Tea -- water boiler

We have become good friends with a family that has a very bright young son. He is currently 13 and just got formally enrolled in the University, and is taking a load of courses including things like Honors Calculus and Intermediate Logic (which SOUNDS easy but is a killer course). His Mom picked me off the internet and I have become a kind of advocate and advisor for the kid. Also we've had several dinners together, and with our other friends.

Today Mom and Son were on campus -- she's Chinese, so she told me she was bringing Moon Cakes. I remembered that I had bought a tea water boiler which had migrated up into the attic, so I got that, and a few nice cups, and my packet of pearl jasmine tea and a packet of Da Hong Pao, and they visited for about an hour at tea time.

The whole experience was SO much better because of the tea boiler. This thing is the size and shape of a rice cooker, you can set it for 3 different temperatures (low temperature for Japanese green tea) and it holds something like 2 liters of water. With such high quality teas, you can go refill the cup or the pot (I served the jasmine tea in a glass cup, for artistic reasons) again and again. And the water was always piping hot and readily available.

I suppose I am trying to recommend buying one of these things if you are truly serious about tea. This afternoon's tea experience would have been really weird and awkward without it.

THanks for the tip, Frank. Jean (my wife) is a huge fan of Japanese green teas, and getting the temperature right is a royal PITA. I think that I just found her an Xmas present.

Mark Lipton

[Jenise]

Several of my Chinese friends' mothers (who are home all day, that is) couldn't live without one of these. Keeps tea at the ready all day. Would be a perfect thing to keep in an office, too.

Could this substitute for a samovar?
-Shaji

I hadn't thought about it but it serves exactly the purpose of a samovar!

An electronic samovar...

For myself, or myself and my wife -- it isn't necessary. I suppose if we drank tea all day it could be. But I've been more of a coffee person.

For a group of people, it is a real blessing to have this.

And let me emphasize, particularly with good Chinese tea, where the whole leaves unfurl in the hot water, you can easily get five or six steepings and the tea remains tasty and interesting -- having water right at hand to refill the little Yixing teapot is especially nice.

Standard tea-bag tea, although good for iced tea, is made of "sweepings" and is basically a dusty powder of tea leaves. As soon as it hits the hot water, it gives up everything it's got. Putting more hot water on that kind of tea is just a cruel demonstration of its inadequacies. One measure of high quality tea is the re-steeping. Probably everyone here knows that...

My favorite Yixing teapot looks a lot like this