Traditional Tea Ceremony 101

Today we're going to be showing you how to do the classic tea ceremony preparation. There are many pieces and parts involved and you don't have to do this as part of your everyday ritual but it's always nice to know and for me a big part of making tea is the process. I get a lot of pleasure from the process itself and it's I find it sort of therapeutic so something to do on a weekend with family or friends. Not for every day but good to know. So let me explain all the components we have here. First is the tea tray. This is the foundation. What you'll want is one of these classic trays where you can remove the tops and the inside is all hollow to catch the water that we will be pouring. Otherwise you'd have to do this next to a sink and then a gaiwan. Three pieces involved here and this is where we brew. We actually brew the tea. Tea cups. A pitcher. We pour from the gaiwan into the pitcher and then into the cups and this is the most fun. A teapot. Everybody should have a little teapot at home and it's not necessary but it makes everything nicer and you'll see how we use the teapot in the process and a strainer if you have and this would go here and then we'd pour the tea into here and put it back just to catch any extra leaves and then tea tongs and the tea presenter. So the tea we're drinking today is snow leopard. It's a really beautiful creamy white mighty leaf tea and first you want to make sure that all your pieces and parts are warm so that it helps the tea and it doesn't shock the tea when you put hot water into a cold vessel. So first we'll warm up the gaiwan like this. Pour the water into the gaiwan. So the process always goes from gaiwan to the pitcher and any extra goes on your teapot and it's you just pour your water over it and make sure you take good care of your pet and then now everything if you touch it everything's nice and warm and we can slide the tea leaves into here. Put the tea in here and part of the reason for warming is that once we put the tea in here we close it give it a shake. It helps open up all the aromas and we'll smell it after every steep and we'll see how it changes and then now we're going to open up and rinse the tea leaves. We'll just let it sit for five to ten seconds and the whole point of this is to first clean the leaves and also get them to open up so by the time we brew it it'll be like ready to let out all its flavors. So after the minute's up pop in your strainer if you have one. The strainer is not a must but it's always a nice to have to catch all the tiny pieces and parts and then we can drink.