Sini TuuliaMar 13

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

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 Tuulia
@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!
Mar 13 at 12:20pmWeb
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. 😆