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
5–7.5 g
Typically 6.3 g
Ratio
2–3 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 1270sBoiled hard in water with the cracked spices first, then milk and sugar go in and the pan is brought up and pulled off repeatedly. A decoction, not a steep.
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: An open pan that can be watched and lifted, and a strainer to pour through. The repeated rise and fall is not theatre — it is how the milk is worked into the extraction without catching on the base.
Note: The ratio is per total finished liquid including the milk, which is why it looks heavy against any western black-tea set. Milk blunts extraction and raises the boiling point, so chai needs more leaf and more heat than the same tea would take in water alone. Spice, milk and sugar quantities are household decisions and live in the drink records; there is no correct recipe and presenting one as correct is a category error about what chai is.
What this does not tell you
These parameters are a synthesis of common practice rather than recorded practice for this specific tea.
How many infusions this tea will give beyond the schedule below is not recorded.
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: Western brewing (teapot or mug) · Mug infuser brewing · Tea bag brewing
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.