Sini Tuulia

Last night in a bout of insomnia I watched a bunch of different tea ceremony videos, both Chinese and Japanese. Today, staring into space in my kitchen, decided I'd make a quick cup of tea, just bung some into a tea ball and dunk in hot water... Except! I did the Gongfu Cha brewing thing where you "rinse" the leaves with hot water, to get rid of harsh tannins and ritually purify crud off the leaves.

And wow it's so much nicer, I've been making tea wrong my entire life!

#Tea #ChineseBlackTea

Mar 13 at 12:17pmWeb
Show threadSini TuuliaMar 13
It's not like this rather nice fancy Yunnan Golden Needle was terrible before, but with the rinse? Literally just pouring hot water on it, then pouring that away, and only then actually brewing the tea?
Oh, it's so smooth and full and almost sweet. It's so much nicer!
Show threadSini TuuliaMar 13

Oh my GOD. Made a nice quick cup of some reasonably fancy Pai Mu Tan, which has been one of my favourite mild white teas.

It tastes so much more like tea! The leaf! An aroma!

Truly I've been fucking up uncountable cups and pots of tea in my life before this revelation, my apologies to all the leaves I've disgraced thus far 😭

Show threadMatt WilcoxMar 13
@sinituulia You made me go look up The Thing, and now I am wondering about trying "proper tea" again, having experimented with it many years ago with many types... and ultimately finding them too bitter or too watery.
Show threadSini TuuliaMar 13

@mattwilcox Based on my very limited experiments I'd say that they're going to be less bitter and more potent if you give them a nice little bath first, that seems to be the trend. But even then there's a lot of room for taste, I don't like every very good tea I've tried no matter how much it cost. 😆

(At least Chinese tea, apparently you're not supposed to wash Japanese tea, I'm not an expert, I just like tea)

Show thread🇨🇦🇩🇪🇨🇳张殿李🇨🇳🇩🇪🇨🇦Mar 13
@sinituulia The wash is the most critical part of tea, in my experience. How much of a wash varies by tea (a Dianhong like yours doesn't take much of one) but I've never met a tea that wasn't improved by a wash.
Show threadSini TuuliaMar 13

@ZDL I've only ever looked into Japanese green tea, and while there's warming up the teapot and pouring the tea out so the different saturations even out in the cup (the spout has weaker tea at first etc.) and such, there's no wash involved! I didn't know! 😭

I've met a couple of nice black teas and plenty of cheap ones that would certainly benefit from the wash. The more delicate ones the difference would probably be subtle but still noticeable 🤔 I assume white, yellow and oolong would still enjoy a wash?

Show thread🇨🇦🇩🇪🇨🇳张殿李🇨🇳🇩🇪🇨🇦Mar 13

@sinituulia I'm drinking an aged white right now.

I washed it. (Just the pour and toss variety, like your Dianhong.)

Some of the fresher, stronger greens need as much as a 10-15 second initial brew that you then toss.

Show threadSini TuuliaMar 13
@ZDL Thoughtfully nodding. I'm going to have to experiment with the varieties I currently have. There's a bunch of sample sizes I wasn't planning getting more of, I might like a couple of them more than I originally did with this new knowledge
Show threadSini TuuliaMar 13

@ZDL Tea traditions question, related but not:

At the end of one video they were advertising different classes for tea ceremonies, and the classes were divided between young women, ladies, young men and gentlemen, with no further explanations about it. Is that just so people attending classes can be with peers, or are there different ways to make tea depending on who you are?

Show thread🇨🇦🇩🇪🇨🇳张殿李🇨🇳🇩🇪🇨🇦Mar 13
@sinituulia I ... honestly don't know. It might be a combination of these.
Show threadAdrianoMar 13
@sinituulia curious: is this taking the dried tea leaves, rinsing them for a few seconds in boiling? warm? hot? water, then brewing in boiling water, right?
Show threadSini TuuliaMar 13
@adriano Yup!
The fancy way is putting the tea leaves in the pot, gently pouring on hot water, leaving for a little bit and pouring all of the water out... And then putting in more hot water for the exact right amount of time before serving. But yeah. Just give it a quick rinse!
Show threadAdrianoMar 13
@sinituulia My brewing process is... basically the opposite of a tea ceremony. A tea desecration, almost. But it is still refreshing cold tea.
Show threadSini TuuliaMar 13
@adriano I'm either thoughtfully making a full pot of tea or slapping a teabag into a mug. Turns out there's a middle of the road option available to me
Show threadSini TuuliaMar 13

@adriano There's obviously whatever suggested brewing temperatures for different kinds of teas, but generally anything between real real hot but not quite boiling and really rather hot is fine.

There's only a couple of fine Japanese green teas that will get ruined by anything above 50-60C, but likely you'll know what you're doing if you're buying those. 😆

Show threadRay McCarthyMar 13
@sinituulia
It also is alleged to reduce the tea equivalent of caffeine a bit as it's very soluble?
Show threadSini TuuliaMar 13
@raymaccarthy I don't know, might very well be! Certainly something gets washed off with the rinse water. Whatever parts of my sensing apparatuses that detect caffeine/theanine seem to like the washed tea quite a bit, my brain enjoys caffeine a lot
Show threadgemelenMar 13
@sinituulia
It's not "wrong" way, only optimized for different things - tea was more expensive, lesser quantity was used that required longer steeps, and no exposure for customs evolved in the region of origin.
Also, rinsing the "black" tea isn't that important as for other types (at times it's not even recommended for a high quality ones).
If you're interested, there is a tea community here, come visit at !@tea
Show threadSini TuuliaMar 13

@gemelen I consider it wrong if it yields worse results than doing it "right" in this instance 😄 There's always many ways to do a given thing, sometimes one is superior! I have a very very sensitive nose and palate and it seems at least Chinese tea for me might indeed be better if washed. I don't think I'd need to wash this one pu'erh I like, it's so so smooth and strong with nothing done to it already... But wow, the results on just these two teas I tried it with? Remarkable.

I may well check the group out!