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I recently wrote about sencha teapots, also known as kyusu.  Another one of my favorite tea brewing vessels is the gaiwan (or guywan).  The word “gaiwan” is Mandarin for “covered cup.”  A gaiwan is a handleless bowl, taller than it is wide, with a flared top.  The cup always has a lid and sits in a saucer.

Tea leaves are placed in the bowl.  Hot water is added by rolling it down the side of the cup.  This first addition of water should be poured off immediately.  This rinse allows the leaves to begin to open and release their flavors and aromas.  To pour off, one holds the saucer in his right hand, then places his middle finger beneath the saucer and his thumb on the top of the lid.  He uses his thumb to slide the lid aside slightly, creating a small opening. The water is poured out through the opening, keeping the leaves inside.  More water is added to the leaves and the lid is replaced for steeping.  When the tea has finished brewing, the lid is moved again and the tea is decanted into another vessel. Steeping times in a gaiwan are quite short.

Another technique is to brew the tea in the gaiwan and then sip it directly from this cup.  The lid is used to keep the leaves from escaping into one’s mouth.

Gaiwans are traditionally made of porcelain, which allows the tea to stay warm, but does not allow the leaves to “cook.”  The lid has a dome shape, which collects the aroma of the tea.  One of the beautiful moments of brewing with a gaiwan is taking time to appreciate the lovely scent of the lid after the initial “rinse” and after each steeping.

Tea leaves are re-steeped many times in the gaiwan.  As the leaves expand, they will fill more of the gaiwan, eventually filling the entire cup and lifting the lid slightly.

I was interested to see in Mary Lou and Robert Heiss’s “The Story of Tea” that they refer to tea jars as modern versions of gaiwan.  I hadn’t thought of them in that way, although I can understand the suggestion.  Tea leaves are placed in these lidded glass jars and the tea is consumed directly from the jar, with more water added throughout the day to continue to extract flavor from the tea.



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