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
98–100 °C
Typically 100 °C
Leaf for 250 ml
5–8.8 g
Typically 7 g
Ratio
2–3.5 g /100 ml
No rinse
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 1300sFive minutes of simmering with evaporated or condensed milk, which is the Gulf and South Asian diaspora register rather than the Indian household one.
Equipment
- Tea strainer
- Tea sock (cloth filter bag)
- Brewing saucepan
- Mortar and pestle
- Kulhar (unglazed clay cup) — The unglazed clay cup the drink is served in at stalls and on platforms, used once and discarded.
Vessel: A small pan with a lip for pouring. The drink is usually poured from a height into the glass, which cools it to drinking temperature and builds a little foam.
Note: Ceylon rather than Assam or CTC as the base, which is the choice made across the Gulf and much of the Indian Ocean trade. It gives a brighter, less malty milk tea than an Assam base and stands up to the very sweet, very rich treatment that condensed milk represents. Recorded because a great deal of the world's spiced milk tea is made this way and the catalogue's chai sets were all Indian and East African.
What this does not tell you
These parameters are a synthesis of common practice rather than recorded practice for this specific tea.
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: Western brewing (teapot or mug) · Mug infuser brewing · Gongfu brewing (gaiwan) · Hong Kong milk tea (sock-strained) · Flash-chilled iced tea · Tea bag brewing · Sweet tea (American Southern style) · Samovar service · Çaydanlık brewing (Turkish double pot)
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.