Some people would consider Chinese tea drinking style to be time-consuming and complex. This is possibly because they find brewing tea to be a difficult task. In fact, there can be many ways to brew tea, both very formal or very simple. In this article, we will give you some tips to help you enjoy tea at home.
1.Choose suitable tea brewing vessel
Different types of tea have different requirements for brewing vessels, but the three most common types are cup, teapot, and Gaiwan.
The cup is the easiest way to brew tea, but the disadvantage is that it does not allow for the separation of tea and water. For some heavily twisted teas, the cup will cause the inner material to steep out too quickly.
Many families have teapots, but most of these teapots are of a larger capacity, making it more difficult to control the ratio of tea to water. This makes the tea more watered down and flavour less powerful.
Gaiwan is a standard teaware, item for tea lovers and beginners. It allows for separation of tea leaves and tea liquid, as well as control of brewing time.
Besides that, with a gaiwan you can smell the aroma of dry tea and the lid of the cup. It also facilitates observation of the tea leaves.
The most important thing is that most of the small bags of tea are now designed according to the gaiwan.
2.The choice of water
The choice of water is often ignored but also very important to the process. In ancient time, brewers would choose mountain spring water and melted snow water for their tea, because they thought this was the purest and best tasting.
In modern times, spring water is not necessarily the best choice. Some spring water has high mineral content and this will taste slightly more metallic. This tea might not have the aroma and delicate taste. Instead you might consider using filtered water.
Furthermore, if you use a different kettle, the tea will also taste different. If you are interested in the material of kettle, we will have a blog about that.
3.The temperature of water
Different teas require different temperatures of water for brewing, in general we need at least 80 degrees. Higher temperature water will bring out the flavour at the beginning of the brew, while lower temperature water will allow the taste to be released in the mouth.
As you might know, different teas require different temperatures, and for people’s different preferences, you can choose different temperature to get different level of taste.
4.Control brewing time
There are six main categories of tea, green tea, yellow tea, white tea, oolong tea, black tea, and dark tea. And in each category, there are different types of tea. And same tea can be made into various shapes.
Different teas require different brewing time. Steeping for overtime will bring in bitter taste, short steeping time will result in light flavour.
About temperature and time, you can follow the instruction on the package, we also have tutorial videos about how to brew the tea, you can find them in our Youtube channel.
5.Pre-soaking
The pre-soaking process, or rinsing tea, can help wake up the tea. Just like wine decanting, some teas, for example, dark tea, requires pre-soaking, one is to get rid of unpleasant smells, another reason is to open up the flavors.
Now it’s time to prepare your tea wares and tea to make your cup of tea, if you find this blog does changed your way of tea brewing and tea drinking, please follow us and subscribe our email to get more information.