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
98–100 °C
Typically 100 °C
Leaf for 250 ml
3.8–7.5 g
Typically 5 g
Ratio
1.5–3 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 12400sForty minutes of boiling, aerated throughout by ladling and pouring back from height. A decoction rather than a steep, and households run anywhere from twenty minutes to well over an hour.
Equipment
- Brewing saucepan
- Tea strainer
- Mortar and pestle
Vessel: An open pan deep enough to pour back into from a height. The aeration is not decoration: it supplies the oxygen the colour change needs, and without it the liquor stays a dull brown.
Note: Tea extraction only. A small quantity of bicarbonate of soda goes into the water — the amount belongs to the drink record — and it is the pivot of the whole preparation, shifting the water away from neutral so that the leaf’s polyphenols rearrange into red pigments. Cold water added partway through arrests the boil at the colour wanted; milk and salt come last and turn the red concentrate pink. Too much soda gives a soapy, flat liquor that no amount of milk covers.
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) · Moroccan mint tea preparation · Sun tea · Gongfu brewing (gaiwan) · 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.