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 100 °C
Leaf for 250 ml
8.8–13.8 g
Typically 11.3 g
Ratio
3.5–5.5 g /100 ml
No rinse
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 1540sBoiled, then poured back and forth through the cloth bag from pot to pot several times, then rested over a low flame. One continuous act on one body of liquid rather than repeated steeps.
Equipment
- Tea sock (cloth filter bag)
- Brewing saucepan
- Stainless steel teapot — The service pots behind a cha chaan teng counter are steel, kept hot and poured fast.
Vessel: Two pots and a long cloth bag, rinsed in water alone. Each pass through the cloth works the liquor through the bed of leaf and takes the fines out, and stopping after one pass skips the step that makes the drink.
Note: Tea extraction only; evaporated milk and sugar are added at service. More leaf and longer than the generic set because a single Ceylon grade brewed alone is thinner than the shop blends this drink is made from — those combine fine broken leaf for colour and strength with coarser grades for body, and each shop guards its own proportions. A low-grown Ceylon gives the strength and a mid-grown the aroma, which is why a blend beats either on its own and why this set is a compromise rather than a recipe.
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.