How to Brew Tea for Many People

Hey teaheads! This is Don from Mei Leaf. In this video, how to brew tea for lots of people. In this video I'm going to be giving you my tips on how to bring tea to the party. If any point in time you enjoy this video then make sure you hit it with a like, and if you're not following us on all of our socials yet then go click those buttons. We are coming up to the busy period in the party season. I'm speaking to you from December, just before the Christmas holiday period, and now is the time to plan how you are going to bring tea to the party. Because there is nothing more frustrating for any self-respecting teahead than trying to bring your passion and enthusiasm of tea to the masses, and yet it falls down flat. Because you can't brew the tea properly, and people can't experience the true majesty of true tea. I've done videos before on how to bring tea cocktails to a party. I'll put a link in the description below so you can make some concoctions that can wow your guests. I've also done a video on how you can make people fall in love with tea. I'll put a link in the description below too. So you've already been armed, but this video is all about how you can bring pure tea to the party, how you can really express your love of tea, and try to spread the word onwards so that people get into true tea. So I'm going to be giving you a few tips. I'll start with my favorite, and then we'll go down to my third least favorite, but still doable method. Are you ready? Let's go. Number one is go full Gong Fu. For those you in the know, Gong Fu style brewing is the way to really express the artistry, beauty, and flavor of true tea. It is the best way to brew most teas. If you don't know anything about Gong Fu brewing I'll put a link in the description below so that you can find out more. So this is my favorite tip. This is the one that I would recommend, is just bring the true Gong Fu experience to the party. Don't try to dilute it. Don't try to adapt. Just bring it to the party, and you will be amazed at how you draw people in, and give them the full experience. So what I have here is my Gong Fu story, our Gong Fu travel set, if you like. These are still available for Christmas. If you are watching at the time of this video release then you can certainly pick one up for the holiday season, but hurry. So what I mean is bring out all of the paraphernalia. Let's really express the beauty of Gong Fu brewing. Bring out your teaware. I've got a Yuzu Mashi here, so I can brew some Japanese teas. I've got a Gong Dao Bei, and a Gai Wan here, so I can brew up in a Gai Wan. Let's see. I've got a Chen Shui pot as well here. So you can see, out of this little bag of tricks here, I can pull out loads and loads of great teaware. And, important, try to bring as many cups as you can. You can see I've got lots of cups here, right? Because what you're going to do is you are literally going to sit, install yourself, hopefully have a kettle plugged in nearby, find a nice space. You don't need that much space. Something like this. Get comfortable, maybe arrange a few seats around you, and just start to drink tea for yourself. And I promise you, it is a promise, you will start to get people coming to you. They will kind of sit, have some tea, they'll go and mingle, they'll come back to you. You're going to draw a crowd, and before you know it you are going to be having Gong Fu style tea with lots and lots of people. All you need to do is have some hot water on hand so you can disinfect cups easily. Maybe see if you can get yourself a little bowl or bucket to pour away some water so you don't have to move too much, and BAM! You have instantly got a proper Gong Fu session. You can bring your Puerh teas, you can bring any tea you like. You've got your whole pouch here. There's even more teas in here that you can bring, and that way you can really do it properly. We all know that this is the way to really experience tea. Small sips of strong, concentrated shots of tea to give them flavor and effect, and the artistry of brewing Gong Fu style. Plus, they are going to truly experience the social aspect, the unique social aspect, that tea drinking brings, especially Gong Fu brewing, where you're really delving deep into the memories to find tasting notes, find aromatics, etcetera, and then you're going to be drawn out to discuss other things in life, and relationships, how things are going, in a much more deep, meaningful way than just simple, small talk with your glass of wine. I have to say, as well, that at parties a lot of the time there's going to be wine around, or beer, or other alcohol, etcetera. Very strong-tasting drinks, and so you have to make sure that you bring the tea with as much strength as possible, because they will sit down, probably with a glass of wine in their hands, and then they're going to be tasting tea. So make sure that you're bringing Gong Fu style brewing, because that is going to bring the best out of your tea. It's going to bring the most intensity of flavor