I tried the recommended brewing parameters (2.25g/cup, 212°, 3:00). Bitter, astringent, undrinkable. I tried various strengths all the way down to just over 1g/cup and various steep times down to 1:00. The best combination was 1.5g/cup, 212°, 2:00, but that was not that good.
I almost put it away for another day when I decided to try it at a cooler temperature. I just tried a pot at 1.5 g/cup, 180°, 2:00. What a difference. No bitterness, no aftertaste, and very little astringency. This is still not a tea that will be one of my favorites, but it's certainly drinkable. I'll do a bit more experimenting.
If you want to experiment some more, you might want to try it hotter than 180F, maybe around 195 or 200, with much more leaf and *much* shorter steeps, starting at 10 or 15 seconds. In other words, treat it like an oolong using gongfu techniques. A good Darjeeling might give you 5 or 6 enjoyable steeps that way, each one different.
Triple or quadruple, seriously. But I imagine you would need to switch to a smaller brewing vessel; you're brewing multiple 6-oz. cups at a time right now, aren't you? A gaiwan would be ideal for this.
It depends. I have a small thermos (500 ml / 2.8 cups) and a large thermos (1200 ml / 6.8 cups). I brew in an ingenuitea (~850 ml).
When I am experimenting, I use the small thermos. I have a mark on the side of the ingenuitea that just fills the small thermos. I can make several pots of 2-3 cups in a day.
Once I find a set of parameters I like, I make the large thermos and drink from it for several hours. I fill the ingenuitea to the top, then fill the thermos with hot water to get the right concentration.
For this experiment, I'd use the small thermos and just leave the leaves in the ingenuitea in between pots.
I got through 4 steeps today. I had a day of desk work, so I brewed a new pot about every 2-3 hours. Still, that was a lot of liquid. ;-)
I hadn't. It hasn't sat in a thermos for more than a couple of hours so far because I was still experimenting, so only brewed 2-3 cups, which I usually finished fairly quickly. This is my first Darjeeling. I had read that many found it an acquired taste, so I put off trying it.
Maybe this was part of the problem. Maybe not. The later pots were, if anything, mostly milder.
I weighed 16.9 grams of the Darjeeling mentioned above into my ingenuitea and added 500 ml of water at 200°. That works out to about
5 g/cup.
The first steep was for about 10 seconds. It was probably closer to
15-20 as it took about 5 seconds for the ingenuitea to drain into the thermos. I left the wet leaves in the ingenuitea with the lid closed. (I didn't get your warning until well after I started.)
Steep #1 tasted about like the pot I made at 1.5 g/cup at 180° for
2:00. There was no bitterness and only the slightest hint of astringency.
Steep #2 was for about 20 seconds. This pot seemed a little bitter, but not that different from #1.
Steep #3 was for about 30 seconds. I could not tell much difference from #2.
Steep #4 was for about 40 seconds. This was the best of the 4 pots, but still not a tea I would prefer. It was slightly milder.
I fear my palate is too unsophisticated to discern the subtleties here. I have found that I am beginning to notice more nuances, but the differences are subtle. I find the same thing with wine. I just can't tell that much difference.
Anyway, thanks for the suggestion. It was an interesting experiment. I'll try it again when I have the time.
Is this something I can do with any tea or does it work best with certain types?
Why stop at 180F? Except for old-style (more fermented) Darjeelings, whose belated return to commerce is much appreciated, I find most teas from this area too astringent - and lacking body to withstand mollifying milk. Short-steep techniques help, but that's not how I like to drink Indian teas.
In preparation for sultry summer, I've been extending previous experiments with room-temperature brewing. One certainly gets a different flavor profile, but it's often good. An illustrative example is dan cong oolongs, which are nasty if over-steeped, unbalanced if conventionally brewed at moderate temperatures, do nicely in gong-fu, and also work well at room temperature. There seems to be a "valley of death" in the tepid zone.
I've found much the same for greener Darjeelings, and am now cool-brewing them regularly. Just load up a big gaiwan with 8-10 g of leaf, and run it all day with steeps increasing from a minute to an hour as it depletes. Every steep good, all different. Cool-fu?
A caveat: at least to my taste, any stale notes come through more strongly under these conditions. I've been lightly re-roasting older samples under an IR flood lamp just before brewing; this seems to help.
About 6 oz. It's one of those superb handcrafted Ming-era antiques available at Kam Man in NYC for $2.95. (I had one of their fancier $3.95 ones, but gave it away.)
RT. I'm partway into a crossover experiment with cold-brewing and reheating, hot-brewing and cooling, and comparing with as-brewed in each case. For a number of types, heating cool-brewed tea seems to make an infusion that's inferior to both cold-cold and hot-hot. But maybe it's just unfamiliarity.
Heck of a lot easier to clean. That's why I use a gaiwan, when a glass pot would be so much more fun to watch.
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