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 98 °C
Leaf for 250 ml
13.8–17.5 g
Typically 15 g
Ratio
5.5–7 g /100 ml
Rinse traditional, optional
Infusion schedule
A session of 7–10 infusions is typical. The schedule below is authored to 6; beyond that, extend each steep noticeably rather than repeating the last time.
- Infusion 130sLong, and it is an opening steep rather than an extraction. Tightly rolled leaf that has also been roasted is the slowest thing in the catalogue to unfurl.
- Infusion 214s
- Infusion 318s
- Infusion 426s
- Infusion 540s
- Infusion 665s
Equipment
- Yixing teapot
- Fairness pitcher (cha hai)
- Tea tray (cha pan)
- Unglazed clay teapot (non-Yixing)
- Tea scale
- Tea boat
- Tasting cup
- Tea cloth
- Tetsubin (unlined iron kettle)
- Cha he (tea presentation vessel)
- Waste water bowl (jianshui)
- Cup stand (chatuo)
- Tea pet
- Cha dao utensil set
- Tea tongs
- Brewing timer
- Charcoal brazier (fenglu)
- Nixing pottery teapot — Nixing is the other unglazed Chinese pot used the same way as Yixing: burnished rather than glazed, so it stays porous.
- Sha diao (clay water kettle) — The Chaozhou clay kettle is the traditional water vessel for small-pot brewing — thin-walled so a small volume boils fast and is boiled again between rounds.
- Tea mat (chaxi cloth) — The dry-table alternative to a draining tray: a cloth defines the surface and the waste goes into a bowl instead of through the table.
- Electric ceramic tea stove — The common tea-table heat source in China, because a radiant plate heats clay, glass and unlined iron that induction cannot.
- Travel gongfu set — The packed version of the same practice, at the cost of vessel size — smaller pots shorten every infusion.
Vessel: A pot with genuine headroom — rolled oolong expands to several times its dry volume and a pot packed at the start is a pot jammed shut by the third steep. Kept for roasted oolong only.
Note: A long first steep and then a sharp drop, which is the shape of any rolled-leaf session and is exaggerated here because the roast slows the opening further. Aged and re-roasted examples take the short end of the first steep, since leaf that has been fired repeatedly is already brittle and opens sooner. The heat retention matters most from the fourth steep onwards, where a cooling gaiwan starts giving noticeably flatter cups.
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.