The vast majority of the time that I spend preparing tea, especially for the purpose of examination, I prepare it in glass. My method has become very standardized over the course of the past few years, and these glass carafes (which perhaps might otherwise have been destined to decant wine) are a valuable tool of mine. Using this carafe as the brewing vessel, you can see, smell, and taste the tea clearly.
Being able to visually see the tea brew is a nice asset for any pot. This is a rather simple design, there are no dual walls or anything fancy here. It’s very easy to clean and maintain.
Thanks to the bottleneck near the top of the glass, you’re able to swirl the tea inside and smell the tea as the aromas hit the choke point. It’s a very useful feature when discerning the fragrances in a tea. Perhaps the tea will lose its heat faster than in a ceramic mug, but in my opinion, the positives far outweigh the negatives.
Ceramics occupy a wonderful place in the grand scheme of enjoying tea to its fullest. Using them can make an average tea seem above average. I’ve found that while doing an assessment of a tea it wouldn’t be useful to tell people a tea is good when it’s only good brewed in specialized, hard to get ceramics. Glass is affordable, ubiquitous to our lives, and very neutral. Glass does a great job at showing the base flavors in tea, without hiding anything. When I am doing side by side comparisons between different teas, it would not be fair to drink them brewed in different teapots; on the other hand, I don’t have any desire to have multiple copies of specialized ceramic teapots. Practicality is important for me. I have a lot of teapots. Most of them sit in a box in my basement until a very unique situation calls for me to bring them out.
I like using these carafes because of all the reasons I’ve just given, and then finally because they’re cheap. If I break one, so what. Teapots to me don’t come with a ‘so what’ mentality. I cherish every time I use my teapots while relegating this glassware to my everyday use.
