Steeping the perfect cup of tea is a science. Most important of course are the tea leaves (or tips and/or stems), then the water, then temperature, then time. However, whether due to laziness or to ignorance, emphasis is too often precisely backwards.
For example, let’s take a typical but hypothetical New Jersey suburbanite. She uses the lowest quality tea dust, the stuff that fell through every conceivable crack in the cultivation, transportation, separation, and oxidization process (aka tea bags). She then dunks this powdered substance into a cold cup of cold tap water. Finally, she microwaves the tea cup from cold to boiling in precisely 2 minutes and 22 seconds. Why this particular time? Perhaps because 222 is convenient and produces a slightly better cup of tea that 111 or 333. I don’t know.
Time and temperature
Bitter tea is a product of steeping too long and too hot. Steeping too short or too cool will not extract much flavour. Of time and temperature, temperature is most important. Buy a thermometer and always preheat your teapot.
Do not trust recommended temperatures. Well, none but mine, of course. The recommendation is often, but not always, too high (I’ve never seen a temperature too low). I suspect this is based on the assumption that the average consumer will not preheat the teapot. Experiment; Get to know your teas.
Water
Tea is what — 99% water? You can do everything else right, but if your water sucks, so will your tea. An unfortunate population must boil a bitter perfumed black tea to mask foul liquid they call water. If you can not afford clean water, there are people who can help.
Tea
Tea quality is not entirely subjective. First of all, what may be called tea is not always, in fact, tea. Herbal ‘tea’ is not tea. Jasmine is not tea, nor is vanilla, rooiboos, bergamot, any type of fruit, oil, scent, spice, essence, perfume, grain, nor chemical. Only one humble species of plant, Camellia sinensis, is tea.
C. sinensis, also exclusively know as tea, has a few subspecies which are processed in generally four varieties, depending on the level of oxidization: white, green, oolong, and black. The quality of the leaves range from whole tips and leaves to powdered dust. Tea degrades in light and moisture. Otherwise, there is great diversity of flavour, colour, feel, scent, texture, and other subjective attributes.
Choosing a tea
Price is a poor gauge of quality or likely preference. My every day ‘table’ oolong from Fujian is half the price of a popular but inferior grade tea (purportedly from either France or Russia) and a seventh of the cost of a famous Wudong oolong I find nearly undrinkable. My absolute favourite oolong from Taiwan is priced somewhere between the latter two.
| price of most recently purchased teas, from least to most appreciated |
| least appreciated |
$ / 100g |
most appreciated |
| 7 |
76 |
17 |
47 |
11 |
11 |
16 |
28 |
20 |
38 |
Find the tea variety you like best. Let me suggest some starting points. Silver Needle is the finest white tea by definition, otherwise White Peony is a fine choice. Gyokuro is the best Japanese green, but Sencha is the cheaper gold standard. Oolongs range anywhere between flowery perfume to rich caramel roasts. Wuyi Oolong (at 85 C) is my benchmark for all teas. Similarly, there is an enormous variety of black teas, from the light (technically oolong) Darjeeling to Keemun, Assam, and finally the powerful (almost fishy) shu pu’erh.
To understand teas, you must resist the temptation to cloak tea in scents, fruits, or oils. If your tea is unpalatable without sugar then (A) your tea sucks, (B) you’ve stewed it too hot, or (C) you don’t actually like tea.
Preparing tea
For sampling teas, I recommend the Gongfu Cha Dao method (yeah, that’s right, the kungfu of tea). While the Japanese, British, and others have ritualized tea making and pomp, only the Chinese ceremony focuses on flavour above all else.
Until you’re a black belt kungfu tea master, you will require a thermometer, timer and a kettle. Additionally, kungfu tea requires a tiny teapot (1-2 dL), a cooling pitcher, small cups, and of course crisp spring water and fine tea leaves. The Taiwanese introduce a few other tools, though I insist only on a fair pitcher. If you’ve got a catching tray, lucky you; I use four plates on which I have a yixing teapot, two matching pitchers and on the last plate, four small thin wide cups.
I pour hot (nearly boiling) water into the empty teapot and cooling pitcher. I place the thermometer into the cooling pitcher and wait for the appropriate temperature for the particular tea leaves (If I loose my zen, I may transfer some water between cups to accelerate the cooling process). When the temperature of the water in the cooling pitcher is almost perfect, I start boiling some more water and pour the teapot water evenly into the cups. In other words, get everything hot and slowly cool down.
I add the leaves to the teapot. Now the cycle begins.
I immediately pour the water from the cooling pitcher to the teapot (and tea). I set the timer (in reality, I just glance at the music player). I then refill the cooling pitcher with a fresh splash of nearly boiling water.
This last step is tricky and is what makes this something of an art. You want the cooling water to reach the perfect temperature at the same moment the tea has completed steeping. It’s actually a bit more complex than that; You don’t want to keep water perpetually boiling because it will loose oxygen and become flat, so you’ve got to sync the boiling, cooling, and steeped tea. This is kungfu, remember.
Anyway, once the tea has steeped at the perfect temperature for the perfect amount of time, pour your perfect tea from the teapot to the fair pitcher. Pour the perfectly warm water from the cooling pitcher to the teapot. Set the timer. Pour the tea from the fair pitcher to the emptied warm cups. Pour nearly boiling water from the kettle to the cooling pitcher. Enjoy your tea. Repeat.
To maximize this perfect absurdity, check out the Taiwanese additions which include scent cups. Each video on the net is worse than the next. Best of luck!
