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
78–88 °C
Typically 83 °C
Leaf for 250 ml
7.5–11.3 g
Typically 8.8 g
Ratio
3–4.5 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 190sLonger and hotter than a sencha first steep. Pan-firing leaves the leaf curled and closed rather than needled, and it opens slowly.
- Infusion 230sHotter and much shorter, as with any kyusu sequence.
- Infusion 360s
Equipment
- Kyusu
- Dobin
- Yunomi (Japanese teacup)
- Thermometer
- Brewing timer
- Kyusu filter — The filter built into the pot is the property that most decides whether it suits your tea: sasame, obiami and drop-in basket differ mainly in filtration area.
- Yuzamashi (water cooler) — A wide shallow vessel drops boiled water fast and repeatably before it reaches leaf that would scorch.
Vessel: A kyusu with a coarse mesh rather than a fine one. Kamairicha sheds very little dust, so the fine filters built for deep-steamed sencha are unnecessary here and slow the pour for no gain.
Note: The one Japanese green that wants distinctly hotter water than sencha, and the reason is the fixing rather than the region: pan-firing produces the roasted, nutty character this tea is grown for, and cool water leaves it flat and vegetal instead. Treating it as a sencha is the standard mistake.
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.