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!
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 😭
@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)
@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?
@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.
@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?
Sini Tuulia
Matt Wilcox
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