Hi, welcome back to Tea with Phil and Jen. Today I'm going to talk to you about how to choose and use your very first guy wand. This video is going to be especially interesting for those of you who have always wanted to get into gung fu brewing, but just did a know quite how to choose a guy wand. And if you have a giant guy wand collection, don't worry, we've got lots of great info for you as well. Alright, let's dive straight into this because I want to get to the using part so I can have some tea, but first we got to talk about how to choose. Let's roll. And choosing our first guy wand, there are two main factors to consider. Size is one of them. The size of your hand will help you choose the size of your guy wand, but we also have to remember that it's our very first guy wand, so versatility is important. That means that it has to work for you when you're brewing just by yourself, just chilling out with your tea, but it also should work when you have a friend or friends over. Material is also a very important factor in choosing our first guy wand. Porcelain is best, but any non-porous material will do the trick. Porous materials like unglazed earthenware or pottery actually affect the aroma of the tea, so we definitely want to go with porous because it's our first guy wand. We're going to literally be brewing all kinds of tea in this puppy. Also the color matters. Ideally the inside of the guy wand should be white or at the very least a light color. You can probably figure out why. Lickercolor. Lickercolor is super important in tea and especially when brewing tea intuitively, so ideally the inside of our guy wand will be white. You can see that this little guy here, while exceedingly cute, is not going to work very well for large groups. This is Jen's personal tea time guy wand, and it's perfect for an individual brewing session, but at only 50 milliliters, it's not a very good choice for your first guy wand. Here we have a gorgeous sky wand that was gifted to us by the Toronto Tea Festival for a talk that Jen did on Puerh. At around 160 milliliters, this one might be a little bit large if your hands are towards a smaller side. Also consider that leaf amount is related to guy wand size, so in a brewing session with only one or two people, you're going to end up with an awful lot of tea. Next, we have this gorgeous guy wand with a wonderful glaze, but if you look at the inside, you'll notice that it's quite dark. Again, not ideal for tea brewing, especially when you're just getting started. Also notice that the guy wand is quite thick. Thickness is an interesting property in a guy wand, and there's a tendency to think that a thicker guy wand will help protect your fingers from burning, but actually the opposite is true. After the first couple of infusions, the guy wand will begin to retain heat and become very hot and take a long time to cool down. Now let's get into how to use a guy wand. Since this is your very first guy wand, I'm not going to get into excessive detail, and I'm definitely going to steer clear of ceremony and etiquette. I just want to give you enough information so that you can brew great tea for you and your friends with minimal burns to your fingers. The first use of the guy wand, perhaps obviously, is for brewing tea. Each tea has its slightly unique brewing method, and we have plenty of videos on those which you can check out in the links down in the description. Today I'm only going to cover the unique aspects, particular to guy wand brewing, which is basically pouring the water into the guy wand to cover the leaf and pouring the water out. I think pouring the water into the guy wand is quite obvious, so let's get on with pouring the water out. Jen and I use two different grips when emptying a guy wand. Jen's grip has the advantage of only needing one hand and it looks something like this. You can play around with the exact grip you use, but the idea is that your thumb and middle finger, or maybe your middle and ring finger, grasp the edges of the guy wand. Be careful not to reach down to the walls of the guy wand because they will be piping hot. Keep your fingers on the edge. That's where the guy wand will be coolest. The exact position of your fingers isn't all that critical. Some people like to put their index finger into the lid, I myself prefer to lay my finger down on the lid. So you'll start by giving the little, little tilt, grasping it, however works for you, and pour out your tea. If you're really concerned about burning yourself, you can always practice with cool water, work your way up to boiling water, without using tea. Your grip I use was recommended to me by Jen's mom. I like this grip because it's a little bit easier on my fingers, temperature wise. That is to say, I seem to burn myself less with this grip. The disadvantage, however, is that you're going to need two hands to get your pour started. Let's take a look. With this grip, I'll pick up the guy wand with my left hand. I'm right handed, so if you're a self-pop pourer, switch the hands around. I'll grasp the bottom of the guy wand with my middle and ring finger on the base and place my thumb on the lid. Always be careful to make sure your fingers are clear of the walls of the guy wand, and squarely on the base, which, like the edge, is much cooler. How much cooler? I don't know, but my fingers know that it's a law cooler, and I trust them. Now here's something that blew my mind. It's a bit of a long story, but I'm going to bring this back to a guy wand use, I promise you. This is the switch one last year, sitting with the inventor of Sugong Cha, also known as Bitan Piao Su with Jen and Jen Lee. Of course, he served as some tea, and we each got a guy wand with Sugong Cha in it, one for each of us. There were no tea cups, no sharing pots. I had no idea what to do, so I just sat and waited while Mr. Su and Jen Lee are chit-chatting away. Finally, Mr. Su picks up as guy wand and he takes a sip of his tea. And it dawned on me. I had read about the use of a guy wand to drink from as a drinking vessel, but I had never actually done it. So I didn't get a good enough look at Mr. Su, so I still patiently wait for Jen Lee or Jen to take a drink. Finally, I see them do it. I want to make sure I get this right. I don't want to look like a clumsy westerner. So finally, I take my sip. Mr. Su instantly notices my awkwardness and gives me a quick lesson on how to drink from a guy wand. I'm here to save you from that predicament, so let's have a look. With this method, unlike our other methods, we're going to pick up the whole guy wand, including the saucer. This gives our fingers a nice break from the heat as that we experienced in previous methods. Once the lid is open, you may notice that there's a bunch of leaf floating around on the surface of the liquor. If that's the case, you can use the guy wand lid to gently encourage them away from the area where you're about to take your sip. This also slightly cools the liquor and prepares your first sip. If the leaves are insistent on coming back to where you're sipping from, you can actually leave the lid in place while you take that first sip. Like so. And once they've all sunk to the bottom and your liquor is sufficiently cool, you also have the option of simply sipping from the guy wand like this. So there you have it. How to choose and use your very first guy wand. And don't hesitate to use that last method either and brew up and drink some green tea straight from the guy wand. That way you'll fit in like a pro if you ever find yourself in a part of China where they drink tea like that. If you like this video, please give it a thumbs up and don't forget to subscribe to our channel where we cover all kinds of tea related information from travel to brewing and more. You can also follow us on all kinds of social media. We're heading over to China soon. So if there's something in particular you'd like to learn from processing to locations, please leave us a comment down below. We'd love to hear from you. Until next time, keep steeping.