Tea Course #4 How to Prepare Tea

In the last videos, we told you not to use a teabag, but we have to provide you a solution what to do instead of that. So this segment really focuses now on how to brew your tea, and we talk about three main factors when we talk about brewing loose leaf tea. One is the temperature, one is the time, and one is the water-leaf ratio. So we talk about these three things, and then I'll go into the brewing and then tell you a little bit what you have to look after when you're brewing a Japanese green tea. So now, let's go into it. When we talk about tea brewing with leaf tea, what we often suggest and what is kind of the common amount of leaves is actually five grams. So five grams are often used to brew your green tea, your loose leaf green tea. Often your package comes with around 100 grams of loose leaf tea, and then when you are brewing green tea, you can go up to 20 different sessions. But within these sessions, you can do three to four to even five steepings. So bringing down often the cost of a loose leaf tea on the level of a teabag. So that's why also brewing green tea from leaves or loose leaves is not that kind of there's not a real big price difference, but this we will cover in another segment. So what we use normally in a teabag, we know around 1.5 to 2 grams of leaves are used. Here in a session, we are using five grams. This is the first part. Then when we go into the water, you have two different things when you brew Japanese green tea. One is that you need to brew the tea with less water. So when we are talking about brewing your tea, sometimes maybe you can have a cast iron pot at home, which is at this size. But when you look at the Kyusu, and this is already a little bit a bigger one. So it's quite a big size difference. So the cast iron pot is the typical Western style. Here we are talking about a smaller Kyusu here. This one here is around 300 milliliters, which is around 12 ounces, I would say. You can brew around 250 milliliters. So we talk about seven, eight ounces of water, which you are using to brew your tea. So we have also less water. Why do we use actually less water? The reason is to use less water is to actually bring a lot of complexity into the tea. Because the less water you use, the more or the more intense the flavor experience will be. But due to this, also as you're going over three to four steepings, you get finally the same amount as the cast iron pot, which I just showed you just now. But you get more intense and kind of more complex and kind of a broader array of taste experience with your brewing of the Japanese green tea. On the other hand, what is also important when we talk about the water is the temperature. When we look into the temperature, often what you hear from Japan is that you use 85, 80 degrees Celsius, 75 degrees Celsius, which are around 175, 180 Fahrenheit. What we experienced over time is that also my personal preference is I like to go even lower. So you cannot boil the water and then use it. Sometimes farmers, they do it just to stress test the tea. But what you have to know is if you go that high with the temperature, you're starting to burn the leaves and you're going to have a very, very much astringent tea or flavor profile. So where we like to go is really to go down even below the 80 degrees Celsius in the direction of 60 degrees Celsius. What I brought here with me today, 60 degrees Celsius water, which is around 140 Fahrenheit. The reason is that as soon as you amount with the temperature, so as soon as you go up with the temperature, you will start releasing more of the catechins, which are the bitter particle, the more astringent particle in the tea. So you will have a more bitter taste experience, the hotter the water. With 60 degrees, also you have more of the amino acids. So we talk about the sweeter particles, L-theanine, one of the big kind of compounds in the amino acids within the green tea. This is then released at the lower temperature. This is also the reason why low temperature brewing or even cold brewing are less bitter or less astringent than a hot brewing. That's also a reason why some people like to cold brew tea that they don't get the astringency and the most kind of the biggest part is really the sweet part going into your tea water. So we like the 60 degrees Celsius and this on the temperature is very important. Then on the brewing time, often you have longer brewing times with whatever infusions you have or even with black teas, which can go up to four or even five minutes of brewing. With green tea or Japanese green tea, it is important that you give it as a kind of a short amount of time. Here we talk about one minute to maybe one and a half minutes with Japanese Sencha, Gyokuro, which is kind of a special, a little bit more of a hybrid tea. This one here, you can go up to two minutes, two and a half, but not longer. But as long as you're staying with the standard Sencha tea from Japan, just give it one minute to one and a half minutes. That's fair enough. Also Gyokuro, you can brew it a little bit shorter. It depends on the strength of taste you want. But with Sencha, we highly recommend you not to go over than one and a half minutes. So this is more or less kind of the ground rules. So I talked about the low temperature. I talked about the shorter sleeping time. I talked about the lesser amount of water you're using per brewing. And I talked about that you use a little bit more leaves. So we talked about, depending on the tea bag which you're using, to double, a little bit more than the double of tea leaves that you're using. Good. But now let's go directly into the brewing. So I brought here with me a Kyusu, so a Japanese teapot, which is actually a metal strainer. It is made for Fukamushi, so deep-steamed tea. You can see it goes around, the metal strainer goes around. I personally like this a lot as it allows really to brew your tea quite easily. And sometimes for some tea as the Fukamushi, for example, so the deep-steamed, the tea leaves can be quite small and they start to clog a normal teapot. That's why I personally like this one here. But there are different ones. And this I will definitely explain you in another segment. Good. So we take the five grams of tea leaves, we just pour it into the teapot and then we're going to add the water here, around 150 to 200 milliliters of water. So around six to eight ounces. I personally like to use also a thermos bottle. So a bottle which keeps the temperature at the same level. Often when you brew your green tea in the kettle, over time the temperature falls or kind of lowers. And this I don't like too much. I like to have the temperature more or less at the same temperature over the different brewings. And that's why often I'm using a thermos bottle just out of the kettle, directly into my thermos. And either you can close it or you can also leave it open as it doesn't have a lot of surface where it can cool down. But this is then very, very personal. Up to you. What also is important is that you can also preheat your Kyusu. So your teapot, that the temperature stays exactly at the same level. I rarely do this as I like to kind of pour directly into the leaves with the water, not preheating it. I'm aware that I'm dropping the temperature of the Kyusu a little bit for the first brewing. But if you really want to keep it at the first, kind of at the same level, then you can just pour in some water. Just leave it in maybe for 20 to 30 seconds and then pour it out and then put in the leaves and add the water for the brewing. So now let's take this tea. So you see the tea is already ready. I would say we had it in for around one and a half minutes and we're here. Also always look that you get out all of the water. And already with the brewing, so you can see the leaves, they are open, but they're not fully open. So they will open up over the three brewings to four brewings, which I will do with this tea. And what you can see is that the color is very beautiful. So this one is a shaded Sencha, so one week in the shade, bringing the tea a little bit more sweetness, making it a little bit more savory also in taste profile, the typical umami taste develops like this. But you can see a very, very beautiful brewing of this tea. And in terms of taste, I have a lot of banana peel, I have a little bit of pear, I have a little bit of sweet apple, which I get. So it's triggering a lot the sweet side of the tea. And this is very important when you're going down with the temperature, when you're pushing up versus the direction of 80 degrees, so 175 Fahrenheit, you're pushing more, also a little bit more the vegetable side, so it's a little bit more grassier, but also a little bit more stringent. When you're going more in the direction of 60 degrees, which is still a kind of a nice warm kind of brewing. If you like it very hot, then rather go in the direction of 80 degrees. But if you kind of want it hot, but not too hot and bring out most of the sweetness, then 60 degrees is perfect. And it's also my favorite temperature. Good. So this was this, a short segment about the brewing. I hope you like this one here. So let's go to the next one. Cheers.