The more deeply I get involved with making tea, the

The more deeply I get involved with making tea, the more interesting it gets. For most people, tea making is a pretty simple thing. You take a tea bag out of the packet, put it in some hot water, and that is it. If you are a little more attentive, you might pay some attention to the temperature of the water when you put the tea in, but few people know this. They don't really pay enough attention to the taste of the tea to notice that, if the water is too hot or the tea is steeped for too long, it gets bitter. They drink tea as if it were soda, something which I used to do but not disdain. You see, there is so much more to tea if you are willing to take the time to explore it.

Everything affects the way the tea comes out: the temperature of the water, the time you steep it for, how you store it, even the tea kettle you use. Recently, one of my friends told me that I needed to get a porcelain teapot. Without a ceramic teapot, he claimed, the tea would never taste good. This caught me by surprise I thought my tea tasted fabulous. Nevertheless, he insisted he could taste metallic undertones from the teapot that I was using. He took me home and show me his porcelain teapots. Apparently, each one imparts a slightly different tastes to the tea. One porcelain teapot will give a slightly earthy taste, another one will ensure a light delicate flavor, and so on.

Of course, I couldn't taste the difference between one porcelain tea pot and the other. Still, he insisted that I learn, and after several days of drinking tea at his house every afternoon, I did begin to notice something. Having a good porcelain teapot does make a difference! Although the differences between porcelain teapots are small, they are noticeable to a true tea connoisseur. And there is no point in drinking tea unless you are going to really savor it like a connoisseur.

The first porcelain teapot that I bought was absolutely beautiful. I found it in the most improbable place a Goodwill store. Usually, ceramic teapots you get in Goodwill stores are actually cheap metal imitations. Some of them are actually rusted on the inside! Nevertheless, this was an honest to god porcelain teapot. It was well-crafted, and hardly imparted any taste at all to the tea. I don't think I could go back to my old tea pot if I tried.