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
90–95 °C
Typically 92 °C
Leaf for 250 ml
3.8–6.3 g
Typically 5 g
Ratio
1.5–2.5 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 1180sRolled oolong needs room to open; a cramped infuser holds it shut.
- Infusion 2240sA second western steep is genuinely worthwhile for oolong, unlike most black tea.
Equipment
- Porcelain teapot
- Tea strainer
- Western teapot
- Glass teapot
- Dobin
- Glazed stoneware teapot
- Enamel-lined cast iron teapot
- Plunger tea press
- Quick-brew infuser press
- Tea dosing spoon
- Standardised tasting set
- Tea cosy
- Teapot warmer
- Silver teapot — Non-porous and instantly heat-conducting, so it takes up nothing between teas and also loses heat to the room faster than ceramic.
- Stainless steel teapot — Single-walled steel sheds heat quickly and gets too hot to hold; double-walled is the opposite on both counts, which is why insulated pots are built that way.
- Double-walled glass — The cup half of the same trick: an air gap keeps the outside holdable and the inside hot.
Note: Category-typical western parameters rather than this tea’s own. Heavily roasted examples take the top of the temperature range; unroasted floral ones the bottom.
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: 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.