Cha Hai
A small jug you pour the finished tea into before it reaches the cups. Also called a gong dao bei, the fairness pitcher, and the name is the explanation: it exists so everybody gets the same tea. It is the least glamorous vessel in a gongfu set and the one that most reliably improves the result.
- Capacity
- 150 to 250 ml
- Material
- glass or glazed porcelain
- Origin
- China, part of the modern gongfu set
- Best for
- evening out the liquor and stopping the steep on time
What it is
A handled or handleless pitcher, typically 150 to 250 ml, glass or porcelain, often with a built-in mesh at the spout. Nothing is brewed in it. Tea goes in from the gaiwan or pot, and out to the cups.
What it does to your tea
It makes the liquor uniform. Tea poured straight from a brewing vessel into several cups is not the same strength in the first cup as in the last, because extraction continues while you pour and the pot empties unevenly. Decanting into one jug and then distributing removes that. It also stops the leaf steeping any further, which is the more important effect for a short-infusion tea: half a minute of extra contact time on a fifteen-second infusion is a large error.
What it suits
Any brewing style with short infusions and more than one drinker, so gongfu above all. It is also useful alone, because it decouples deciding the tea is ready from deciding to drink it.
How to use one
Pour the whole brewing vessel into it in one movement, then distribute. If it has a filter, empty and rinse that between infusions rather than at the end; wet fines left sitting in the mesh will carry into the next pour.
How to choose one
Glass, on the first one. Being able to see the liquor is genuinely useful for judging strength, which is a skill the jug helps you build. Then check the spout: a fairness pitcher that dribbles down its own front is the single most common defect in cheap sets, and you cannot fix it. Capacity should be at least as large as your brewing vessel, or you will run out mid-pour.
Care and cleaning
Rinse hot. Glass will pick up a tannin film in time, which comes off with bicarbonate of soda.
What people get wrong
Skipping it because it looks optional. It is the piece that turns pouring from a race into something you can do calmly, and if you brew for anyone other than yourself the unevenness it fixes is real and tastable.
What it is made of
