How to Season and Clean Clay Kettle Boilers

I don’t know whether a post on clay water boilers is of interest to anyone, but I might as well post what I do with my clay boilers. 

Clay teapots and boilers can enhance puerh teas, or at least diminish storage effects on older teas. Clay is also mitigating our water as well as enhancing flavors in tea. Any boiler or tea kettle may perfectly suffice for most people, and I believe that no special equipment is necessary for boiling water. Yet you may wish to consider a clay boiler down the road. These boilers are quite nice to have for brewing tea out of doors in areas with no electricity, such as on a camping trip. Like clay teapots, a clay water boiler softens water and enhances flavors within the tea. Clay boilers also allow one to use lovely porcelain tea ware while still enjoying the enhancements clay brings to tea sessions.

A clay kettle may be used on a burner or kitchen stove or on a charcoal warmer designed especially for clay kettle boiling. The standard advice with a clay kettle is to decide which sort of burner you want to use, and stick with one burner type only. I personally do not believe this is the case, as long as you use the lowest possible heat setting on whatever type of burner you choose. The key is heating the clay slowly.

Some tea drinkers prefer to boil their water in a faster electric kettle, use some to warm their clay kettle first, dump it and then add boiling water. Then the clay kettle stays over a low heat burner to remain warm during the tea session. I use this method, but also I have started with cooler water. As long as the kettle is not starting out ice cold and heated too quickly, there is no danger of cracking the kettle. Keep in mind if you start out using cool water, your clay boiler will need more time to heat up using a very low heat flame or burner.

I own three clay kettles because well, I am a pig first of all. Nobody needs three clay boilers. I am hopelessly addicted to tea ware. I could argue that I like testing various clays and justify my purchases for the “sake of the blog.” Hahaha. Anyway I own a Lin’s Ceramics Purion kettle, a Chaozhou (or Chaoshan area) red clay boiler, and an art ware kettle made of high fired clay by Petr Novak, a well-known Czech artist.

You can find a Chaozhou red clay teapot from Chawangshop.com, they have a nice selection of these kettles and also the proper stoves for sale. Shipping cost is a factor. A kettle or stove must be shipped separately from anything else in your order, adding approximately $20-25 to the cost. Even with the extra shipping, you can get a nice kettle and stove set-up for under $100. But you can also find clay kettles sold from many other sources to compare.

How to Season Unglazed Clay Boilers

Chawangshop recommends their boilers soak in water for 24 hours prior to use. I asked about using a food starch seasoning as this is what I normally use. The traditional starch is rice starch. Chawangshop replied that this method is not necessary for their clay Chaozhou. You can find their instructions on the listings.

Clay Chaozhou from chawangshop.com

For me, I need to consider that while my water is not terribly full of minerals and my kettles do not build up much scale, I would rather prevent this scale from building up. Once the scale forms it is difficult to remove without using anything other than water. A simple food starch seasoning will slow down any scale formation. A starch seasoning needs only to be done one time.

Corn Starch or Rice Starch

These starches are good for very fine particle clays. Start with a dry pot and fill with room temperature water, add a heaping spoon of starch to the pot and stir well. Heat the boiler to boiling over the lowest possible heat temperature.

To use rice, mash cook rice on a plate and then add it to the boiler with water and stir well.

Adding corn starch to water.
I used a tea brush to clean off the mess.
Tea boat by Mirka Randova.

Boil for 1-2 minutes, remove from heat.

Pour off the water as soon as it is cool enough to pour, minding your hands.  Remove any rice if you used rice.

Do not rinse the pot. When the water is poured off while very hot, the remaining water will evaporate quickly leaving behind a film of starch.

Allow the kettle to dry for 24 hours without the lid.

Potato Starch

Cooked potato or potato flakes are a nice alternative to corn, and the cooked potato will fill a more coarse type of clay kettle such as my Novak. Potato works very well with composite clay kettles.

Local tater.

Mash a small cooked potato in a bowl.

Mashed potato with peels removed.

Add the potato to your clay boiler and top with warm water. Stir up the potato.

Add hot water to potato.
Clay kettle by Petr Novak.

Boil the kettle over the lowest possible flame slowly. Allow to boil for 5-10 minutes, stirring occasionally until the potato is mostly dissolved. 

Stir with wooden spoon or bamboo skewer.

Do not rinse, any remaining hot water will evaporate very quickly.

Use a tea pot brush if necessary to remove any excess starch left on the bottom or around the top.

Allow the kettle to dry without the lid for at least 24 hours.

Photo of the lid just after the starch procedure.
A bit tough to see a film left from the starch,
which has mostly soaked into the clay and will dry.

