Is it recommended to rinse the teapot with boiling water, or does that make no difference?
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I brew my tea in a stainless steel vacuum flask. You can buy very nice ones designed as coffee plungers. Great for brewing tea. Plunge to stop the brewing. Keeps tea warm for ages– TFDCommented Mar 14, 2011 at 21:01
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9 Answers
Preheating the tea pot with hot water will also prevent the tea pot from cracking when you do add boiling hot water for the tea to steep in.
I will say that I have a fairly thick-walled tea pot, I rarely preheat it, and I've never seen any danger of cracking. However, if I had a nice china pot, I would preheat it. Better safe than sorry!
answered Aug 27, 2010 at 16:15
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3While thermal stress can break a ceramic pot, I've never seen it happen. That said, if the stress is your concern, use hot-but-not-boiling water for the preheat (i.e. warm it in two stages to reduce the stress). Commented Aug 27, 2010 at 20:17
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@dmckee Likewise, never seen it happen. I'd like to know if anyone has, b/c that's what I've always heard is the reason for pre-heating. 'Course, if I ever get my hands on the teapot to match my china pattern, I can't say that I'll take any chances. Commented Aug 27, 2010 at 20:51
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1I have had my teapot for several months now and have never preheated it. But just the other day when I poured the boiling water in the pot, I heard a crack and the water started to seep out. There is now a hairline crack in the teapot. I am hoping I can fix it and from now on I will preheat my teapot!– user18061Commented Apr 26, 2013 at 14:14
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Surely a thicker teapot is more likely to crack because one side will be hotter (and thus larger) than the other for longer... Commented Apr 26, 2013 at 14:23
The main reason you put boiling water in the teapot before making tea is to heat up the teapot. You dump out the now cooler water and then add your teabags and more boiling water, and the teapot will now be warm and not leech out the temperature from within it. This results in tastier tea, but is totally not necessary if you didn't make enough hot water, or don't want to spend the time doing so.
My mother and father were raised and lived in Wales and England from 1903-1923. The homes were quite cold in the fall, winter and spring. If you put boiling water into an extremely cold teapot it would crack and weaken the pot. I have been trained to do this even when it is in the warmth of summer. I have noticed that if someone pours boiling water into my bone china tea cups or mugs, that they will crack. The china cups and tea pots should at least be at room temperature otherwise a warm rise is required.
This is tea-tasters' lore, on the basis that the best flavour is extracted from the leaves at a temperature as close to boiling as possible. Heavy ceramic pots will absorb a lot of the heat from the water unless pre-heated, and a cooler extraction will be less efficient. This is less important with thinner metal pots where heat absorbtion is less.
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Quite right. Warming the pot is an almost redundant part of the the Anglo "tea ceremony" of yesteryear, when tea bags hadn't yet been inflicted upon the great British public and its cuppa, and leaf tea was the only way go, what? Commented Sep 6, 2016 at 8:02
Assuming it's clean beforehand, the only reason I can think to do this would be to keep the water hotter longer by heating the pot a bit (or, if it's a ceramic pot, to prevent the glaze from cracking...I certainly wouldn't use boiling water for that though).
Tea should steep well before the water is too cool. I don't see any reason to rinse the pot.
I don't remember whether I've ever seen a teapot or cup break apart the first time it was filled with boiling water. But I have seen cups develop cracks. Being wide open at the top, it's easy to see a new crack in a cup. Pots are a different story. The small openings limit both light and sight, so cracking may not become apparent until it works its way to the outside. Once it works its way through, it will just keep getting bigger and the pot weaker.
I imagine none of us remember seeing a pot break apart because of modern improvements in the chemistry, molding, firing, and handling of china. With fewer faults in the finished clay, the effects of rapid heating aren't so severe. But an old-fashioned pot or cup deserves gradual pre-heating for two reasons. The liklihood of faults due to manufacturing of older goods is one. The liklihood of hidden damage due to long use is the other. When you bring a teapot home from an estate sale or an antique shop, you may not be able to tell if there are already cracks inside the pot. There may even be hairline cracks on the outside, so fine that you can't see them easily. Whether inside or out, the cracks will surely suffer from boiling water unless gradually preheated.
I've come up with a quick and energy-efficient way to gradually preheat a china pot or cup. While the kettle is on the fire, I put a small amount of cool tap water into the pot or cup, then pop it into the microwave for 20 to 60 seconds, depending on size. When the kettle is ready, the pot or cup is ready.
Nuking a pot or a cup might seem like drastic pre-heating, but it is slow-w-w-w by comparison with the instantaneous heating that comes with boiling water.
Pouring boiling water into a bone china or porcelain teapot without heating the pot first will cause the glaze to crack.
Yes, boiling water without pre heating can break porcelain (bone china) teapots and it has happened to me. I sadly lost a grand old Royal Albert cottage rose pot this way through being careless.
I was interested in buying a Brown Betty teapot and after reading reviews on multiple websites, I found that a lot of customers experienced the glaze on their teapots had cracked. That being said there is some truth to preheating a certain teapot to avoid cracking.