out of your leaves, and that is going to wow them much more than if you serve Western style. Now, this is really the key point here. If you serve this tea, your favorite tea, Western style, it's extremely unlikely that you are going to get anywhere near the same result in terms of flavor, and result in terms of getting people into tea. I'm going to quickly brew up some tea, just because I can't resist. So quickly have a little taste of Nectar Raider, and then we'll move on to our second tip for you. So as I said, brewing... Oh! Oh! Sweet, supple, and creamy. It's a delicious smell. I'm only going to drink one infusion of this, I promise, but I'm going to come back to it later. The beautiful thing is that if you sit here and you have a few different bits of teaware then that's even better. You can really kind of adapt. You can be brewing multiple teas, depending on what people want to try. You can be describing the teas. You can say, okay, this is a raw Puerh, but you might bring out a green tea. You might bring out a jasmine tea. You can adapt. You can be versatile, depending on people's experience with tea, and that's really, really important. You know what? No filter for this one. It's really, really important that when you're brewing with lots of people they're all going to have their own different experiences in tea. They're all going to have their own particular tastes that they enjoy and dislike, and so you want to kind of have enough options so that you can draw them in. So you might want to bring a jasmine tea, or an osmanthus-scented tea, or a rose-scented tea, just to bring people in a little bit, but of course, make sure you break out some of the heavyweights as well. Oh! First tea of the day for me. It's always important to enjoy your first sip. Notice I'm bringing very small cups here, simply because you want to max out the amount of tea servings you're going to get from each pour that you make from your Gai Wan, or from your pot. And of course, I would recommend bringing slightly larger size Gong Fu ware, like 150 to 200 ml is better than bringing a 70 to 100 ml Gai Wan, and you're going to be busy, busy pouring. Okay, so bringing the full Gong Fu session, and if you get tired of brewing, you know what? Great opportunity. Teach somebody. Get somebody to come around. Get them to learn. They will be itching to get their hands on the tea ware. I promise you, maybe start with a pot so that they're not burning themselves with a Gai Wan, but I'm sure that a lot of people will want to dive in, and suddenly, before you know it, you've got other people at the party. Gong Fu brewing, you can go do your mingling, you can come back, see how they're doing, you can take over, and it becomes such a great experience. I promise you, I speak from my own experience on this. I have brought this Gong Fu story to many parties, and it feels a little bit strange at first. It feels a little bit awkward. Speak to the host. Just say, you know, it's all right if I brew some tea over there, you know, sitting over there on the floor, or at the table. Most of the time they'll be very, very happy for you to do that, because you're bringing this added entertainment to the party, and I promise you, I promise you, it will wow people. It will really wow people so much more than you trying to serve this Puerh, Western-style, and trying to serve it up for everybody. The other thing I would say, please don't do. Please don't make a batch of amazing Puerh tea, or amazing Oolong tea, or whatever tea that you love, and make a big batch and let it sit there for people to serve themselves. It will not work. The tea will get cold. Nobody's going to go to it, because it's not going to draw them in with any kind of theater or artistry, and all you're going to do is let the tea down and leave people with a meh impression of the tea. Okay, so that's your first, and my favorite, way to bring tea to the party go full Gong Fu. The second way is to cold brew your tea. So maybe the party that you're going to doesn't suit a full Gong Fu session. Maybe it's a small space, and there's going to be lots of people, so there's no space to set up. Maybe the host doesn't feel very comfortable you setting up a Gong Fu session. Tut, tut, tut. Well, you can speak to the host and say, what about if I bring some non-alcoholic tea drinks to the party? I'm sure most hosts say, yes, please. The great thing about cold brewing is that you can do it all in advance. You can get the taste exactly as you wish, seal it up, bring it to the party, and it will quite happily sit for the whole day, evening, and it will be fine for you to drink. These teas will not start to oxidize too much until about 10, 12 hours after you start opening it up and pouring. So don't worry about that. They really will last a long time. Many restaurants are starting to cotton onto this idea, and they're starting to serve cold-brewed teas. The reason is not simply because you can prepare it in advance, not simply because it lasts, but also the format is very different