Brewing methods
The styles TeaHQ describes, grouped by family. A family is not a level of effort — it is a different extraction, with its own ratio, its own temperature and its own idea of what one brew means.
Gongfu
3 methodsA large amount of leaf in a small vessel, poured off completely after seconds and refilled many times over a session.
The eastern Guangdong household form of gongfu: a red-clay pot well under 100 ml packed with strip leaf, water off a hard boil, seconds-long infusions, and the liquor distributed by a continuous rotation into three cups rather than poured one cup at a time.
A high-leaf, low-volume, many-infusions approach: a great deal of leaf in a small vessel, steeped for seconds at a time and poured off completely, repeatedly.
The same short-steep, high-leaf approach as gaiwan gongfu, carried out in a small unglazed clay pot that seasons over time and is dedicated to one tea.
Western
8 methodsA modest amount of leaf in a large vessel, steeped for minutes and usually drunk once.
Steeping leaves, flowers or fruit that are not Camellia sinensis. The method looks like tea brewing and follows different rules, because the material has none of the compounds that make tea sensitive to heat and time.
A low-temperature approach to Korean green tea in which the water is cooled through a separate open vessel before it ever meets the leaf, and the pot is emptied entirely into the cups each time. Darye names the etiquette; the brewing approach below is shared by everyday practice outside any formal setting.
The Japanese domestic approach to green tea: a moderate quantity of leaf, water well off the boil, short steeps, and two or three infusions from the same leaf with the times adjusted each time.
Low-temperature brewing (gyokuro style)
玉露の淹れ方Multi-infusionIntermediate5 teas with authored parametersA great deal of shaded Japanese leaf in a very small volume of water that is deliberately far below boiling — cool enough that the vessel can be held bare-handed. It is the most extreme low-temperature steeping in common practice, and it exists to extract one part of the leaf while leaving another behind.
Loose leaf in a basket inside a mug — the most common way loose tea is actually made, and the method most often responsible for people concluding that loose leaf is not worth the trouble.
Black tea brewed hot and strong as a concentrate, sweetened while it is still hot, then diluted with cold water and chilled. It is a regional American household staple, and the sequence of those four steps is the whole method — rearranging them produces a different and worse drink.
Pre-portioned tea in a permeable bag. The format was an accident of early twentieth-century sampling practice and became the dominant way tea is drunk worldwide, because it removes every decision except how long to leave it in.
A small amount of leaf in a large volume of water, steeped once for a few minutes and then strained off. The approach most English-speaking drinkers already know, and the one most teas sold in the West are made for.
Grandpa style
1 methodLeaf loose in a tall glass, topped up as it empties and never separated from the water.
Leaf loose in a tall glass or flask, topped up with hot water through the day and drunk around the leaf. It is how an enormous proportion of tea is actually consumed in China, and it needs no equipment whatsoever.
Whisked
2 methodsPowdered leaf suspended in water rather than steeped and strained out, so the leaf itself is drunk.
Matcha prepared thick enough to pour like paint rather than to whisk into foam. It is not a stronger version of everyday matcha but a separate preparation with its own motion, its own grade of powder and, in chanoyu, its own place in the sequence — and it is the older of the two.
Powdered leaf suspended in water rather than steeped and strained — the only common preparation in which the leaf itself is consumed rather than discarded.
Boiled and decocted
8 methodsLeaf, and often spices or milk, simmered in the liquid rather than steeped off the heat.
Compressed or aged dark tea put into a kettle of water and brought to a simmer rather than steeped. It is a normal winter preparation for Liu Bao, aged shou pu-erh, brick tea and tea nuggets, and it is also what a gongfu session’s exhausted leaf is for.
Leaf, and usually other ingredients, simmered in water or milk rather than steeped — the basis of masala chai, butter tea and noon chai.
Brick tea boiled at length, then churned with butter and salt into an emulsion. It is a daily staple across the Tibetan plateau and neighbouring highlands, and calling it a savoury drink undersells what it is: the churning changes its physical state, not just its seasoning.
