Brew assistant
Pick a tea and a brewing style. Everything below is transcribed from that tea's own authored parameters — nothing is scaled from another style, because a ratio and a steep time do not transfer between styles.
Water temperature
95–100 °C
Typically 100 °C
Leaf for 250 ml
1.5–3 g
Typically 2.3 g
Ratio
0.6–1.2 g /100 ml
Rinse recommended
Infusion schedule
This style is authored as a single infusion. A second steep from the same leaf will be thinner rather than merely weaker.
- Infusion 1300sBrought to a boil with the leaf in and then held just below it. Coarse leaf pressed hard takes minutes simply to come apart, and the first two of those minutes produce almost nothing.
- Infusion 2600sThe same water and leaf taken further, or fresh water on the same leaf. A brick will carry a second and usually a third boil, and the second is often the better one.
Equipment
- Kettle
- Brewing saucepan
- Tea strainer
- Tetsubin (unlined iron kettle)
- Teapot warmer
- Boiling teapot — The vessel for boiling rather than steeping: heat-resistant, wide-based, and made to sit on a heat source with the leaf in it.
- Electric ceramic tea stove — A radiant plate takes the glass and clay vessels that boiling calls for.
- Induction plate — Works only with ferromagnetic material, so an unlined iron kettle is fine and the glass boiling pot beside it is not.
Vessel: An open pan or a kettle rather than a teapot, with something to break the piece against first. A brick pressed this hard has to be prised into flakes before it goes in the water; dropped in whole it will still be a brick when the pan comes off the heat.
Note: Low leaf, long boil, and both numbers are consequences of the same fact — this is coarse mature leaf and stem compressed to a density that resists water. It gives up very little quickly and a great deal slowly, which is why the traditional preparation is a pan on a stove rather than an infusion, and why the ratio looks a tenth of what a gongfu session would use.
What this does not tell you
These parameters are a synthesis of common practice rather than recorded practice for this specific tea.
No caffeine estimate is authored for this tea, so the assistant cannot tell you how strong the cup will be in that sense.
Leaf weight is a weight. A teaspoon is not — a fluffy white tea and a tightly rolled oolong differ several-fold by volume, so scales beat spoons here.
Other authored styles for this tea: Gongfu brewing (gaiwan) · Western brewing (teapot or mug)
Methods TeaHQ describes but cannot give numbers for
1 of 28 brewing methods have no authored parameters on any tea. They are listed rather than hidden: the method exists and is described, the numbers are simply not written yet. Nothing here is estimated from a neighbouring style.
- Herbal infusion (tisane)
Herbal infusion is on that list for a second reason as well: the herbal catalogue is two records held in review, so there is nothing to brew even once parameters exist.