Kyusu
A Japanese teapot with the handle at ninety degrees to the spout rather than opposite it. That single difference is the reason it exists: a side handle lets you pour with one hand, wrist rolling forward, and empty a pot completely without lifting your elbow. Most carry an integrated strainer, because Japanese green teas are cut fine enough to escape anything coarser.
- Capacity
- 150 to 350 ml
- Material
- unglazed Tokoname or Banko clay, also porcelain and glass
- Origin
- Japan, side handle from the nineteenth century
- Best for
- Japanese green tea, especially sencha and gyokuro
What it is
The lateral handle is hollow, which keeps it light and keeps it cool. The strainer is the other defining feature: a handcrafted kyusu usually has a clay mesh fired as part of the body, while mass-produced pots fit stainless steel. Sizes run from small senchado pots up to everyday ones. The best-known clay bodies are Tokoname, a red iron-rich shudei, and Banko from Yokkaichi, which is darker and higher in manganese. Porcelain and glass kyusu also exist.
What it does to your tea
Mechanically, quite a lot: the integrated strainer is fine enough to hold back sencha's small leaf particles, and the shape lets you get every drop out, which matters because Japanese greens are brewed short and a few millilitres left behind will over-extract before the next infusion. Chemically, less is established than you will be told. The clay in Tokoname and Banko is genuinely iron-rich, and the measured study on unglazed clay and tea chemistry tested Chinese zisha and zhuni rather than Japanese bodies, so extending its result here is an assumption rather than a finding.
What it suits
Japanese green tea, which is what it was designed around: sencha, gyokuro and bancha. The fine strainer and the complete pour are both answers to problems those teas create. A kyusu will brew anything, but nothing else needs what it does.
How to use one
Hold the handle from above with your thumb on top, not underneath. Fill, steep short, and pour to the last drop, alternating between cups if you are pouring more than one so the strength evens out. Support the lid with a finger; the lateral handle gives you no second point of contact the way a Western pot does.
How to choose one
Look at the strainer first. A clay mesh integrated into the body is the mark of a handmade pot and will not corrode; a stainless steel basket is easier to clean and easier to replace. Then check the pour, because a kyusu that dribbles is a kyusu you will resent daily. Handle a few: the balance of a side-handled pot is personal in a way a Western pot's is not, and a pot that is comfortable full is not always the one that felt right empty.
Care and cleaning
Rinse with hot water and leave the lid off to dry. If the body is unglazed, no detergent, for the same reason as a Yixing pot. Clean the mesh strainer by back-flushing it with water rather than by scrubbing, which bends the fine clay ribs.
What people get wrong
Believing the clay does more than it does. Sources describing Tokoname or Banko clay commonly state that iron in the body adsorbs catechins and measurably reduces bitterness, and that the effect is proven. None of them names a study. The claim may well turn out to be right, and the adjacent measurement on Chinese clay is real, but a page that repeats it as settled is repeating a shop's sentence, not a result. Buy a kyusu for the handle, the strainer and the pour, all of which are real and all of which you can feel in the first week.
What it is made of
Sources
- unglazed Yixing clay measurably changes an oolong infusion: higher total catechins, less caffeine, lowest minerals and lowest volatile compounds of six pot materials Liao, Z.-H., Chen, Y.-J., Tzen, J. T.-C., Kuo, P.-C., Lee, M.-R., Mai, F.-D., Rairat, T. & Chou, C.-C. Effect of teapot materials on the chemical composition of oolong tea infusions. Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture, 751-757