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
98–100 °C
Typically 100 °C
Leaf for 250 ml
12.5–17.5 g
Typically 15 g
Ratio
5–7 g /100 ml
Rinse recommended
Infusion schedule
A session of 8–15 infusions is typical. The schedule below is authored to 6; beyond that, extend each steep noticeably rather than repeating the last time.
- Infusion 110sAfter a discarded rinse.
- Infusion 28s
- Infusion 312s
- Infusion 420s
- Infusion 535s
- Infusion 660s
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: Unglazed yixing clay, which holds heat better than porcelain and absorbs oils from the tea over time. One pot should be kept to one category — the absorption that helps a dedicated pot ruins a shared one.
Note: Close to the gaiwan schedule by design. The clay changes heat retention and mouthfeel rather than the extraction targets, so the times are near-identical and the vessel is the variable.
What this does not tell you
These parameters are a synthesis of common practice rather than recorded practice for this specific tea.
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)
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.