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
2–3.8 g
Typically 2.8 g
Ratio
0.8–1.5 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 1300sBoiled rather than steeped, in a pan, for several minutes. The leaf is coarse, mature and post-fermented, and it has almost nothing to give a short hot steep.
Equipment
- Mortar and pestle
- Brewing saucepan — A decoction has to be simmered in an open vessel; the saucepan is the requirement rather than an option.
- Berrad (Maghrebi teapot) — One of the few teapots in the catalogue designed to be heated directly rather than filled from a kettle.
Vessel: A pan on a stove, and then a wide bowl. This is the step before the one the tea is known for — the liquor is poured into a bowl and beaten to a foam with a twin-headed bamboo whisk, sometimes with a little salt, which is a serving practice rather than an extraction and is why the tea also carries a whisked set.
Note: The whisked set describes what happens to the liquor and this describes how the liquor is made, which is why both belong on the record rather than either standing for the whole preparation. Low in bitterness and astringency for the same reason every post-fermented tea is: the compounds that would supply them have largely been consumed by organisms before the water ever arrives, which is what makes a five-minute boil a sensible thing to do to a tea leaf.
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: Whisking (bowl-prepared powdered tea) · 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.