Revisiting Our Recommended Brewing Instructions

Here is a confession- more often than not we ignore our own recommended brewing instructions for oolong tea.

The reason is simple, newer tea drinkers often prefer a lighter, sweeter taste hence we gear our recommendations more towards that. As for experienced tea drinkers, you guys will ignore the brewing instructions and do it your own way anyway

Moreover it is rather dependent on the brewing vessel, methods, ambient temperature at point of brewing and so forth.

After a while, we eschew calling it “recommended brewing instructions” in favor of calling them “suggested brewing method” or equivalent, to emphasize it is merely a starting point.

As to how we derive these “suggestions”, frequently we look at how the locals do it.

Dancong is a sub-category of tea that gave us some problems. Don’t get me wrong, I love it. It is 1 of the 5 teas I can’t live without.

It’s just that following the traditional recommendations for Dancong would result in an amazingly bitter brew.

For the heck of it, you might want to try it:

i)   About 1 g of tea for 10-11 ml of water, if you are going by volume it just means stuff the pot until you can’t stuff it anymore, then stuff it some more

ii)   Boiling water

iii)   Infuse for 45 seconds to 1 minute

My additional instruction for those who are not used to it is get some plain water on hand because this is unbelievably bitter.

But the Chaozhou people like it, at least the traditional ones.

A farmer I met joked that it was my partial Hakka blood that kept me from appreciating this but he conceded very few people outside of Chaozhou enjoyed Dancong that way.

Anyway, basically to minimize bitterness you can do 1 or more of the following:

i)   Reduce the quantity of tea leaves

ii)   Reduce the water temperature

iii)   Reduce infusion time

Using Mi Lan Xiang as a gauge, initially I went with 85⁰C water temperature, 30 seconds infusion time and about 5-6g of tea for every 100 ml of water.

So ‘translating’ it for newer tea drinkers, I reduced it to 3g for every 100 ml of water. This gave a smooth, sweet brew.

But overtime, I found myself adding more and more leaves (who doesn’t) and increasing the water temperature while reducing the infusion time.

Recently I made some Tong Tian Xiang for my wife.  I didn’t tell what it was and just passed her a cup. She was taken aback and asked if I brought some of my ‘special occasion’ Dancong.

When I told her what it was, she was very surprised as her memory of it was rather different- this not being one of her regular teas- and asked what I did differently.

The difference had not been so marked to me as I have been making small regular changes to the brewing methods as opposed to a radical one time switch that my wife experienced.

Upon reflection, since the original ‘recommended brewing instructions’ for Dancong has no resemblance to what we currently use, I can’t in good conscience continue to ‘suggest’ those parameters.

Whilst ‘translating’ to a lighter brew, our suggestions would be:

i)   Quantity- 4g for every 100ml of water

ii)   Water temperature- 95⁰C

iii)   Infusion time- 15-20 seconds for initial brew, add 5-10 seconds for each subsequent one

This gives a more rounded, fragrant brew with good mouth feel and lingering sweetness.

As a side-note, this is why we recommend drinking more of each tea as opposed to trying 100 teas only once each, it takes time to know a tea.

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