208 vs 190 degree Fahrenheit water ...

That's good to know. I've been doing under 200 for my oolongs. Toci

I always use boiling water for tea. I think greens and oolongs taste better at moderate temperatures but that has no relation to brewing. If you use glass pot and glass it'll cool down fast enough. You'll get an edge from green tea that you can't get with any other temperature. These days I want a punch from any tea I drink. I've given up on nuances. If the leaf is larger than BOP I'm drinking it off the top these days. I pay my respect to the tea by tossing down a couple of leaves.

Jim

SN wrote:

I brew my green oolongs around 195, however if I am using an oolong that is darker with the long twisted leaves, in order to enjoy the stronger fired flavour I definately run a little hotter. It also depends how the quality is. normally I find the higher the quality the more forgiving the brew is, you can go up to ten minutes steeping and go even higher on the heat. All boils down to ones tatse requirements are. Maurice

I dunno, I have some oolongs for which 190 is too hot. And others for which it's not hot enough, too.

--scott

That am funny because these days I use very low temp for all brewing, even blacks. I do about 160 for greens, 180 for oolongs and 200 for blacks. To me the resulting flavors are much more pleasant and I can drink the tea immediately.

In the immortal words of Larry Wall, "There's more than one way to do it."

More specifically, any decent tea will have a whole gang of nice qualities - that's why you *like* it - and it's very improbable that the whole bunch can be maximized by one brewing setup. So, basically, any brewing temperature will be a compromise. I may go for months happily brewing a given tea the same way each time, but then I feel a longing for the other taste or aroma I know I can get from it with, say, a different temperature.

But congratulations, SN, on finding a setup that causes your tea to give you much more pleasure!

/Lew

Not only that, but "oolong" describes a pretty broad spectrum of teas, which range widely in terms of oxidation / roasting / age / etc. For a highly oxidized / roasted oolong, many people would want to use hotter water than for a really green one.

I usually use boiling or just-off-a-boil water for the first brew of almost all oolongs to open up the leaves. I remember being surprised the first time I saw someone do this with a pretty green oolong, because I'd always heard it's better to stay around 185-190F.

Often, I use cooler water after that, either because I'm too lazy to reheat my water or because it tastes better.

w

I'm with Will--boiling water on oolongs to open the leaves up, then once they have opened a little (the leaves tend to have the beginnings of a softer texture) I use slightly cooler water. And I try a range of temperatures if I'm feeling experimental. Once the leaves start getting towards the edge of spent I use hotter water.

I th> >

That sounds pretty familar. For the last 12 or more months I´ve been mainly living on stout Assams/Eastfrisian blends, single estate Ceylons and broken -brrrisk- Darjeelings with the odd fancy high-grade DJ or Oolong thrown in for a change of pace. While I use a rolling boil for Assams I´m still picky [read: neurotic] with the temperature for my DJs, always eager to get the maximum flavor out of each one of them, each and every time. One thing I learned from the Friesen which I found makes a real difference is not to add all water at once, but to prepare an extract in your prewarmed pot [keep that pot/water sufficiently hot at all times]. Just take enough boiling water to cover the leaves, let steep and finally add the remaining water. I´m slowly adapting this technique to other blacks, even DJs with interesting results. Whatever I tried so far, I get different flavor spectrums compared to conventional steeping. While not all teas I´ve tried seem to benefit from it, almost all Assams and Ceylons I´ve tried, and even some of my beloved DJs do.

I can´t say that for myself, except that I´m even less interested in delicate greens or anything even remotely watery.

Karsten [Managama Ceylon in tazza]

Sorry, I'm not quite clear about this. Add the remaining water to the steeping leaves, or add the remaining water to what you might call the zavarka (the concentrated liquor previously poured off)?

/Lew

I used hot boiling water for oolong too especiall wuyi oolong. I did tried brewing long jing with hot boiling water but very short infusion time like 8-10 seconds. It didnt taste bitter. But if you steep longer yes it does taste bitter. So it my short brewing method for green tea with hot boiling water.

Lewis Perin snipped-for-privacy@panix.com replied:

Lew, I thought the standard samovar usage was to have the zavarka, with leaves, in the top pot (chainik) and boiling water (kipyatok) in the urn beneath? If for some reason I were doing this with Darjeeling then I would definitely want to pour the zavarka into a third container after a minute or two, but this would constitute a samovariation on the usual practice. That's why we need a nice mellow stew-resistant tea (Dilmah is a good brand).

More generally, I like this strategy. Right now I am drinking a delicate ti Kuan Yin from a guywan which I refill with boiling water when maybe 20% of the liquid is remaining.

Best,

Rick.

I haven't actually seen a samovar in action, but I just reread the "How to make it" section of the Russian Tea HOWTO, and you're right. I'd forgotten that, and I was thinking of the zavarka (tea concentrate) as having been poured off.

I'm not sure that's actually the same strategy. In your gaiwan the leaves will cool down a lot before you've drunk 80% of the liquor. Similarly, the remaining, cooled liquor, not to mention the cooled mass of leaves, will moderate the effect of the boiling water you add. By contrast, the samovarian leaves continue to cook at a high temperature.

/Lew

I find this surprising. To me, water anywhere near boiling makes greens and lightly fermented oolongs taste like overcooked chard. And once that state is reached, all later steeps have the taint. I use cooler water for tightly fisted teas, only increasing when the leaves are all the way open and fully hydrated.

-DM

actually that was the thing, it was with a green oolong

, and there wasnt even mild astringency. another greenish one i just tried with didnt make much of a difference. on a dancong it made the flavor just a little stronger. maybe i should test the water temp with a thermometer, maybe its not even 200F.