How to brew black tea Gongfu style

Black tea is the most widespread type of tea across the world, and yet most people brew it western style and add milk to it. If you're a true Chinese tea enthusiast, you'll want to brew your black tea gongfu style, because it's the brewing style that will allow you to get the most out of your black tea. But brewing black tea gongfu style is not as easy as it seems, and there's one key element that you must understand in order to brew it properly, and not miss on all what the tea can give you. So I've prepared my teaware for this session. It will be a gaiwan from Jingdezhen, a glass pitcher, and a cup also from Jingdezhen. While the gaiwan is preheating, I'm going to talk about this tea. This is a tea that we made in Jingmai in our tea factory last autumn, autumn 2021. It's sun-dried, so it's somewhat a special tea. Most of the black teas are oven-dried, but we're going to talk about this again in a minute. Every year, I like to do small experiments with black tea in my tea factory. It might not be the greatest black tea, the most professionally made, because we're mainly poor tea producers, but I use all my heart to do this. It's quite my side hobby when we're doing the tea. Okay, so the gaiwan is preheated. We're now going to put the leaves in the gaiwan. So the key to brewing a tea properly is understanding how it's processed. So we're going to talk about black tea. Black tea is withered for 12 to 24 hours. It's laid on mattresses, and the withering allows the leaves to be softer. Why is it important? Because after the withering, there will be the rolling. So we're going to put the tea in a rolling machine, and it's going to be pressed tightly and rolled like this for about one hour. This is very important. One hour. Remember that. Then there's the oxidation step. It can be skipped, actually, for low oxidation black tea, or you can extend it up to six hours if you want a very heavy oxidation. And finally, it is dried. It can be dried with hot air. Most of the teas are dried with hot air. Or it can also be sun-dried like this tea we have. Whether it's hot air dried or sun-dried doesn't really affect that much the brewing parameters you would use. But remember what I said. This tea is rolled for one hour. And what does that rolling do for the tea? Well, it breaks down the cells, and it extracts the juice out of the tea. So when the tea comes out of the rolling machine, the tea will be very juicy, very moist, and almost a bit sticky when we dry the tea. Of course, the water on the surface of the leaves evaporates. So since the tea juices, the polyphenol, the caffeine, all the good stuff that's in the tea is on the surface of the leaves, it means that when I'm going to pour water, it's going to be extracted very quickly. It's readily available. It's almost like pre-chewed food, you could say. That means I will need to use very short steeping times. It's recommended to rinse the tea in order to wash the dust that could have settled throughout the processing. But since we said that this tea will brew out very fast, then I think the rinse is optional. I'm going to show you a quick rinse, but it's going to be a flash rinse. Okay, pour in, not even to the top, and pour out as fast as you can. Because maybe you only want to wash up the dust, but you don't want to lose these really nice compounds that are in the tea now. And now, the key is, do flash brews. I've just reboiled my water, and now I'm going to give the tea a flash brew. The key to brewing good black tea is to start with the brewing times as short as you can. So it means it's just pour in and pour out immediately, just like this. And you see that even though I gave it a very short brewing time, the color is just like it should be. Not too yellow or not too red. A good color for black tea should be coppery. Of course, it will depend on the oxidation level of the black tea. You might have some low oxidation level in which the right color will be yellow. So for a given tea, once you're a bit acquainted with the tea, you'll be able to judge the strength of the brew by looking at the color. But of course, looking at the color across different teas doesn't really make sense. Because even though they are black teas, they might have different level of oxidation. It's actually a myth that all black teas are fully oxidized. I can produce a black tea which is not fully oxidized. You will just need to cut down on the oxidation time. If despite using as short a brewing time as you can, the tea is still too strong, there's another parameter that you can use to lessen the brew strength. And that's water temperature. Most of the time, I like to use boiling water for all my teas. Well, except green teas. But I never drink green tea anyway. I'm going to show you a simple way to drop the water temperature. We're going to pour the boiling water into the pitcher. Now we can just pour in. And with colder water, the tea will brew more slowly. You can see now that I get a clearer brew. So really, when brewing black tea, keep in mind that since the juices are on the outside of the leaves, you must use as short a time as you can. And sometimes, you must go to the extent of dropping the water temperature. Actually, a lot of black teas can be brewed for 10 steepings or more. It's just a matter of keeping the brewing time short in the early steps. It's now my sixth brew. And you're going to see something. If I do a flash brew, you're going to notice that the liquor color is getting brighter. So it means I'm going to need to add a few more seconds to my steepings from now on. And it's quite normal for black teas to somehow drop suddenly. Because once you've washed away all what was on the surface of the leaf, now the water will have to work and dig in inside the leaves so that it can extract more of the juices that are remaining inside the leaves. There's a lot of good stuff in that black tea. You just need to give them the time towards the end of the session. You can do long brews, 5 minutes, 10 minutes, even brew until the tea is cold and you'll still get that juicy sweetness that you can taste. A lot of people recommend to brew black tea with 85 to 90 degree water. But personally, I like to brew my tea with boiling water if I can, if it doesn't give too strong a liquor. And that's because I like to evaluate the true personality of the tea. There are four things in taste that you can get from black tea. And that's sweetness, umami, especially for high bud to leaf ratio teas. Then you have bitterness and sourness. Usually sourness is a sign of strong oxidation. If you use lower water temperature, the bitterness and the sourness of the tea will drop down. Now, is it the thing you want in the tea? Do you want to have the good side of the tea come out in your brew? Or do you want to find out the true personality, the true character of those leaves that are in your gaiwan? Well, I guess that's a philosophical question and you can meditate about it over a nice tea session. Thanks for watching and see you later.