How to clean your Yixing clay teapot?

How to clean your Yixing clay teapot?
iap_640x640.2173666402_dartvfpj

There are two kind of cleaning. One cleaning refers when the pots are brand new. The other cleaning refers to maintenance cleaning.
There isn’t much disagreement for how to clean a brand new pot. Boil the entire teapot in pure water or water with a bit vinegar or water with a baking soda (not harsh chemical) and also brush with a very soft brush. Clean the brand new pot until you do not see any dust or fine particle. Usually take at least two cleaning cycles.

There are two line of thoughts for regular cleaning. The most traditional and most widely accepted thinking is that you do not need any cleaning. At most, rinse the teapot with boil water a few times. The idea is to prevent damage to the pot and also keep the tea reside fragrance in the teapot. You can think of it as seasoning the pot.
The other approach is almost the same as the above, except allowing occasionally cleaning with acidic water like vinegar with water and alkaline water like baking soda with water to remove excessive the tea residue or funny taste, and then rinse a few times with pure hot water to remove the vinegar or baking soda taste. This vinegar water and baking soda with water cleaning is only to be done as needed, maybe like once every 6 month or once every few years. This is not to be done routinely.

FYI. My most favor tea pot shape is the one you are showing. The Xi Shi (西施) teapot, just so cute and round. its shortcoming is that most Xi Shi teapot is not great at pouring and tend to drip.

2 Likes

Hand wash only using hot water and gentle scrubbing without soap (Yixing clay absorbs aromas easily).
Keep lid off until thoroughly dry.Do not microwave.
Do not use vinegar to clean, you can use baking soda.
The water flow of the Xishi tea pot is still very good.

1 Like

I always hear that they recommend a different pot for each type of tea you drink, given the yixing’s tendency to absorb the smell and aroma of teas. So if you make pu 'erh in one, always use that one for pu 'erh. Is that true, and how rich so you need to be to have multiple yixing tea pots? :expressionless:

But I guess have multiple ones for each tea type would certainly make cleaning it easier, since you don’t have to work about residual aromas.

1 Like

I have multiple Yixing teapots. I know the recommendation push for one teapot for one type of tea. I won’t take it as an iron rule. For example, Don from Mei Leaf does not believe this.

I do use different teapots for different tea, but it really isn’t a big deal. You can test it yourself. A lot of tea recommendations floating around are really more rumors and myths than facts and science. So you should test it yourself. Again, it is not that difficult to clean the teapots. I use Gaiwan more than Xiying teapots.