from tea. Now you can start to place tea within the whole network of other drinks available, wine, beer, etc. You can also serve these really well with food, because of the fact that a lot of people, especially in the west, think of drinks with food as having to be cold drinks. It's very rare that you have hot drinks served with food, unless you go to a Chinese restaurant, and then suddenly it's okay, right? So this way you can slide tea into the meal situation, where people can taste the tea, and because you are cold-brewing you can get really nice, strong, rich flavor that you know is going to match and contrast well with the food. If you don't know how to cold-brew tea I have done a full video about cold-brewing. I'll put a link in the description below. But essentially, all that you're doing is taking a western-style brewing parameter, so you're brewing with a smaller amount of leaf-to-water ratio, and you are putting the leaf in cold water. Usually I like to rinse the leaves in hot water first, just to open them up a little bit, then put them into cold water, and either brew them in the fridge, or you can brew them at ambient room temperature. I would recommend that you do it the day, or the night, before the party. Store your finished, filtered tea in the fridge afterwards, and it will quite happily keep, as long as you keep it relatively airtight. So if you've got some old wine bottles, or you've got some screw-cap bottles, then they work really, really well. I have here some Elder White, which I've cold-brewed, and some Merioku Sencha, which I've cold-brewed. I recommend, with cold-brewing, that you stick to, in my opinion, white teas, green teas, and black teas. I do like Oolong teas, but they are a little bit less suited to cold-brewing, in general, in my opinion. Obviously, do it to your own taste. You can see how it looks when it's served in these glasses, and I would serve these in glasses. So you are literally mimicking the wine and cocktail service, but with tea. Let's give these a taste. Elder White is one of the most fantastic teas to cold-brew. The spicy elderflower note. So I'm getting creams, I'm getting a little bit of white pepper, but I'm getting tons and tons of elderflower and fruit, and then a real depth and sweetness that comes from long extractions at cold temperature. Mmm! This would serve perfectly with fish dishes, with cheese dishes. It really is amazing. Don't be fooled by the lightness and clarity of the liquor. It is bursting with flavor. And this one here, very, very potent. Really thick mouthfeel. It's got that umami savoriness, but it's got real tons and tons of cut grass. Much more than if you brewed it hot, actually, because when you're brewing cold you're extracting different aromatics, so you're gonna get slightly more of the fresh notes in the tea than if you are brewing hot. A great way to bring tea to the party. It's gonna surprise people, it's gonna interest people, and the wonderful thing is you can now, if you want, mingle. Do what you want. Put these in ice, if you want, just to give it even more of a kind of flair and artistry. Put it in ice buckets like champagne. Or, if you wanted to serve the tea at room temperature, which might work for more of those black teas, then serve it just like that, sitting there next to all the other wines. People can serve themselves, and, if you want, you can mix these with cocktails. So a very versatile way of serving tea, and certainly will surprise a lot of people. Right, so that's my second tip for brewing tea for the masses. Finally, let's move on to our third tip, which is not my favorite, but still doable, and that is that you brew half Gong Fu style. Maybe the party that you're going to is a little bit more of a sit-down, formal dinner party. Often at those dinner parties people are craving, at the end of the meal, a nice hot drink, and they'll go for coffee or tea. Now is the time to bring your true tea to those people so that they can experience the taste of excellent quality tea. But it's very difficult to produce high-quality, hot tea for 10, 15 people all in one go. And oftentimes people take shortcuts, and you brew western-style. Meh. Not good. So what I recommend in these situations is to brew half Gong Fu style. What I mean by that is that you don't brew with the same leaf-to-water ratio as Gong Fu style brewing, which would be lovely, but it's going to use up a lot of your precious leaves. Instead, I would take half the leaf-to-water ratio and double the time. Now I know, I've said in a million videos, that reducing the leaf-to-water ratio and extending time is not the same thing, and that is true. I stand by that statement. So oftentimes what I'll do is I'll take a full Gong Fu serving in a Gai Wan, and I will brew multiple infusions, right? So I'll brew one, and I'll brew another, and I'll brew another, until this pot gets filled up. It's not ideal, of course, but it's better. However, that usually means that you're sitting around doing a lot of brewing, and it might not suit the