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.

Wenzhou Huang Tang

Grandpa styleSynthesised parameters

Water temperature

8290 °C

Typically 86 °C

Leaf for 250 ml

1.53 g

Typically 2.3 g

Ratio

0.61.2 g /100 ml

No rinse

Infusion schedule

This is a multi-infusion style. The schedule below is authored to 1 infusions; beyond that, extend each steep noticeably rather than repeating the last time.

  1. Infusion 1240sFour minutes. Yellow tea is under-brewed far more often than over-brewed, and a glass is a forgiving place to find that out.

Equipment

  • Travel infuser bottle
  • Vacuum flask
  • Chinese lidded mugThe lid holds heat through a long slow drink and, tilted, holds the leaf back while you sip — which is why the inner basket is optional.
  • Double-walled glassAn air gap keeps the outer skin holdable while leaf sits in near-boiling water all morning.
  • Hot water boilerTopping up all day needs hot water available all day, which is what the insulated boiler is for.

Vessel: A tall glass, topped up at about half. Nothing about the vessel is special here.

Note: Warmer than a green tea in the same glass, for the reason the smother gives: yellowing removes much of the sharp, grassy fraction that cool water exists to protect in a green tea, so there is less to protect and the extra heat buys body instead. Leaf-grade yellow teas take this better than the bud grades do, which are too expensive to leave standing in a glass.

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)

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.