Tea Strainer What do you use?

[Zanaspus]

I generally buy my gaiwans from Kam at

http://funalliance.com/

his teas are also pretty decent if you go that route. Note that he does not have yixing gaiwans.

My bigger question is; are you sure you want a yixing gaiwan? Yixing holds nigh mythical properties for improving the taste of tea, however, to do this, it is essentially absorbing some compounds in the tea brewing process. I do own several yixing pots, but I dedicate each to a specific style of tea. To have a yixing gaiwan (which I consider the knock around do all of the tea world) to brew various teas is somewhat self defeating as a "trace" of each of the previous beverage infusion remains.

I'm not trying to talk you out of it, just making sure that that's what you want. Yixing gaiwans, while available are not easy to track down, and I don't have a good source off the top of my head.

Also, since this isn't a tea board, and I need not fear getting flamed three ways to Sunday, I'll timidly say that I think that yixing is one of the most overrated products on the face of the earth. Sure, the hundreds of years old ones are awesome if you're a bank robber, but the new ones are just clay IMHO.

As always, hope this helps.