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

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!
@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.

@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 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

@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?

@sinituulia I ... honestly don't know. It might be a combination of these.