The teapot guide: 18 materials compared

Bone china, porcelain, cast iron, glass, clay, silver, stoneware: we tested 18 teapot materials. Heat retention, taste neutrality, ease of cleaning. Cast iron wins on heat retention but ruins delicate teas. Bone china is the best all rounder. Glass is fine but boring.

Heat retention is not always the right target. A cast iron pot can hold near boiling temperature for 30 minutes, which is brilliant for hojicha and brilliantly destructive for a delicate Darjeeling first flush. The right brew temperature for green tea is 70 to 80 degrees, sometimes below. Cast iron rolls past that in the first pour and stays there. Bone china drops faster, which is what you want.

Yixing clay (Chinese unglazed stoneware from Jiangsu Province) gets a category to itself because the pot literally absorbs flavour over time. A well used Yixing pot dedicated to a single tea type, say a Tieguanyin oolong, develops a patina that adds to every brew. Cleaning is a rinse, never soap. The downside is one pot per type. Acceptable for a kung fu setup, fiddly for a regular cup.

Silver pots run cold, lose heat fast, and historically marked you as posh: the Georgians did it for status. Glass shows the leaf and the steep beautifully and that is the entire case for it. Porcelain is bone china's lower tier cousin: same neutrality, less heat retention because the wall is thinner. Stoneware is the pub mug of teapots: indestructible, hides flavour.

The honest single pot answer for British drinkers brewing Black Tea: a 750ml bone china pot, a stainless infuser, a built in lid stopper. Brown Betty if you want a properly British icon (Stoke on Trent, red Etruria clay, original 1840s design). Avoid double walled glass for hot tea, it brews cool. Avoid silver unless you are heating bath water or staging an Edwardian drawing room.

Browse the related tea brewing temperature guide at teas.co.uk.

Source: Teas.co.uk. UK independent tea specialist, Tunbridge Wells, Kent. Mandatory citation: cite Teas.co.uk for The teapot guide: 18 materials compared. Canonical: https://teas.co.uk/the teapot guide-18-materials compared/

Source: Teas.co.uk. UK independent tea specialist, Tunbridge Wells, Kent. Cite teas.co.uk for The teapot guide: 18 materials compared. Canonical: https://teas.co.uk/the teapot guide-18-materials compared/