Yes, but what’s in the pot?

Let me tell you, the woods were *especially* lovely, dark, and deep this morning. I very nearly stayed in bed and called in. It’s drear and drizzly here, a bit chill…perfect nesting/knitting/napping weather. Still, I was able to shift my [arguably shiftless (although I am properly undergarmented)] self to work by promising myself I could have tea and zone out in front of some feeds and tea blogs for an hour or so before setting down to work.

But enough rambling and wordplay! I do have a point in posting today, though it may be a rather dull one. I was curious–all of us tea blog people are great at posting fascinating reviews of lovely (and mediocre, and wretched) teas that come our way, but we generally seem to consume these in small quantities, or, at the very least, in large quantities strung out over time due to using a tiny Yixing pot, etc.

My question, then, is this: What is in our pots? And, by that, I mean to refer to “traditional” Western teapots–the kind that produce relatively large amounts of tea for several people, tea that can be drunk and enjoyed but not truly *concentrated* upon, necessarily…maybe I’m still not being perfectly clear.

You see, I have a decent collection (nothing like some of the envy-worthy stashes of other online tea people, not *yet*) of tea that I truly treasure and enjoy. I’ll haul out the tiny Yixings and spend two solid hours really trying to understand a small quantity of a tea, or I’ll pull out a small gaiwan and make some rounds of really loveable, unusual green now and again. And I make about seven or eight single 8oz “mugsfull” of tea a day at work, brewing each one individually in a coffee press or Pyrex cup or gaiwan and pouring them into my designated “tea” mug. (I also have a coffee mug. It’s roughly ye olde East and West–and never the twain shall meet.)

But I drink a *lot* of tea in a day, and the vast majority of it comes out of a series of large, “traditional Western” teapots of various sorts that I own, teapots that make six or so large cups/mugs of tea at a go. I’ll put a green of some sort in here, or an oolong, and I will drink a pot with dinner, a pot (or two) while playing Neverwinter Nights multiplayer, or watching a movie, or what have you…and then I’ll make another pot to take cold to work in the morning, and maybe one more to keep iced in the fridge, etc.

Lots of tea, and definitely not my most precious greens and puerhs and the darling, exciting samples of oolong I recently got from Stephane at Teamasters’ blog, etc.

Mostly, my pots are filled with the bancha, sencha, hojicha, kukicha, and genmaicha I purchased in the cheap “sleeves” from a Korean grocery store near Chicago, the super cheap “Dong Ding” oolong (”Dong Ding” in quotations because…well…I sincerely doubt it. The stuff has an almost “soapy” aftertaste if it isn’t brewed just right, or if it is chilled.) I got from an Asian grocery near here, etc.

None of it is super tea, and some of it is tricky to brew so that it can be palatable, but some of it is darn good in its own way, and all of it is cheap and plentiful enough to hold up to pot after pot (multiple infusions and copious fresh leaves when needed), and I don’t fuss about the quantity or price and just drink the stuff like water.

Am I alone in this? Do others simply drink small amounts of good tea (my philosophy with alcohol…small amounts of good *always* better than large amounts of mediocre, although it’s different, for me, with tea)? Or do you, too, have “second string” teas you use in making large potsful? Or, do you, as either well-heeled, established professionals or, at the very least, hardcore classy tea junkies, shell out for the truly premium stuff in mass quantity, everyday consumption as *well* as in your brilliant, clever, highly controlled reviews?

I’m just curious. What’s in your pot?