The Genius of Jiri Lang’s New Pots

A little while ago, I accidentally broke my favorite sheng pot, which was made by Jiří Lang and purchased from pu-erh.sk. I saw an Instagram post saying there would be new teaware from him in a couple months, so I waited. When they came out, I bought two – one for young sheng and one for all-purpose. With new designs and a new clay, I anticipated that his new work would be something special. I have noticed nobody has really been buying these pots, maybe because Jiří Lang is a bit lesser known, but they are some of the most ingenious and beautiful objects I have ever come across. Here’s why I like mine:

Style and Substance

Notice a few things. First, the body of the pot goes above the lid. This actually prevents tea from spilling down the sides of the pot when you put the lid on or pour. Second, there are three finger indentations on either side of the spout. I am not sure what they do, but they go all the way in to the inside of the pot, so maybe it prevents clogging. Third, it’s wood-fired to stunning effect. It looks like tiger skin or something, and feels rough and smooth at the same time, as if it were coated with varnish, which it is not.

The Lid

What is this lid? Usually lids are convex with a short cylinder going down into the pot. This one is just a concave disk with a hole in it. You can see the underside of the lid in the picture. It’s very simple, but Jiří (or Jura, as he is also called) obviously got creative with this. Not only is it creative, but it makes sense with the design. The body of the teapot, rising above the opening, holds it in place.

The Clay

This clay is some of the lightest I have ever seen unglazed. It’s white with many black spots. I knew how this clay would interact with the tea the moment I saw and touched it. Basically, it’s like porcelain, but porous. In a regular glazed porcelain gaiwan or pot, the tea can end up “slippery” if that makes any sense. Here it comes out mild, smooth and natural. The taste is pure and front-focused in the mouth. There is not much muting going on. It is just clear, but superior to glazed porcelain in roundness and texture. It’s not like the other Jura shibo I mentioned in the Veins post. That one was more typical European coarse clay. This is unique, and every new unglazed pot by Jura has this clay.

Tilting the concave lid

Showerability

With that lip all around the lid, you might ask, how can I pour water over the pot; wouldn’t it pool in the top above the lid and spill everywhere? No, I tried this, and it blew my mind. Watch the video below.

Yeah. The water drains through the spout! You lose a little bit of tea, but not too much, it actually pushes some cooler water out to make way for the hot.

The Pour

Because of the lid design with low center of gravity, you don’t need to put your finger on the lid until the very end of the pour. I know this works with some other pots, but this lid stays on even though it has no inner ring.

Hidden Value

From the description of Jura’s work on the site: “It’s pieces has a special character and hidden value that will come up during their use.” Hopefully I showed you some of these hidden qualities. You can get one for yourself here if you scroll down as there are plenty in stock. Let me know if you have any questions about the pot in the comments.

I wrote this post not to show off my teapot, but rather because Jiří Lang is underrated. From what I gather, he is very humble, but underneath that humility is an emerging genius, and I can’t wait to see what he comes up with next.

Tea Secrets Party 0.75 Recap

I had tea with Joey the other day at my place.

Tea #1: 2016 Tyler in Two Different Pots

_94A8589 — Joey’s pot on the right, mine on the left. All pretty pics in this post are by Joey

Fun fact about Tyler: Joey actually helped create the wrapper for Tyler! If you ever need a puer wrapper made, he’s your man. We wanted to see how the tea did in two different pots. My pot by Jiri Lang from pu-erh.sk seemed to concentrate the flavor more forward in the mouth, while the yixing pot gave us more throat action. The pour on the yixing is much slower, but the fact that it’s a bigger pot compensated somewhat for the increased infusion time. Overall, the tea was very sweet and quite relaxing. The water here was just me chucking a bunch of minerals into some filtered tap water. It was a pretty good water! Mostly gypsum, some calcium chloride, some epsom salt, and a little bit of baking soda. It did the job. I then tried a steeping with something I call jar-char water, of which Joey remarked that it had a layered quality, almost like when it goes into your mouth, it has a solid structure, but once you taste it, it breaks and melts all over your tongue. More on this water strategy in a future post.

Tea #2: 1990 Wild Brick

The arrangement of the plate on the tray just happened spontaneously

Old, a little tart, powerful qi, smooth mild natural taste. That’s about all I noticed. I’m fond of this one.

Tea #3: 2018 Daydream

_94A8662 — I like the light in this picture

27 cents a gram and free shipping. I brewed this mostly to convince that it’s worth more than its price and could stand up to much more expensive sheng. We quickly realized that a CLT blend is very different from a W2T blend and it’s hard to even compare like that. It’s a fruity and floral tea with great sweetness. It won’t blast your face off, but it’s very full and a joy to drink. Then we got pizza.

Tea #4: 1990s Blue Mark (W2T)

Unfortunately we only had 3.7 grams of this long sold-out tea, which used to cost something like $1000 a cake. It was light for a bit, but we got 8 or 9 long steeps with great depth and an awesome profile. All we wanted was more leaf, but you take what you can get. Time flew by with this tea. Oh also I got a toy helicopter which we flew around for a while.

Tea #5: Tsukigase Zairai Sencha (Hojo Tea)

_94A8601 — No pictures were taken of this tea, so here’s a jar

I just wanted Joey to try one cup of this sencha. It’s not grown with any fertilizer, so it has a very non-umami profile with some throatiness. This tea made us both so dang tea drunk we had no idea what to do. A strange way to end a session like this, but I don’t regret it one bit.

Are You Making Your Tea Right?

How do you know if you’re making your tea right? What I mean is, how do you know that someone on the other side of the country or the world is not making the same leaves taste ten times as good? People’s steepster reviews can be so vivid; is this a reflection of their imaginations or do they have the perfect trinity of great water, great teaware and great tea just by luck?

The same goes for cha qi. When mgualt has waves of frisson going up his ribs and down his back, and I only feel a little loopy, and we are drinking the same tea just in different parts of the world, how do I know if it’s a difference in our selves vs. a difference in our resulting brewed tea?

It’s fairly clear this is a not-so-good way to look at things. Your tea is your tea, and you should enjoy it in that context. However, it is always in the back of my mind, the question, is this good tea?

Sometimes I look for the ten qualities of a fine tea (living tea/GTH) or Relaxation, Oil, Aroma, Liveliness, Finish (deadleaves.club) but I could have teas that should tick all the boxes that aren’t for some reason. The only way to know is to have tea with people all over the world, and I haven’t gotten the chance to do that yet. If anyone would invite me, please drop me a line.

For now, I’ll be playing with water to gain a better understanding of how vastly different tea can taste with seemingly subtle changes.

A Big Tea Party

I went to a tea party! We had twodog from white2tea serving a whole bunch of us. I won’t say too much about the tea; it was great. I got to serve some Yang Qing Hao 888 at the end, but it didn’t come out too well. I still consider myself a tea novice among this sort of company. Anyway, it was good people, good tea, good music, good food, good drink, what more can you ask for?