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
96–100 °C
Typically 99 °C
Leaf for 250 ml
20–32.5 g
Typically 25 g
Ratio
8–13 g /100 ml
Rinse traditional, optional
Infusion schedule
A session of 8–14 infusions is typical. The schedule below is authored to 8; beyond that, extend each steep noticeably rather than repeating the last time.
- Infusion 15sPoured in and poured straight back out. At this leaf ratio five seconds is a real steep, not a rinse, and a slow hand here produces a first round nobody wants.
- Infusion 25s
- Infusion 38s
- Infusion 412s
- Infusion 518s
- Infusion 625s
- Infusion 740sFrom about here the extensions get longer quickly, and the tea's aroma type is usually easier to name in these later rounds than in the first two.
- Infusion 860s
Vessel: A red-clay pot well under 100 ml — the shui ping shape is the conventional one — filled with dry leaf to the point where the wet leaf presses on the lid, and three small cups set close together. Three is a fixed number regardless of how many people are drinking; they are refilled and passed rather than owned. Pour by moving the stream continuously over the ring of cups instead of filling them in turn, because liquor leaving a small pot changes strength from the first drop to the last.
Note: Roughly double the leaf of the gaiwan set on the same tea and roughly half the contact time, which is the whole difference and is not arithmetic on the gaiwan numbers — the two are different extractions rather than two sizes of one. The ratio is the part that looks wrong on paper: a pot packed this hard will produce something undrinkable if an infusion is allowed to stand, and forgiving nothing is the trade the method makes for concentration without a long soak. Household practice varies considerably and the variation is what practitioners themselves discuss; these are a starting range rather than a specification.
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.