Brew assistant

Infusion schedule

A session of 10–15 infusions is typical. The schedule below is authored to 7; beyond that, extend each steep noticeably rather than repeating the last time.

1. Infusion 110sRinse, discard. Compressed dark tea always takes one.
2. Infusion 215sA second short rinse is worth taking with a densely packed brick or column, which the first will not have penetrated.
3. Infusion 320s
4. Infusion 425s
5. Infusion 535s
6. Infusion 650s
7. Infusion 775sExtend steadily from here. The tea outlasts most sessions.

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 kept for dark tea only. Porous clay takes up something from every tea brewed in it, so a pot used across categories carries the last one into the next — which is a reason to dedicate a pot rather than a reason to scrub it. Rinse with hot water and let it dry; soap is not used on unglazed clay.

Note: Boiling water throughout and a full leaf load, as for any compressed dark tea. What the clay contributes here is thermal rather than aromatic — a thick unglazed pot holds a steep at temperature where a thin porcelain gaiwan drops several degrees in the first few seconds, and a coarse, heavily fermented leaf notices that more than a delicate one does. The often-repeated claim that clay rounds off the pile note is a real reported effect and TeaHQ records it as a convention rather than as a measured one.

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) · Boiling aged and dark tea (zhu cha)