Using the Clay Boiler

You may want to toss the first 1-2 boils to remove any excess starch or use them to water plants.

Do not use ice cold water; allow water to reach room temperature if you are using bottled water. Warm water from a thermos is also okay. The idea is not to shock the clay.

Bring to a boil over the lowest possible temperature on your stove or burner.

Use all the water, or pour off any hot water when your tea session is finished. Do not let water sit in the pot after use. Allow to dry for a full day with the lid off.

Cleaning Exterior Stains from Clay Boilers

Stains add charm to a well-loved clay boiler, but sometimes people want to remove them. Cleaning clay is like cleaning vintage or antique items in that we want to use the least intrusive, least harsh methods first. So, try water with a tooth brush first.

Next, use a slurry of baking soda and water with a toothbrush, and gently brush stains. Wait about 10 minutes, and then wipe off excess. Pour hot water over the entire pot to remove the soda.

My Lin's Ceramics kettle has a few stains.
Normally I would not remove these, but
this is for demonstration.

The next step if you are not yet happy is to use whitening toothpaste. I like Gleem, it is an older and gentle whitening toothpaste that works very well on vintage plastics, glass and porcelain. Gleem will also remove yellowing from your car headlights. I don’t use Gleem on my teeth, but I always have some in the house for cleaning.

Baking soda and water slurry.

Wet-brush the stain gently with Gleem, can also be used on top of the baking soda if you wish. Pour hot water over the entire kettle to remove the toothpaste or baking soda.

Gently brush on baking soda slurry or wet toothpaste.

If you are still not satisfied, you can repeat any of the above or proceed to a dry sandpaper of 300-400 grit. This is the harshest method, so test the sandpaper on the bottom of the boiler first to see how much it affects the color of the clay. Sandpaper will also remove patina, the last thing you want is a more prominent stain. Sanding should be a last resort. At the same time, if you burnt your boiler to a black char on a tea stove then you may wish to completely sand off the char, although there is nothing wrong with leaving it charred.

Stain has lightened somewhat to blend into the pot.
I could remove more of it, but choose not to.

I would not recommend cleaning the interior of the boiler. As long as hot water is poured off and the kettle is allowed to dry after use, then further cleaning is not necessary. If you happen to get dirt or scale inside, boil water in the kettle and pour off.  Wipe out any remaining particles.

I like to try my teas using a clay boiler to heat my water, and compare the clay boiled water with water from another heating method. Clay boiled water is very nice with drier storage puerh teas. By contrast, I prefer to use small clay teapots for steeping wetter stored teas, and then I don’t need clay boiled water. 

Clay, and 2016 CYH Mahei

Our February this year is a confusing mix of warmer spring-type weather, think April, alternating back to winter. Best to ignore the weather now and fold myself into my puerh hobby. If you have a lot of puerh tea, free time spent in the company of your teas is time between worlds, somewhere between the places of home and work. I imagine our tea hobby is somewhat comparable to greenhouse gardening of orchids or roses when paying attention only to the plants and what they are saying to us. 

Slipping into the space of puerh tea is like raising a hooded cowl over my head, seeing neither sideways nor above, just a narrow focused meditation, the work of observation. I feel I am moving backwards in time, through my farming ancestors to the medieval times and even further in the human act of storing food in ceramics as I store my puerh in crockery. How much we have in common with all of humanity that has ever lived, observing our stored tea in the same fashion as herbs, vegetables and teas are through the centuries. We communicate faster than light now, my tea collection welcomes me back to earth from cyberspace. 

Lin's Ceramics Tea Ware
2016 CYH Mahei puerh tea in the cup

Last week I read an interesting article in  The New Yorker about ancient clay crockery (M. Bjornerud, 2017). You might have seen this article as it has appeared on a number of websites. Of course The New Yorker is not a scientific journal, but the ideas are interesting. Pieces of ancient crock jars are used in experiments to measure changes in the earth’s magnetic field. This field is what reflects back radiation from the sun and outer space. Apparently the magnetic field in the atmosphere varies from strong to weak, and we are currently in a weak cycle. When this happens, more Carbon 14 is available and shows up in clays which appear younger because of the extra carbon. But when the magnetic field is stronger, the clays appear older. Clay from ancient Judah bore tax stamps which allow for close dating even before the clay is analyzed. Clay pottery tells its story because the firing cycle of hot/cool locks in the iron oxide into a stable form.

