All Washed Up

This is my 150th post on this Tea Trade blog.Happiness is a warm teapot

It’s true that this is only my sesquicentennial post if you do not count a couple of dozen on various other blogs I contribute to around Tea Trade. It’s not like I hold back at all. Heck, some of my comments on other people’s blogs are longer than their posts.

Today, I’d like to pay tribute to one of the key cornerstones of the tea experience, the hero of many a teatime, the statuesque kings and voluptuous queens of the tea table: the teapots.

One does not get to put together so many tea-fuelled rants, paeans, poems, vilifications and celebrations without a magnificent contribution from teaware generally, and teapots in particular.

This blog was inspired when I read, on another blog, a heading about teapots and dishwashing, and opened it up knowing exactly what it would be about. It would be about putting teapots in dishwashers.

Except it wasn’t.

So, I thought I’d tackle it myself.

Teapots are our friends. They adorn our spaces, wear stylish cosies, are resplendent in their shininess, or even their dullness. I even follow a small, yellow one on Twitter.

So how should we treat them?

Mention tea and dishwashers and you get looks of horror and loud exclamations:

“You CAN’T put teapots in a dishwasher”

and

“You HAVE to put teapots in the dishwasher”

The first statement comes from a lot of purists. And there is some basis for it. Yixing unfired clay pots probably wouldn”t enjoy the experience. And the idea of any involvement with soapsuds in anathema to many tea drinkers.

Where does the second statement come from? Health authorities.

When we owned a tea shop, we had lovely bamboo-handled pots. For hygienic reasons, the Adelaide City Council insisted that we put them through the dishwasher, which meant we had to remove the handles every time and attach them back afterwards.

So, I don’t know what’s right or wrong, but here’s what we do.

After getting a clean teapot out in the morning, I usually just rinse it in water before the first use and between uses. If I am moving from a really strong tea to a different one I wash it pretty well, otherwise it’s a desultory swish-out then on with the tea.

Often, they get washed out in warm, mildly soapy water at the end of the day.

And sometimes, they go in the dishwasher.

Not the Yixing, I should say, but pretty well all of the others, which are china or glass.

Because all teapots have little nooks and crannies that we just can’t get at, even with our special teapot brush, a good, hygienic clean in the dishwasher once a week is a great idea.

But after taking them out of the dishwasher, or the cupboard, I like to rinse them in clean, filtered water. Soap is your friend with regards to cleanliness, but not on your tastebuds. A few rinses is a small effort to make to before you have a cup of tea.

Put simply, a nice rinse before using any teapot usually assures that only the saponins in some teas give your that soapy mouth feeling. And that would be a whole other blog. Sometime in the next 150.

14 thoughts on “All Washed Up

    1. It scares me too. That’s why I am a fanatical rinser. And I would never put a gold leaf or unglazed clay or really precious one in there, just the daily pots.

  1. I’ve never heard of saponins before, Robert.

    Also, I do not wash my tea pots. I don’t feel a thing about it. I’m probably not wrong, though. Or do I just have a lot to learn? The thing is, I have scrubbed one out before. It’s pretty horrifying to see all that build-up at once. So I haven’t done it since on any pot. It is fear, Robert, and that is surely understandable.

    Thank you for your 150 posts, mate. I do like reading you. Really! You’d be surprised.

    With love,

  2. No, no teapots into the dishwasher for me. I don’t think that tea stains are unhygienic just not terribly pretty.
    However, I do put our mugs and cups in the dishwasher and that doesn’t seem to spoil the tea. I do often give them a quick swirl with water though. Just in case there’s any soapy scents left in them.
    And your mention about little pots reminded me of something. I’ll talk to you later.
    Congrats on the 150! If we had the achievements in place at the moment I’d make you a special medal.
    Thanks for always entertaining us,
    J.

  3. No dishwasher so no conversation here. For the most part I rarely use a teapot most days it’s the Breville heating hot water then making tea in cups or using gaiwans or thermoses to keep tea warm for longer periods. When on occasion I use one hand scrub and rinse mostly using environmentally safe soap products.
    Congrats on 150 always enjoyable.

  4. I have heard of saponins. ( Honestly, some people). And I would never put Richard Armitage (my manly little teapot) in the dishwasher. He just likes a stiff bristle from time to time.

  5. Firstly, congrats on your 150th blog post as least on this particular blog as I know you write on and for others as well.

    As for the dishwasher I will clean my cups in there and even that are glass but everything else gets hand-washed. Don’t want to risk it.

  6. I thought you were becoming a Jedi Knight with your sentences “You CAN’T put teapots in a dishwasher”” or “You HAVE to put teapots in the dishwasher” and this worried me a lot. 😉

    Congratulations for the 150th post.

    1. I Love the thought of Jedi mind control. It wouldn’t take too many cheap, pathetic café owners to strangle themselves publicly with teabag strings for the whole world to embrace loose leaf.

  7. I do put my ceramic pots, my tea traveler, and some glassware in the dishwasher. Anything clay (like my yixing pots and my kyuusu) aren’t allowed within 30 feet of the thing.

    Congrats on reaching the 150 mark. (I just passed 430…Time flies.)

  8. I only own one teapot and one elephant that thinks it’s a teapot. I must say I don’t dishwash it nearly as often as I should. The rest of the time, I’m simply rinsing it thoroughly.

    When that bugger is not in use, it’s steeper mugs.

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