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 Mix tea with hot water
Tea and hot water are all you need, along with time to wait three to
four minutes and straining the tea leaves back out. Water
temperature, gear issues, proportion, variations related to types --
all of that is secondary, and not as critical as it might seem. In
the end, adjustment of all the factors to match preference is the
key.
Necessary gear
A teapot -- an English-style ceramic pot, like someone’s grandmother
would own -- will work. For simple brewing, which is referred to as
the Western style, adding a teaspoon of leaves per a cup of water is
typical, along with one extra spoonful for the pot.
A French press (or plunger, in British English) is another good
alternative because it also covers straining and can allow for
making one cup at a time, or a lot of tea with larger versions.
Another close functional alternative would be a pint beer glass
covered with a saucer (to seal in aromatic components), or you can
use any of the numerous custom tea tumblers, infuser devices or
simple push-button devices similar to a coffee pot design.
Water temperature
Expert input varies a little on optimal water temperature for
brewing tea. The consensus is that black tea can brew at boiling
point or close to it, and green tea needs much cooler water to
offset astringency (like bitterness, just not exactly that), in the
range of 170 F (75 C). Oolong teas and white teas brew in the middle
of that range. To really pin down specifics, various online tea
resources offer more input, and variable-temperature kettles help
adjust this more precisely.
Boiling water is a crucial step; microwaving is not recommended
because dissolved air stays in the water and interferes with the
infusion. Simple, inexpensive electric kettles can boil water
quickly, or using a teapot on a stove works.
Brewing proportion/multiple infusions
Beyond the general recommendation of a teaspoon of tea to a cup,
making adjustments suited to how you like your tea is important.
Leaves can be brewed two to three times, or more if a higher
proportion of tea is used along with shorter infusion times. This is
essentially the guidance of the other main brewing approach, called
Gongfu-cha (or "tea technique"). Gongfu brewing uses a much higher
proportion of leaves to water, short brewing times (a few seconds to
well under a minute) and multiple infusions, possibly more than 10.
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Regardless of approach, different teas brew differently, and use of
progressively longer infusion times for both approaches can offset
the leaves "brewing out."
Timing
It doesn’t sound like this is as easy or as fast as brewing a pot of
coffee, does it? Even heating the water takes time. But after three
to four minutes of contact with water, the tea is ready, and after
another three to four a second cup is. Of course, you can buy a
device to do all this automatically, but either way the actual labor
involved is next to none. Letting the tea brew for twice as long
isn’t ideal, but many people use timers for that.
Of course, all this is the simple version of brewing tea; people
tend to talk about specialized clay pots dedicated to tea types, or
using specific water (which does make a difference because of
mineral content) -- the list goes on and on. Getting started is the
main thing, and getting comfortable with a bit of learning curve.
It’s not self-study in the sense picking up a foreign language is
long term, and the rewards of making tea suited to what you like are
immediate, mostly delayed by three minutes of brewing time.
Overbrewed tea can be diluted a little in many cases, or not much is
lost in the worst case when it all goes badly, perhaps more related
to the delay of restarting as the expense.
Most important, of course, is starting with a tea you like -- the
type and specific version.
Copyright 2017 John Bickel via Zester Daily and Reuters Media
Express
[© 2017 Thomson Reuters. All rights
reserved.] Copyright 2017 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published,
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