Brewing Leaves in a Bowl

Hi, this is Colin Hudon, founder of Living Tea. I'm sitting here in Mountain Gate Tea House and Art Gallery, and today we wanted to share with you the first and primary and foundational way of preparing tea or brewing tea. I'm going to show you today how to brew it as if there were two other guests sitting with me, and you can incorporate this practice into your life for your own personal practice, but also for when you're brewing with other people. As a foundational practice or the first method in our tradition of brewing tea, it's something to start with if you're just beginning out as in a tea practice, and it's also something to return to if you're a seasoned tea drinker. This is a way of returning to humility, simplicity, and direct communication with nature because there's not a lot of teaware involved. We're just brewing leaves directly in a so it's a wonderful place to start. So you can see here we have leaves already waiting for us in the bowl, the dry leaves. The first step if you're brewing for others is you can bow. For a lot of Westerners, this is a bit awkward. It's a way of showing respect to your guests. It's also a way of showing respect to yourself and to nature. Tea is an incredibly labor-intensive plant to process, so it's a way of acknowledging and showing reverence for all the labor and sacrifice that went into the preparation and all the steps it took to get the tea to you for you to enjoy it now. So step one, there's 10 steps here. The first step is to bow. The second step would be to bring out your bowls. So in this case, we're pretending as if we're brewing for three people, myself included. When you bring the bowls out, you're turning them three times, and this way of turning is a way of acknowledging the outside world. As we bring the bowls out, we're setting an intention for the tea ceremony. At the most basic level, it might be for the well-being of your guests. The third step is bringing out the jin shui, or the wastewater bowl. Again, turning it three times. This is also connecting you to the cycles. So the traditions that developed tea ceremony often work with the cyclical nature of things, which is something we see frequently in the different traditions, the Taoist or Buddhist traditions, out of which the tea ceremony emerged. So step three is to bring out the jin shui. The third step is to clean your tea bowls. So you're just pouring a little bit of water. This is a way of showing respect for your guests by cleaning the bowls in front of them. It's also a way of acknowledging all the people who aren't there for the tea ceremony, or being mindful of them. And finally, it's a way of heating the bowls. So in preheating the tea where it's going to produce nicer tea. So that's your fourth step. The fifth step involves fluffing the leaves. So this, especially as you can see here, this is a large leaf tea. It's a red tea. With leaves in a bowl, we like to use teas that have larger leaves that are called da ye, big leaf teas or great leaf teas, because that way the weight of the leaves will drop them down to the bottom of the bowl. So they don't get stuck in your mouth. And also when they're large like that, there aren't little bits. So this is a large leaf red tea from Taiwan. So when you fluff it, the leaves, any of the small pieces will then fall down to the bottom. You know, we usually brew maybe three grams. With leaves in a bowl, you don't have to brew a lot. It will only yield maybe three or four nice steepings of tea, because the leaves are steeping the whole time. The sixth step is to spin the leaves. So you want to pour at a 45 degree angle into the side of the bowl. That way, you're not pouring directly onto one leaf and burning it or singeing it, which might have an effect on the flavor. So that's your sixth step. The seventh step is making an offering of the bowl to your guest. So in this case, you're just taking a moment, you might say a nice intention internally, or just take a moment to acknowledge them. So when you actually distribute the bowl, you can look at them and smile or make eye contact. That also can help break the silence of the tea ceremony, which can create a little bit of awkwardness if you're not accustomed to sitting in silence with other people. And once your guests have finished their bowls, they can pass them back closer to you. So let's assume that these bowls are empty. You'll bring them back and then pour a second steeping and then distribute the bowls again. The second time or the third time you pass out the bowls, you don't need to make eye contact or acknowledge your guests. At that point, bowl tea is more about a meditative practice. In that way, it's a ceremony. It's an opportunity to be in silence, to be in meditation, in reflection, contemplation. Finally, after you've had three or four steepings, however many steepings you wish to have, you'll receive your bowls back and you'll actually take them and now they'll just be empty but with the leaves and you'll dump the leaves out. Finally, your 10th step is to rinse the bowls, just as you did in the beginning. And when rinsing the bowls, you want to make a claw with the left hand and the right hand is going to touch the lip. So technically, you could hold the bowl with three fingers and you're just spinning it gently so that the water comes over the lip of the bowl, both cleaning it but also heating it. So you're going to now rinse the three bowls, pour a last steeping of water, which is washing clean the tea ceremony, marking it as an event that has a beginning, a middle and an end, redistributing the bowls for a last cup of water, which is kind of like returning to the beginning. And then once your guests have enjoyed their last bowl of water, you can return them, give them one last final rinse, bow respectfully, hopefully in a better place than the beginning of the tea ceremony and move on with your day.