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
60–80 °C
Typically 70 °C
Leaf for 250 ml
5–7.5 g
Typically 6.3 g
Ratio
2–3 g /100 ml
No rinse
Infusion schedule
A session of 3–4 infusions is typical. The schedule below is authored to 3; beyond that, extend each steep noticeably rather than repeating the last time.
- Infusion 190sat 68 °CBoiled water goes first into the cooling bowl, then to the pot. Straight from the kettle skips the step the method is built around.
- Infusion 260sat 72 °C
- Infusion 390sat 78 °CThe later steeps take slightly less-cooled water, which is a small correction rather than the Japanese habit of raising it sharply.
Equipment
- Water cooling bowl (sukwoo)
- Porcelain teapot
- Yunomi (Japanese teacup)
- Thermometer
- Dagwan (Korean teapot) — The Korean pot, used with water already cooled in a separate bowl, so it is not asked to manage heat itself.
- Dawan (Korean tea bowl) — The wide thick-walled Korean bowl, used where the practice takes tea from a bowl rather than a cup.
- Buncheong ware — Slip-coated Korean stoneware is one of the common bodies for the cups and bowls of the practice.
Vessel: A sukwoo — a wide shallow cooling bowl — a small pot and small cups. The pot is emptied completely into every cup in turn and then back along the line, so no cup is stronger than another, and nothing is left standing in the pot between steeps.
Note: A generic record covering the whole picking-date range, so the band is wider than any single grade’s: work towards the cool end for an early pick and the warm end for a late one. A wide bowl drops the temperature quickly and by a fairly repeatable amount, which is what makes the sequence reproducible without a variable-temperature kettle. Darye names the etiquette and the descriptions of it vary between schools; the brewing here is the everyday practice that sits underneath, described from the outside.
What this does not tell you
These parameters are a synthesis of common practice rather than recorded practice for this specific tea.
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.