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
96–100 °C
Typically 98 °C
Leaf for 250 ml
2.5–3.8 g
Typically 3 g
Ratio
1–1.5 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.
- Infusion 1180sLift the basket out at three minutes and put it on a saucer. Leaving it in is the single most common cause of a bitter mug, and it is a habit rather than an accident — there is usually nowhere to put it.
Equipment
- Mug infuser basket
- Travel infuser bottle
- Empty filter bag
- Tea ball infuser
- Tea dosing spoon
Vessel: A basket wide enough for the leaf to treble in volume. A narrow ball infuser holds the leaf compressed, wets only its outside, and is the main reason people conclude loose leaf is not worth the trouble.
Note: Full-boil water and a single hard steep, which is what these teas are built for. This is the same extraction as the western-teapot set on the same record in different crockery, and the parameters agree because the act is the same — the difference is that a mug loses heat faster, so the last third of a big mug is brewed cooler than the first.
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) · Tea bag brewing
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.