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 ðŸ˜
@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)
Sini Tuulia
Matt Wilcox