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 100 °C
Leaf for 250 ml
2–3.5 g
Typically 2.5 g
Ratio
0.8–1.4 g /100 ml
Rinse traditional, optional
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 1420sSeven minutes at a simmer, with the leaf added to water already boiling.
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 glass or ceramic pan on a low flame. Aged white tea is boiled at the table in glass in China as often as in the kitchen, because the colour deepening is part of the appeal.
Note: Boiling aged white tea is ordinary Chinese domestic practice and has nothing to do with rescuing exhausted leaf. Rather more leaf than the catalogue’s existing aged-white simmer sets carry, because these records are the aged grades specifically: years of slow oxidation in storage turn a thin hay-like tea into something that will take a hard boil and reward it with a jujube-and-honey thickness. Fresh white tea boiled the same way is simply cooked, which is why the fresh records here are not given the set.
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) · Gongfu brewing (gaiwan) · Boiling aged and dark tea (zhu cha)
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.