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
0–5 °C
Typically 2 °C
Leaf for 250 ml
12.5–22.5 g
Typically 16.3 g
Ratio
5–9 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 13000sFinished when the ice is, which in a warm room is under an hour and in a cool one considerably more.
Equipment
- Shiboridashi
- Glass teapot
- Houhin
Vessel: A lidded dish or shallow bowl with the ice piled directly on the dry leaf, standing on something that will catch the liquor. No water is added at any stage.
Note: A heavier ice load and a longer melt than the premium new-season sets, and for an unglamorous reason: these are everyday grades rather than the first-flush leaf ice brewing is usually demonstrated with, and there is less of the sweet fraction in them to select for. Deep-steamed leaf gives its colour up fast and its sweetness slowly, so judge by taste rather than by how green the liquor looks. Brew the leaf hot afterwards — nearly all of its hot-water extraction is untouched.
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) · Kyusu brewing (Japanese style) · Gongfu brewing (gaiwan) · Flash-chilled iced tea · 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.