Concentric incision on a jar handle
from Ramat Rahel, modern-day Israel
Photo courtesy Oded Lipschits
Reproduced in The New Yorker 13.2.2017

You may have seen this image as it appeared in most other articles on this topic, such as in the Daily Mail. I like this jar handle which reminds me of my clay teapots and redware crockery. In fact, somehow this handle evokes my Lin's clay boiler kettle in the photo above. I don’t know what effect, if any, variations in the magnetic field captured in clay might have on puerh tea, either stored tea or tea brewed in a clay teapot.

I wonder if pottery truly has a magnetic field and whether minerals in water interact with that field and have any effect on the flavor. Certainly my tea friends have explored mineral waters for brewing. Tea people think minerals in water add something to the flavor of the brew. But a potter has more hands-on insight into clays. I think of my potter friend Inge Nielsen who makes iron clay teapots that I like to hoard. I message her to ask if she saw any articles like the one above. and turns out she already has. “Like a tape recorder,” she says of the clay.

So with my hooded cowl I channel the buzzing magnetic field in my teapots. Good tea and bad does not get any worse, but I feel glad now for my crock storage. I wonder how my tea will taste someday when compared with a pumidor like the one I previously had, lined with plastic. Will my crock tea have a magnetic field that rocks the drinker off her feet? Maybe the field is linked to hoarding behavior. Perhaps my brain is affected by all this magnetism and I am inexorably drawn to buying more tea and clay tea ware. I am not right in the head to be sure. Now that I think of it, I really started hoarding after putting my tea in all these clay jars and crocks. I did not have big problem before. No, this cannot be, for I have plenty of hoarding friends with pumidors and nary a clay shard in the house. The tea is fully to blame.

Speaking of which, I just tried a bit of my sample of 2016 Chen Yuan Hao Mahei sent by a friend last month. This is a rather generous sample, so I still have half of it left after picking out 7g to drink. The leaves are long and pretty and not easy to carefully stuff into a taller teapot. I brewed my water in a Lin’s clay kettle to get an extra dose of earth's magnetism. Earth's magnetism will surely be linked to a longer life span and possibly greater sexual libido by some tea company very soon. 

Long Leaves are always a turn-on

Teapals is no such vendor and the 2016 CYH Mahei is still available for purchase by sample, cake and tong. The description states that the tea lacks any bitterness, and to get more qi one can “soak” the tea. This suggests that perhaps the tea dies out rather quickly. I did not rinse the tea, and am glad because the first fragrance is orchid-like and fruity, which dissipates quickly in subsequent steepings. The leaves look a bit oolonged on a few, with red edges, the description emphasizes the sun drying and lack of char, but I wonder if the chaqing was short to preserve the floral sweetness of these leaves. 

Amber first steeping.

The brew is pudding thick and sweet with not much astringency. I get a bit of qi along the back, and increased visual acuity but I drank on an empty stomach which magnifies tea effects. The flavor is all top note floral and fruity, with not much underneath. This is a grassy tea, and to be fair is still less than a year old. After the fifth steep the tea died out markedly in flavor. I “soaked” the tea as recommended and got some sweet/sour bitterness. The brew looks right with the golden color, but this seems like a prime loose leaf green at this stage and skews vegetal after the initial beautifully floral nose.

Some reddish leaves in the pile.

Again, reserving some thought that the tea is less than a year old and perhaps still needs to settle in, I worry about my ability to store this sort of tea. My conditions are on the drier side which could easily fade this tea or turn it sour. On the other hand, too much humidity will kill it. You can find lots of examples of Mahei Yiwu teas on the market, such as from Wymm Tea or puerh.sk of varying quality. This CYH is certainly a decent leaf, but at the outset I am missing some lower notes. The leaf might do better in a blended cake, giving the drinker something to enjoy now in the somewhat oolonged Mahei leaf, and then something else from a different leaf down the road that ages well, yet more darkly bitter when young. CYH has a history of offering Mahei in blends in the past. I need to try this again in another year perhaps. Certainly my storage will speak to me at that point. I will either have a sour brew on my hands or the tea will steep out longer than five steeps as it settles.

You can get a 75g sample of this tea for about $40, and a 357g cake is about $180, making this tea one of the less expensive options in Chen Yuan Hao. Looking at the other CYH teas from last year, the high end teas like the LBZ and Guafengzhai, and even the Mansong are long gone. The fan base for these productions will jump on the good stuff early, and they have the money to spend. This Mahei tea falls clearly in the middle drinker range and probably is not what the typical CYH buyer is after. But as an example of a nice fresh Yiwu, you can do a lot worse.

Early 2017 spring greens are already showing up on sites like Yunnan Sourcing. The season is right around the corner. This reminds me I need to tackle my sample stash, and soon before the samples dry out. I will try and post any interesting ones I find.