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
95–100 °C
Typically 100 °C
Leaf for 250 ml
2.5–5 g
Typically 3.8 g
Ratio
1–2 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 1300sSimmered in a kettle first. The strained liquor is then poured into a bowl and beaten to a foam with a twin-headed bamboo whisk — the leaf is never powdered, which is the difference from matcha.
Equipment
- Chawan (matcha bowl)
- Chasen (bamboo whisk)
- Chashaku (bamboo scoop)
- Tea cloth
- Matcha sieve
- Kusenaoshi (whisk stand)
- Natsume (matcha caddy)
- Hishaku (bamboo water ladle)
- Gooseneck kettle
- Ro and furo (hearth and brazier)
- Jian ware tea bowl (jianzhan) — The dark-glazed conical bowl was made for whisked powdered tea: white froth on a near-black ground is easy to read, which was the point of the contest it was made for.
- Stone tea mill — Nothing can be whisked until tencha has been ground, and the granite mill is what does it slowly enough to keep the powder cool.
- Hagi ware — A soft, crazed, open-bodied ware used for tea bowls, which visibly changes colour with use.
Vessel: A wide bowl and a double chasen. The twin heads are what make the noise the tea is named for.
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) · Boiling and decoction
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.