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
75–85 °C
Typically 80 °C
Leaf for 250 ml
25–37.5 g
Typically 31.3 g
Ratio
10–15 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 145sKneaded in a slow folding motion until glossy and uniform, not beaten. Foam is the sign of the wrong technique here, not of a good bowl.
Equipment
- Chawan (matcha bowl)
- Chasen (bamboo whisk)
- Matcha sieve
- Natsume (matcha caddy)
- Kusenaoshi (whisk stand)
- Hishaku (bamboo water ladle)
- Gooseneck kettle
- Chaire (thick tea caddy) — Koicha is served from a ceramic chaire; the lacquered natsume holds the powder for thin tea and the two are not interchangeable.
- Kama (chanoyu kettle) — The spoutless iron kettle stays on the fire for the whole gathering and water is lifted out of it a ladleful at a time.
- Ro and furo (hearth and brazier) — The sunken hearth in the cold months and the portable brazier in the warm ones — the seasonal arrangement the kettle sits over.
- Mizusashi (fresh water jar) — Because the kettle never leaves the fire, the cold water has to be in the room already.
- Kensui (waste water vessel) — The open vessel rinse water is emptied into during the gathering.
- Futaoki (lid and ladle rest) — In a room with no work surface, the hot lid and the ladle each need a defined place to be set down.
- Stone tea mill — Thick tea is made from the highest grades of tencha, and the mill is the last step of their manufacture rather than of the preparation.
Vessel: A chawan and a chasen worked slowly. Sieve the powder first — at this concentration there is not enough water for kneading to rescue a lump.
Note: About 4 g of powder to 30-40 ml in practice; the per-100 ml figure exists so it can be compared with the rest of the catalogue, and nobody measures koicha that way. Only powder sold for koicha, conventionally from old bushes, survives this concentration without turning punishing. In formal practice one bowl is shared.
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: Whisking (bowl-prepared powdered 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.