Happy New Year, all. Allow me to begin this one with a few skeptical (as distinct from cynical) thoughts on brewing. Long-post alert; please trim largely if replying.
There's an old saying that there are two kinds of people: the righteous and the unrighteous. And the righteous decide which is which. Hoping to avoid that trap, I'd like to observe that there are two kinds of tea aficionados: those who like to be very precise in all their manipulations, and those who are (or appear to be) casual or even sloppy. The first kind further divide into those who use scientific tools like digital scales, thermometers and timers, and those who find precision in ritual, counting breaths, reciting mantras, etc. The second also divide, into those who use a combination of experience and sensory signals to provide needed cues for a behavioral precision, and those who just like to see what emerges by happenstance.
I suggest that all four groups have exactly as much fun, enjoy their tea to the same degree, and make equally fine company. They may also have equivalent tacit knowledge of tea, though perhaps not the same ability to express it explicitly.
The largest difference, in fact, may lie in what used to be called "the story" and has now been elevated to "narrative." This is where myth and magic come in. I suggest that as working definitions, myth is a body of formal knowledge that may once or somewhere have been true, but that is largely or entirely untrue here and now, or at least not reproducibly true across situations. Magic is narrative about why and how things work, told so compellingly that it influences what people experience irrespective of what's in their cups. (And both often use the language of science, though not its data, methods or epistemology.) Both have roots in testable fact, but have become remote from any kind of causal proof, reproducibility, or mechanistic basis. Examples could include the injunction to match pot and leaf shape (come on!), the compelling effect of certain clays or metals (just throw an old silver spoon or shards of a dropped Yixing into a glass pot, and save a few shekels), or the mid-infrared emissivity of some magical charcoal (first wash off the clay, dirt and ash, then draw conclusions about operationally irrelevant subtleties).
So are fact and science better? Better for what? We (most of us) are not trying to create the next encyclopedia of tea truth, just to share what brings us pleasure. And on the way, compare notes on what leaf and equipment from what vendors, and what methods applied in what circumstances, and narratives about it all seem to make us the happiest. Sometimes the tenets of science serve us well: propose, test and confirm or falsify hypotheses, run controlled experiments with managed parameters, document both apparent conclusions and nulls or noise. This quickly brings us to some generally (not universally!) held heuristics, like using cooler water for greens and boiling for reds, ways to maintain freshness, what regions and packers and times of year most reliably produce the best teas. But even these aren't absolute; witness certain discussions about cupping all teas at the boil, or the definitive superiority of FF DJs, or the persistent canards about water source, freshness and other aspects.
From my point of view as student (and occasionally teacher), the important meta-learning for all on the path is that almost all tea "knowledge" is only situationally useful - and that establishing one's own tastes and pleasures is the most urgent task, after which refinement, broadening and deepening will happen anyway. In other words, take everything as a guide, and almost nothing as a rule.
For quite a few years, I've been on a private quest to determine some of the key parameters of brewing technique that lead to more useful real-life control than usual instruction offers. The purpose, per the four categories above, is not rigor, but just some idea of where best to play. A life in the lab notwithstanding, I almost never use measurement equipment of any kind in brewing. But I still seek ever-more precise distinctions in aroma, appearance and other signals to guide getting the best of each steep.
This quest has led to some categories on which many of us have already written. A few I'm still exploring (and on which I'd welcome others' thoughts) include:
- The irreversibilities: over-ripening, over-roasting, over-aging, overheating and oversteeping.
- The non-reciprocity between steeping time and brewing temperature.
- The effects of steeping time vs. intersteep time in gongfu, and the interactions of common ritual or quasi-technical activities (e.g. deliberately incomplete draining) with both.
- Distinguishing between the effects of brewing and drinking temperatures.
- Distinguishing the effects of enzymic reactions before kill-green (so-called fermentation) from those of roasting, and both in turn from passive chemical oxidation and microbial/fungal action, especially with Pu-erh and other "live" teas.
One specific question in this portfolio is how far to break down pieces of cake when brewing. This mainly applies to Pu-erh, but numerous other fine teas are likewise available in pressed form. There seem to be three main schools of thought on this:
- Neatly pry off one intact chunk and drop it in the gaiwan or pot complete.
- Take it apart it up somewhat, either a random mix of large and small pieces as it breaks, or a careful division into smaller chunks of roughly equal size.
- Complete dissection almost into individual leaves, usually with care to avoid breaking them if possible. (Or, in some cases, including some deliberate fragmentation.)
There's no doubt that these produce different results. Perhaps the simplest model has each leaf or fragment leaching out at some rate once it is exposed to water. (The real situation is much more complicated and interesting as extraction rates depend strongly on leaf hydration in several ways, some non-linear or history-dependent.)
If uniformly divided single leaves are well-mixed with water, the amount of material extracted per unit time will follow some kind of curve that increases rapidly with hydration and temperature, then tapers off at some rate depending on various binding, solvation and diffusion effects. So the uniformly divided leaf offers a sort of baseline of what the tea "ideally" delivers over time under a particular set of conditions.
Having the leaf pressed into lumps can then be understood as overlapping the same curve repeatedly, smeared over time: when the first-wet leaf is completely depleted, there is also material just "peaking" and some in its first extraction. In certain cases, each steep in the middle of a long series might resemble the result of pouring all into one mixing vessel, or of doing a single long steep with all of the leaf divided.
As some of us have found, though, this is not generally a good description of the experience. Key factors probably include the widely variant rate of extraction of sugars and simple amino acids vs. more highly condensed polyphenols, and flavor fatigue and thresholds. The latter leads into the whole area of flavor balance vs. concentration (which lends itself to some easy and revelatory dilution experiments), another very import reciprocity failure in brewing. Those who regularly use gongfu approaches with young sheng Pu-erh and dan cong oolongs are especially aware of how small changes in multi-steep timing can transform astringent mouthwash into nectar.
My own interest in this area arose from experiences with really well-aged (in time and technique) sheng Pu-erhs, between 30 and 100 years old. The whole flavor-profile-with-dilution effect really came forward, as the older teas tend to extract very quickly at the beginning and then keep yielding appealing brews over twenty or even thirty subsequent steeps.
My question was/is whether the power of the early steeps might be carried over into those following, without compromising the smooth delicacy of the latter. Not being economically equipped to do a full experimental series with 1950s Blue Label, I've mostly been playing with bingcha in the 10-year range. The game goes like this: break up the cake into small flakes, steep a few times, then start adding small pinches of fresh dry leaf every few rounds.
The results have been variable but compelling. In many cases, I've been able to get strength and smoothness in pleasing collaboration. This makes a case for starting with large chunks and letting matters unfold as they will, but I've found this to yield poor control - often too-rapid wetting of the whole mass, without the later boost; or too slow, with fresh leaf always overpowering the quieter late notes. So I'm starting to do the add-a-pinch routine more often.
Although this works pretty well with my favorite oolongs as well, I've mainly been testing the approach with Pu-erhs. Another observation in this class is that *small* amounts of shu pu-erh can work very well with a sheng base. Since shus continue to extract almost forever, this lends credibility to the practice of mixing sheng and shu in a single cake. But my limited experience suggests that the ratio as supplied is way off optimal; the smoothest sheng-like experience seems to happen with only a few percent of shu added.
All early results. Your mouthfeel may vary. I hope some here will add their own greater wisdom.
Salubrious sipping to all-
DM