I've been throwing away GOOD TEA. Did I miss something in the FAQ? I must have, 'cause I had no idea you could steep Yin Hao more than once. Now I discover that if I boil the water and let sit to cool for 5-6 minutes (on a different burner) and do my first steep for 3 minutes, I can set the tea leaves aside and do a second steep for 5-6 minutes with boiling water. Tastes just as good as the first steep. Wow. I guess even the totally ignorant can learn something every now and then.
Question for the group: I saw a tin of tea at the local Chinese grocery that identified itself as Ti Kuan Yin (I think.) The lady there said that tin was the best of that type of tea. What is this tea like? I am in love with Yin Hao, but not too narrow-minded to wonder about other teas. Life is an experiment.
Good Te Guan Yin is a wonderful oolong, top notch. However if the quality of the leaves is not good, so is the tea. The prices for TGY may vary from hundreds of $$ /lb to just few $$. So is the tea. I saw recently a huge (several pounds)can of TGY sold for 6 bucks. Garbage tea. But there are several ways you can make a judgment on tea quality - good TGY must have its leaves tight in a small "ball" which has to unfold in water into a "three-leaf". It should not contain broken leaf and the unfolded leaves should be sturdy, leathery and have a dark green color with brownish lining. But the final and most important test is the scent. If I were you I would try to get several good samples from a known vendor first, just to get an idea. These are just guidelines, however the main rule stays - if you like the tea, that's the tea for you.
That, BTW is true for all teas. You can buy Long Jin for couple of bucks and for couple of hundred bucks - both will be Long Jin and these will be very, very different teas.
Wow. Thanks for the info. This same store has a 1 lb tin of the same type tea for +/- $100. I'll try to check out a few samples to get an idea of what it's like.
I strongly advise you not to boil your water, whatever tea you're brewing, and always drawing fresh water for each infusion. Boiling water drives off the dissolved oxygen and it's that oxygen that aids brewing and gives the tea its "brightness". Bring the water to the desired temperature (which can be anywhere from 60 to 95 degrees C depending on the tea) rather than boil and cool down.
Good Yin Hao works well with water as low as 60 degrees for the first infusion (a couple of minutes is enough), notched up by 5 degrees and 30 seconds for each subsequent infusion.
Your input is appreciated, but if I don't heat the water considerably than you describe the tea is (to me) quite weak. I did start out something like that, but it seems I like strong flavors. Just today tried adding sweetener to my tea, and am currently somewhere between earth and heaven. Will admit, however, it doesn't have the same "Zen" effect (at least to me.)
Will consider what you offer. I'm still learning.
Dave snipped-for-privacy@hotmail.com
When in trouble Or in doubt Run in circles Scream and shout.
I have read some research into the effect of oxygen on tea infusion and tomorrow I'll look up the references for you.
In the meantime you may like to try a subjective test. Boil some water and let it cool. Pour into a glass. Pour another glass of freshly drawn cold water. Which tastes better? Ask yourself why there's a difference ...
Well I promised a longer reply, so here it is. Apart from the subjective tests you can do yourself, there is a wealth of knowledge available to you from the tea industry (not forgetting thousands of years of Chinese tea knowledge and hundreds of years of developed tea culture). Some may not know why tea tastes better brewed in a particular way, but their palates and noses (much more acute than ours) tell them what works.
This is no different than that other great field of part science / part art that is food. Noone has to understand the chemical and physical processes of cooking to know what works. It's not necessary to understand the interactions between rosemary and lamb to know that the combination is greater than the sum of the parts, or to know the processes that cause fish to be "cooked" by lemon juice. Generations of chefs find out what works by repeated trying (and often failing) to make better tasting food and we all benefit from their example.
The ancient great tea masters had no idea that water contains dissolved oxygen, but they did know that water has a huge effect on the tea. Not too surprising - tea is mostly water after all. Probably the greatest of them all, Lu Yu, was so aware of the importance of water that a good chunk of the Cha Jing is devoted to it and a later work was entirely about water sources. It was his efforts that gave us the the first hints of how to prepare tea properly.
Turning to the modern scientific evidence, there are plenty of scientists interested in the health benefits of tea and the effect of active ingredients, but the actual brewing process has been largely left to the artists. Probably the most committed has been Dr Andrew Stapley, a chemical engineer and member of the Institute of Food Science and Technology, formerly of Cambridge and Birmingham and now a lecturer at Loughborough University. His paper, ''Modelling the kinetics of tea and coffee infusion'' published in the Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture, 8214, 2002,
1661-1671, ISSN 0022-5142, deals with many aspects of making a decent brew. There's much about the great British "milk in first or last" debate, but also the part played by oxygenated water. His paper was announced by the Royal Society of Chemistry
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and you can download the bullet points from the press release at
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If you'd like to get hold of the original paper try Loughborough Department of Chemical Engineering at
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Ultimately tea drinking is about pleasure and taking the time to contemplate and no amount of scientific analysis will add to your enjoyment.
Oxygen starts to come out of solution around 160F when bubbles start to form at the bottom of the pot as nucleation sites for boiling. The boiling itself scrubs the water of dissolved oxygen while decreasing its solubility.
I believe there is some credibility to the claim that boil> I have read some research into the effect of oxygen on tea infusion and
"Properly" is a relative term, or should be. And, as I'd thought you knew, Lu Yu got his material from his wife, who put onions in his tea.
[snipped stuff about modern chemistry]
Ugh, have to disagree here. How we derive our pleasures is highly individual. Who's to say that intellectual exploration -- scientific exploration -- isn't a large part of the pleasure of tea for those for whom science is a pleasure? What adds to one's enjoyment is up to one.
I never boil the water for I'm a great believer in the oxigen theory. Actually, having never seen it, I do have my doubts, but that's the other side of faith. Don't believe me? Ask Saint John of The Cross.
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