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.

Golden Monkey

Flash-chilled iced teaSynthesised parameters

Water temperature

95100 °C

Typically 98 °C

Leaf for 250 ml

6.38.8 g

Typically 7.5 g

Ratio

2.53.5 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.

  1. Infusion 1150sTwo and a half minutes at full heat, then straight onto the ice.

Equipment

  • Glass teapot

Vessel: Ice to half the finished volume, in the vessel first.

Note: Black tea is the material most likely to haze when iced, and the flash method is the standard answer to it: the cloud forms as certain polyphenols and caffeine associate on slow cooling, and dropping through that range in seconds rather than minutes gives them much less opportunity. Adding sugar while the tea is still hot also holds the haze off. A tea that clouds anyway has not been ruined — it is a cosmetic fault.

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) · Cold brew tea

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.