Brewing tea- or more specifically loose leaf tea- doesn’t need to be a complicated affair. It starts with the basics but there are some guidelines to adhere to in order to maximize the flavor and enjoyment of your tea.
Here we’ll provide an overview to brewing tea as well as the reasoning behind some of the guidelines. In the first part, we’ll look at the basic steps and why it is done in this manner.
Basic Steps
No matter which tradition or method you use, the basics of brewing tea is not going to differ much from these fundamental steps:
In some cases, the order may vary. For example for brewing green tea with ‘top drop’ method, the water is added before the tea leaves.
In other cases, the ‘rinsing’ or ‘blanching’ step is skipped.
Let us get to that in a while but here are the steps in detail:
1) Warm the brewing vessel
The reason for doing so is two-fold.
Firstly the brewing and drinking vessels may have accumulated dust. Pouring warm water also has the effect of rinsing the utensils.
Secondly and more importantly- the ambient temperature of the vessel instantly cools the hot water by 5-10°C. As often discussed in brewing tea (or indeed any type of hot beverage), temperature is an important factor.
2) Add the tea leaves
This seems pretty straightforward, without this step we would be just drinking hot water.
i) It’s not a good idea to pour tea leaves directly from the packet into the brewing vessel if you had warmed the brewing vessel.
The steam might cause moisture to condense in the packet or tea and heat also induces chemical reactions which would affect the freshness of your tea.
ii) Hence you would need a spoon or equivalent.
While the ubiquitous tablespoon is useful for CTC (Crush-Tear-Curl or broken small leaves), it is not very useful in handling large leaves such as White Peony or Phoenix Dancong where each tablespoon gets probably a couple of leaves that don’t even register on a weighing scale.
A cha ze or measuring spatula would be good, it is deeper and can hold more leaves. Furthermore, it is usually made of wood or bamboo and less vapor forms on its surface which in turn means less (if any) moisture is transferred to the packet of tea.
iii) Try not to scoop the leaves as you would scoop ice-cream- i.e. digging into it- especially if you’re dealing with brittle leaves as it would break them.
You can see this post for more details.
iv) Alternatively you can pour the leaves into a cha he or a piece of paper- yup, Chaozhou-style- and pour into the brewing vessel.
a) It appears unappetizing to everyone other than the preparer- would you eat salad that the host scoops with his or her hands?
b) Our hands may leave oil residues on the packet of tea which hampers the storage
3) ‘Rinse’ or ‘Blanch’ the Leaves
After adding hot water to the vessel, decant almost immediately.
There are 2 main purposes:
a) ‘Rinsing’- or 洗茶 literally washing the tea leaves
The theory is that during storage or production, dust and other impurities may build up.
Giving the leaves a rinse will remove the impurities.
b) ‘Blanching’- or 温润泡 literally a warm-up infusion
Some types of tea leaves are tightly rolled and in the case of dark teas- compressed as well. When you’re doing gongfu brewing, tendency is that infusions are shorter. For tightly rolled and compressed tea leaves, the leaves have barely begun to unfurl and unleash their flavor before you decant a somewhat insipid brew.
Hence you give the leaves a ‘warm up’ brew to allow it to unfurl.
On the other hand, there are many proponents who believe that a lot of the nutrients are lost during the ‘rinsing’ process and some of the taste.
So the question remains- to rinse or not to rinse.
Without a huge laboratory behind me, I can’t attest to the claim of loss in nutrients. However I am always an advocate that every action should serve a purpose.
However, for teas that have been stored for a long time such as aged oolongs and dark tea, especially those compressed in cakes or bricks, it’s a different story. Pu-ers need exposure to humidity and a bit of air to age.
Consequentially, if I am drinking an aged Pu-er be it Sheng or Shu, I will always rinse, sometimes twice. Especially since the leaves are typically compressed as well.
Blanching is the more important reason though especially since I gongfu brew oolong teas exclusively. The Minnan and Taiwanese Oolongs especially are tightly rolled. A good blanch will help them unfurl and release flavors that otherwise might not have been unlocked within the first infusion.
If you ever brewed a tuocha or a nangua Pu-er you can see an even more obvious illustration.
To cut to the chase- my suggestion is that:
Green, white, yellow- rinse not required
Oolong and dark tea- rinse required
Black tea- depends on the rolling and method used to brew. Also increasingly more black teas such as this Qimen Black are made from buds and hence no blanching seems necessary.
4) Pour hot water in again
As far as you can don’t pour hot water directly on the leaves, though there are some exceptions where I would eventually discuss.
If you are using a Yixing pot, you can pour along the opening of the pot in a circular motion. You can read more about it there.
If you are using a gaiwan, you can pour along the walls of the gaiwan as discussed here.
For a guide on the water temperature, you can refer to this post.
Generally speaking, dark teas are more compressed and require a rolling boil to unlock the flavors.
Higher temperatures release more aromas but at the same time, tender leaves are over-cooked from too high a temperature.
Hence, as a very broad guideline-
Oolong tea and black tea: ~ 85-95°C
Green, white and yellow: ~ 75-85°C
5) Infuse for the recommended time and decant
The relationship between quantity of tea leaves, infusion time and water temperature will be discussed separately.
Do take note of the following:
a) Cover the lid tightly for all teas except for green teas. As green teas are un-oxidized, the trapped heat will cause the tea to turn yellow and lose its freshness.
b) Decant completely as residual hot water will cause your next brew to be too strong and bitter
c) If you are filling the cups from the brewing vessel directly, the initial cup would be less concentrated and the last cup more.
You can either use a fairness cup or fill partially repeatedly to distribute fairly.
Please click to see other articles related to brewing tea.
