Gongfu Tea - Chinese Tea Ceremony Tutorial - #teaceremony #tea #gongfu #chinesetea

One of the first step in the tea ceremony is we warm up the teaware with hot water. Hot water helps to prime the teaware so that when the tea leaf goes in the flavor and the aroma comes out much better. So I pour hot water into the gaiwan and then I pour the hot water from the gaiwan into the fairness pitcher with the filter on the top. After that I will then pour the water from the fairness pitcher into these tiny little gung fu cups to warm up the cups. I discard the excess water onto the teapads and I also discard the water from the gung fu cup onto our little teapad here. The more water and tea we discard onto this piece of ceramic made from purple clay the shinier he becomes over time and that is why it's called a teapad. So the more you give to it the more you can get out of it. Now that the teaware is warmed up we can put the tea leaves in. So what I've done just then is displaying the tea leaf to the guests and now I'm using a tea stick made from bamboo to gently put the tea leaves into the gaiwan. Now I pour hot water onto the leaves and what I'm doing here is not brewing up the tea. What I'm doing here is what called the first rinse of the tea leaves. So by pouring hot water over the leaves and then quickly removing the water into the fairness pitcher we are removing the impurities of the leaf. But then most importantly we are opening up the leaves slightly in preparation for the actual brew. So I'm now discarding the first rinse which we're not going to drink into these tiny little Gong Fu cups again to then discard onto our favourite teapot. This process is a rather meditative process so it helps to bring out patience in people. So you have to really focus to pick up the little Gong Fu cup and this whole ceremonial process of offering it to the teapot also has the added purpose of bringing us good luck. So now that the leaves are opened up we pour hot water once again over the leaves but what we're doing here is we're doing the actual brew. So this one we're going to leave it in for that 60 second mark. So depending on the strength that you'd like your tea to have you can brew it anywhere between 30, 60 or 120 seconds. This is called scraping the tea leaf. Sometimes there's some bits of leaf on the top by scraping it we make sure everything is captured. And now we pour the brewed up tea into the fairness pitcher via the filter which captures any small bit of leaf that comes through the crack. And what I'm doing here is I'm preparing it for a second infusion. With quality leaves you can do up to three to four infusions with. So while I'm serving the first infusion to our guests the second infusion is brewing in process. Bear in mind the very first one I did is not an infusion it's what we call the first rinse. So this is the first infusion and I'm pouring it into the aroma cup first. We're not going to drink out of the aroma cup we're using it to then appreciate the aroma of the tea. And then we put the little gong fu cup on top of the aroma cup hold it tightly quickly flip it around put it down and then gently lift up the aroma cup. And we do the same for this other one. The tighter that you hold it and then the quicker you flip it the less likely it's going to spill. And there we have it this is a mindful tea ceremony for you guys.