The Best Way to Brew Tea

Today I'm going to walk you through the three steps of brewing a perfect cup of tea and adjust the intensity to your liking. Let's go through the three steps of making that perfect cup of tea. Choosing your teaware, observing the tea leaves as well as the techniques of pouring. The material of your teaware plays a big role in handling taste and brew time. Glassware makes it easy for you to observe the brew. Heat tends to decrease quickly. This makes it perfect for delicate teas like tea buds, white tea, green tea and herbal teas. Terracotta is a very porous material and it tends to absorb most of the character of the tea. It also absorbs any impurities and can provide a smoother taste. There's an actual saying that prolonging using your terracotta teapot, you can simply add water to your pot, it'll make you a cup of tea. This material aligns well with most recommended temperature and brew time. Terracotta is great if you have a favorite tea and shines most when brewing fermented teas like pu-erh, oolong and black teas. Porcelain is what we call the neutral tool. It doesn't take on any flavor so it gives you the very pure taste. Heat transfer very slowly and like terracotta, aligns with most brewing guidelines. This feature also makes it very easy to handle. A great tool to start your tea ceremony and genuinely good for all tea types. Observing the tea leaves help us to determine how much tea leaves to put in, steeping time and steeping temperature. Genuinely speaking, tightly rolled teas will require higher temperature, longer steeping time and usually less quantity. Flatter and longer leaves brew best at lower temperature, shorter steep time and higher quantity. Now let's look at some examples here. Now talking about more delicate teas ideal to be brewed in glassware. Here I have two green teas here. Now this one is more of a lighter green so you can see the leaf is a lot greener and more grassy looking and that one would be considered a delicate green. Another green tea here. Now the green tea you see the color is obviously darker. They dry a little differently. I refer as dark green. Now the two different green tea we actually use two different temperature. This one I would use about 70-75 Celsius and where this one I can go up to even 80 Celsius. Now another well-known tea that are very delicate is white tea. Now this white tea you can see there's a lot more needles in it. Needles or I call it tea buds. Those are the delicate part and open leaves. They're literally like babies. So you want to use low temperature. Something like what I use for green tea 70-75 Celsius would be ideal. Now oolong teas. Oolong teas again as a general rule of thumb a lot of people refer oolong tea as a hearty tea that you can use very high temperature. You can in the event that you see leaves that are very roll up like this. This is roll up and it unfolds into larger leaves. This is tea type called Iron Buddha in oolong. Now the difference between the two is that if this one's more lightly fermented and this one's a little bit more heavily fermented. So you would use slightly both maximum about five degrees difference to be very specific. So that means you still want to use high temperature like 100 degrees to open it up. Remember heat releases, opens the leaf. If you use lower temperature what happens is the flavor and the aroma does not release. So you're losing the tea experience. Now same thing this is another type of oolong. Now this one is very different because the leaf you don't need the heat to release it. So you can definitely use lower temperature. This is a tea type called Dan Chong and it's a oolong tea from Guangdong province. The specialty is always long and straight leaves and for this tea type I would use about 85 maximum 90 celsius to brew. Now moving on to pressed teas. Now pressed teas another whole new world. Pressed tea because they're pressed or sometimes this one's fully pressed in a little mini tea cake but some of you pry out from a larger tea cakes. Now what happens is you're going to be very observant in this case. It's because in larger piece you want to use hotter water to brew it. Where some are more smaller pieces that's apart from the big chunks of leaves you want to use lower temperatures. So really be observant of the size of the chunk of the tea cakes to determine the water temperature. Now for this one here I would use 95 to 100 to open it up because the again always remember heat releases it opens up things. So whenever you see tea leaf that you want to open it up so it gives you the flavor and the aroma you want temperature to be higher. This one is just another one I show you black tea about tea buds. This one is black tea so a lot of people associate black tea using a very high temperature. Now not when you see tea like this. This one is Yingde number nine black tea. This one is picked from the crown of the bush that means it's most delicate in the bush. This leaf have all unopened leaves so that means we use lower temperature 70 75 maximum. If you want to get a little bit more fuller body from it you can do 80. It is a common habit to increase the amount of tea to adjust intensity. Adding more tea leaves tends to add more tannin and acidity as they congest the tea. I recommend that you stick with the guideline on the packaging or the list to my right. Adjusting your steep time will help you find your ideal intensity. If you are brewing a tea for the first time we recommend shorter steep time. This will give you a better progression throughout the first three infusions. Now before we get started on how to pour let's talk about water that we're using. We tend to use single filter water because it's readily available and also it's consistent. If you happen to have a multi-filter system at home you can give a little try. Sometimes I find because it takes away a lot of its mineral the water is not as ideal. Some people might choose spring water. Now spring water also is the ideal choice because it carries a little bit more minerals so it makes the tea a little bit sweeter and smoother. A glass pot or a illuminating teapot is a great way to gauge your water temperature. Small bubbles like crab eyes is about 75 degrees. Bigger ones double size of the crab eyes is about 85 degrees. Full boils is 100 degrees. If you're boiling in a pot five minutes off the stove tends to be around 80 to 85 degrees and 8 to 10 minutes off will be 70 and 75 degrees. Now there's several different pouring methods that we use that actually complements different tea types. So one of is very well known called fixed point low pour. Now fixed point that means we're not going to be heating right into the tea. We're not going everywhere. We just want to fix one point the water to go down like this. Low pour that means we just keep it consistently in one area. Now what this does actually is the water goes like this inside here. It's very ideal for tea types like Pu-erh, tea oppressed or aged teas to actually let it penetrate into the water a little bit more evenly that way. So let me just try once more. Fixed point low pour. So you pick one side. It doesn't have to be here. It can be also closer to you or on the side but you want to low like this and not onto the tea leaves. Now the next pouring technique is called the fixed point high pour. I love this one because it's very stylish and it's actually I love to seeing the water pour in. Now you want to find a point that you're comfortable with. Again it can be here. It can be here. Doesn't matter but you want to fix. That means you're not circulating. You're not just going all over the place. You're finding one point that you're comfortable with. So you want to pour and then you pull. You see how it's rolling like that? This is rotating. It helps to penetrate into the leaf as well as open up its fragrance. Now it's very ideal for tea types like Iron Buddha. I do have Iron Buddha here and see it's unfolding. So once more fixed point high pour. You want to find a point and then bring this up. Okay and then the next one is we call it circular motion pouring. Now this one a lot of you may have seen this done many times for me. It's very ideal for tea type that are white tea, green tea, that are delicate tea. So this one now is not a fixed point. That means you're circulating like so. Now you don't need to go super low or high. You're doing about three to four inches above the gaiwan here and you let the tea slowly absorb, penetrate into the water. What we're doing here is you're not heating the tea. You let the tea slowly infuse. Remember this is delicate tea. You want to pamper it as much as you can. One of the things that I do not recommend is that you pour directly at it like so. Now because when you do that, you pour the hot water directly onto the leaves. What happens is some leaves open up quicker and other will open slower. So it gives you a very uneven taste. Then you really lose your tea experience that way. Now general guideline is a great way to start. But as you progress into different tea types and different learning in the tea journey, you want to try the steps to enhance the best experience you can get from tea leaves and tea brewing. It's lots of fun. Keep practicing and enjoy. Thank you for watching. If you have any questions, please feel free to drop me a comment below. For more tea content, like, subscribe, and share. Cheers!