Tea simmered with milk, sugar and whole spices rather than steeped — a decoction, and the daily preparation of a very large part of the world. There is no single authoritative recipe, and regional and household variation is enormous.
A blend of black teas brewed very strong and passed repeatedly through a long cloth filter between two pots, then finished with evaporated milk. The filter stains to a deep tan with use, which is where the popular name comes from — there is no stocking involved.
Brick or green tea boiled in water and milk with salt, and aerated by being ladled and poured back into the pot repeatedly. It is an everyday drink in Mongolia and in Inner Mongolia rather than a ceremonial one, and it is savoury by design rather than as a variation on a sweet drink.
Chinese gunpowder green tea brewed strong with a large quantity of fresh spearmint and sugar, and poured from height into small glasses. It is the daily preparation and the hospitality ritual across the Maghreb, and the pour is functional as well as expressive.
Green tea boiled long with a pinch of bicarbonate of soda, shocked with cold water, aerated, then finished with milk and salt. The pink colour is the visible consequence of the chemistry rather than an added ingredient, and the preparation belongs to Kashmiri households on both sides of the Line of Control.
Cold brew
3 methodsCold or ambient water over hours, which draws a different set of compounds out of the same leaf than hot water does.
Leaf steeped in cold water in the refrigerator for several hours. Low temperature extracts the sweet and savoury compounds readily and the bitter and astringent ones barely at all, producing a cup that is genuinely different rather than simply a chilled version of a hot one.
Ice cubes placed directly on dry leaf and left to melt, with no water added at all. The liquor arrives as the ice goes, drop by drop, and there is very little of it. It is the coldest steeping in ordinary practice and produces the most concentrated sweet extraction of any.
Tea left to steep in a jar in direct sunlight for several hours. It is a traditional American summer method, and it is the one preparation in this catalogue where TeaHQ recommends a substitute rather than the method itself.
Flash-chilled iced
1 methodA concentrated hot steep poured straight onto ice, so the aroma is fixed rather than lost to a slow cool.
Tea brewed hot at double strength directly onto ice, so it chills within seconds. The speed is the whole method: aromatic compounds that volatilise away while a hot brew cools slowly are captured instead, giving a far more fragrant iced tea than gradual chilling produces.
Samovar
2 methodsA strong concentrate held above a water urn and diluted cup by cup to taste.
Çaydanlık brewing (Turkish double pot)
çaydanlıkSingle infusionBeginner3 teas with authored parametersTwo kettles stacked on a hob: water boiling below, leaf steeping in the pot above, and the two combined in a tulip-shaped glass to whatever strength the drinker asks for. It is the everyday preparation in Turkey and much of Northern Cyprus, and it is filed under the samovar family because it inherits that service model, not because the vessel is a samovar.
A strong concentrate held in a small pot, and near-boiling water held separately below it, combined in the glass at the moment of drinking. The drinker chooses the strength, not the brewer. It is the daily method across a wide band of Eastern Europe, the Caucasus, Iran and Central Asia, and the practices within that band are not one practice.
Why these are not sizes of the same brew
Five grams of leaf per 100 ml for twenty seconds and three grams per 200 ml for three minutes are not the same drink made in different quantities. They pull different compounds out of the leaf in different proportions, and they are meant to be judged differently: one is a sequence of short, changing infusions, the other a single settled cup.
So TeaHQ never converts parameters from one style into another by arithmetic. Doubling a western ratio does not produce a gongfu ratio, and halving a gongfu time does not produce a western one. Every set of numbers on this site is authored for one tea in one style, and where that set has not been written the brew assistant says so rather than scaling a neighbouring style into a plausible-looking answer.
Where to go from here
Each method page lists the vessels it needs — see teaware for what those objects are and what to use instead — the tea types it suits, and the teas that have parameters written for it. Where a brew has gone wrong, troubleshooting works from the symptom rather than from the method.