situation. So instead, take a teapot like this. This is our Symphony teapot that has a filter in it. Or, what I like to do is take our leaf and bean brewer, and what I will do now is brew it, but I'm going to brew it with half the amount of leaf-to-water ratio that we're used to for Gong Fu style, and I will brew it for double the length of time. What we're trying to do here is mimic Gong Fu tea. We're never going to get it exactly the same, but it's going to be a lot better than western-style brewing. I would recommend that the types of teas that you choose are going to be powerful, strong-tasting teas, like roasted Oolongs, like your Puerhs. Maybe people are up for some ripe Puerh. You're going to have to judge the crowd, because some people may be really freaked out by it, but it's an excellent digestive, as we all know. An amazing way to clear, and cleanse, and make you feel good after a heavy meal, which during the holiday season, let's face it, they tend to be quite heavy meals. So you can rinse the leaves beforehand if you would like. I haven't in this case, but you can certainly do that, and then brew. And of course, you can always come back for more infusions. So don't waste this tea. Come back for more infusions. Because we are sort of half Gong Fu style brewing I would half the amount of infusions that you would get out of these leaves, but you can certainly infuse multiple times. So this is pretty much done. I would then put this over and strain it out. As I said, you can do this in the filter, and pull the filter out, but I prefer to use something like this, because the filters... There's a lot of water not touching the leaves, and the leaves don't get enough space to move around. I prefer this leaf and bean brewer, because it's a sort of just one large vessel. It's like a giant Gai Wan, if you like. Okay, so you can see that I've made up about half a liter of tea here, which will serve a fair few people. If you serve it properly, and this is really important as well, I recommend that when you serve don't serve more than something like this much tea, right? Because a few reasons for that. The first is you want to maximize the amount of servings you're going to get out of your leaves, sure. But more important than that is that you don't want to serve a giant cup of hot tea, right? It's not the way tea should be drunk, because you're having a very, very hot liquid at the beginning, and then you're going to have to wait for it to cool down, and then once it gets to kind of halfway it might start to become too cool, and then it becomes less enjoyable. Think of it like a coffee, or an espresso, or a macchiato. In fact, I like to serve after dinner in cups like this. Like small, little tea cups that mimic the idea of coffee. Very, very useful, because people can get their head around what this means. If they ask, just tell them that this is the way that tea should be drunk, to improve the stability of the temperature, which means that they can taste stronger, more concentrated shots of tea, just like an espresso, or a macchiato, etc. So if you are going to be serving hot tea for lots and lots of people, brew half Gong Fu style, serve in still small measures of less than 200 milliliters of tea, and you will have a much better result. So from this you could probably get about four or five servings. So if I brewed that twice I could be serving 10 people quite happily, and go back for more infusions. I'm having a gorgeous midnight sun here. Midnight sun. Beautiful Taiwanese roasted Oolong, full of those roasty, toasty notes, but also because it's a Jin Xuan cultivar it has that creamy, luxurious finish. A perfect way to end a meal. I guarantee you, if you serve tea like this, that people are not going to be missing their coffee, just don't serve it in large mugs, please. That will ruin the whole experience for your guests. So there you go. Three tips that I've picked up over the years on how you can brew tea for lots of people. I'll put links to all of the products featured in this video in the description below so that you can pick up any wares that you need before the party starts. And, of course, I'll put links to all of the videos that I've talked about so that you can learn more about the different brewing techniques. I commend each and every one of you true tea ambassadors out there. Get out there, spread the word, and wow people with the artistry, aesthetics, aromatics, taste, and effects of true tea. That's it teaheads. If you made it to the end of this video then make sure you hit it with a like. Follow us on all of our socials so that you don't miss out on any news and videos from Mei Leaf HQ. If you're ever in London then come visit us in Camden to say hi and taste our wares. If you have any questions, comments, or video ideas then please fire them over. Other than that, I'm Don from Mei Leaf. Thank you for being a part of the revelation of true tea. Stay away from those tea bags, keep drinking the good stuff, and spread the word, because nobody deserves bad tea. Bye.