. You cannot watch the leaf, so you learn the pot by its pour and by taste. Each pot pours at its own speed, and you adjust your timings to it.
A pot is also better kept to one family of tea, because the clay seasons to what you brew. Tea people disagree on how strict to be about this. Our view is in do you need one Yixing teapot for each tea. The reward is slow: a pot brews noticeably better after months of steady use, not after a week.
Will you end up needing both?
Most gong fu drinkers keep a gaiwan after they own several pots. It stays useful for tasting a new tea before deciding which pot suits it, for green and white tea, and for any tea you do not have a pot for. The pots do the daily brewing. Whichever you start with, drink from thin, white cups, which take little heat from the tea and show its colour.
Start with what you will use every day, and upgrade the part of your tea you notice most.