Contradiction

A puzzlement.

All my long tea-drinking life, I had read and heard that tea leaves perform best when unencumbered by tea balls or small insert-infusers. (I guess that's also why infusers themselves seem to have gotten larger over the years.)

Then I discovered gongfu, which blatantly goes against this theory, and doesn't give the leaves much expansion room. And some of those yixing pots are no bigger than a teaball anyway.

So, as an experiment, I repotted some well-spent gongfu'ed oolong leaves into a new pot and tried rebrewing them with plenty of expansion room, to see if there was more flavor locked away that hadn't been unleashed. Nope.

Does this mean there's less reason to follow the aforementioned "rule?" Have we been lied to by The Man?

Just interested in your comments. And apologies if I've overlooked something that makes this a dumb question.

Joe

Reply to
Joseph Kubera
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On 13 Oct 2003, Joseph Kubera posted the following to rec.food.drink.tea:

My experience with teaballs and the like is that small infusion tools keep the leaves in the middle from really contributing to the steep. That is, the exterior leaves give their all, but the good stuff from the interior leaves gets trapped. So a normal steep time provides a weaker tea. And if I extend the time to compensate, the tea loses quality and doesn't taste right.

On the other hand, I have never found a difference between steeping in a pot and straining it versus using a significantly sized infuser. As long as all the dissolved components get a chance to "participate" in the final product, I can't tell the difference.

But then, I also find that larger infusers are just ever so much easier to clean than tea balls to begin with - or is that the end?

And I've only had the pleasure of experiencing Gungfu once - so I can't really speak to that.

Derek

Reply to
Derek

I think Derek's explanation is basically the argument for "elbow room." Those of us who spent much time in biochemistry and physiology classes may remember that the rate of diffusion of a substance (in this case the various compounds in the tea leaf) is directly proportional to the difference in concentration, in this case between the leaf and the surrounding water. If the tea is in leaf form and has more room to expand, more leaf surface area is exposed and the compounds get to diffuse into the water at a faster pace than they would if the leaves did not get a chance for good exposure with the water and the compounds did not get an opportunity to diffuse out into the surrounding water. Now, how important longer and short steeping times may be probably differs based on the type of tea, the diffusion rates of the different compounds and your personal taste. And how important relatively small differences in "leaf compression" may be I have no idea.

Of course, this suggests that the issue is probably much less important for teas that are cut to a greater degree since they have more surface area to begin with.

I think many of the issues we discuss here are more closely related to subjective tastes than anything else. For example, I personally find that the flavor of a good darjeeling improves somewhat if the poured tea sits in the cup or mug for 10-15 minutes before drinking. That may due to the fact that some substances develop as the tea cools. It could also be that my taste buds are better with slightly cooler rather than hotter liquids. Some of you may think this observation is nuts.

For me, all of these issues are interesting, but they pale against my realization, a few years ago, that there is an entire delicious world beyond grocery store tea bags. I own two different pots, two different infusers, a thermometer and a digital timer. I pay some attention to preparation issues, but they seem less important than issues of personal taste and my original foray into loose teas and the realization that "I ain't in Kansas anymore."

Warren

Reply to
Warren C. Liebold

On 13 Oct 2003, Warren C. Liebold posted the following to rec.food.drink.tea:

Yep. That's pretty much it. I used to use a tea ball, and unless I stood their dunking it up and down during the steep, I got really bad teas. I didn't know much at the time, but I knew this.

Unless there is room for difusion, you just don't get good tea.

Nah. I think it shows that you pay attention and know what you like. I happen to prefer my 3-minute teas steeped for 2.5 minutes. I dont' know if it's because I use more leaf than I should or what, but there is a distinct drinkability difference in that extra 30 seconds.

I SO very much agree with this paragraph. My enjoyment went up when I discovered that one could buy loose leaf tea instead of bags, and that one didn't have to get this from a shop where the tea was infused with the aroma of a certain bean.

What's really scarry is that I got my wife hooked just as badly as I am. :)

Derek

Reply to
Derek

[snip]

Warren, I'm with you on this. Darjeeling is my hands-down favorite tea, and I find that the flavor is enhanced if it cools a bit. I'd assumed, as you suggested, that my ability to taste (or smell, actually) some of the more subtle nuances was suppressed if the temperature was too high. On the other hand, cold Darjeeling is not as flavorful as warm to mildly hot.

As a side note, have you ever noticed that if you make a pot of Darjeeling (especially first flush, which tend to produce a very pale liquor), drink some, come back an hour or two later to pour another cup that the second cup is darker than the first? Sometimes I notice that the flavor is slightly different, too. Can brewed tea "oxidize", just like the leaves?

Regards, Dean

Reply to
Dean Macinskas

I too think tea tastes better if allowed to cool a bit, even delicate green teas brewed at below-boiling temp to begin with. I tend also to let most foods cool down before eating for the same reason. Piping hot or icy cold seems to be the goal in US restaurants -- possibly for bacterial concerns -- but you'll often find tepid food served to you in Japan if the chef deems it correct.

--crymad

Reply to
crymad

Well, things have diverged a bit since my original post, and It's certainly true that in the bigger picture, we're grateful to have excellent loose-leaf tea and brewing methods available. And I, too, have noticed flavor enhancement in tea that's been allowed to cool.

But if I may bring things back around, why does gongfu tea with high leaf-to-water ratio taste better than leaf compressed in a teaball, given the same degree of compression and water contact? Could it be that there's _so much_ more water in the teaball scenario?

Joe

Reply to
Joseph Kubera

"Joseph Kubera" asked:

Is it really the same degree of compression and water contact? I don't have a lot of experience with gongfu use, but I thought tea balls end up compressing the leaves much more.

Warren

Reply to
Warren C. Liebold

"Dean Macinskas" asked:

I'm certainly not an expert on tea chemistry, but it seems very likely that some of the componants of tea are pretty volatile, and some may develop through the steeping process, so you'd expect that what you're tasting right after steeping, after 15 minutes, after two hours and after six hours should be different.

I used to use a one-quart pot but now I use a four-cup Chatsford pot. I drink one potful with breakfast and then I do a second steeping and place it in the fridge for iced tea with dinner (so you can measure my addiction at 8 cups a day). The aged, colder tea never tastes as good as the fresh brew, but it's still pretty good. But it's clearly missing several levels of taste that were part of the tea when fresh. I think that's one of the reasons people often recommend preparing ice tea hot, allowing it to cool at room temp and then adding ice at serving time, instead of refrigerating the tea to cool it. Refrigerated aging changes the tea.

Anyway, that's my experience.

Warren

Reply to
Warren C. Liebold

BTW, I haven't been able to find anything easily accessible on tea chemistry and this:

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goes under the category, "Hey I Took a Lot of Chemistry in College But I Still Only Understand Ten of the Nouns in This Article"

Warren

Reply to
Warren C. Liebold

Maybe so. Another way of putting it is that in a gongfu pot all the liquor is in direct contact with leaf whereas with a teaball some of the liquor is pretty remote from the nearest leaf. I don't want to pretend to understand the physics and chemistry of steeping, but surely once a certain amount of the Good Stuff (note technical term here) exits a leaf it doesn't immediately disperse all the way to the periphery of the brewing vessel.

/Lew

Reply to
Lewis Perin

I usually prepare several rounds of gongfu tea per day and I've only rarely had leaves that didn't unfurl even using tightly scrunched up teas like tiguanyin and buddha's palm. While I'm not sure why the leaves aren't as compressed as with a tea ball, I do know that they aren't. My vote goes to the water:tea ration hypothesis, though.

Cameron

Reply to
Cameron Lewis

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