Has anyone tried brewing black teas in an Yixing teapot using gongfu style? Is it possible to get more than one flavorful infusion using this method?
I have been somewhat disappointed with not being able to get a good 2nd infusion from black teas using traditional methods (i.e boiling water, 4-5 minute infusion). Teas tried: Keemun, Darjeeling 2nd Flush.
it's not traditional, but there is no reason under the sun for you not to try it. There is something of a concensus, not universally shared, that the second steep of a black tea will be inferior to the first (nearly) always. You would have to carefully control the steep times in order to avoid an undrinkable brew, I'd think -- that is, if you gungfu. How big is your teapot?
BTW, personally, when I steep black teas, I sometimes put in extra amounts of leaf, cut down steep time, and get a pretty decent second steep that way. But, it is seldom near as good as the first.
I don't think it's necessarily un-traditional to use a yixing for black teas. At least I know I read some references to it when I started researching gungfu practice.
I think the one kind of tea no one recommends for yixing use is -- greens in general.
However, I'm no expert. I'm sure others more experienced will chime in.
It's common in the UK (I'm told) to steep the leaves twice, but I don't think that the expectation is that the second infusion will taste as good. I think it arises from frugality.
I've really only found that greens and oolongs can handle multiple infusions well. I've never tried black tea in a Yixing pot, and I doubt I will (what with the lingering flavors it would impose on other teas).
I've tried gongfu'ing keemuns, yunnans, and darjeelings. I've never gotten any results that were worth the amount of tea used. The first steeps tend to be completely overpowering with the strength and complexity falling greatly in subsequent steeps. The gongfu'ed yunnan was almost undrinkable it was so heavy.
It is traditional to use yixing teapots for black or "red", as the Chinese call them, teas, though the pots are generally much larger than usual. Most Chinese don't drink black teas which, IIRC, were originally intended for the European market. I do most of my black tea brewing in yixing pots, but the volumes involved are 8-12 fl oz.
I think with non-puer black teas you just have to accept that the first steep will be by far the best oweing to the highly soluble caramelized compounds being dissolved on the first go. You just get an extremely strong first steep and then somewhat weak tea thereafter.
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For what I know, black tea production started in Fujian at the end of XVII century as further development of oolong tea. One of the the names by which it was known to Western merchants was "Congou", a awkward rendering of "gongfu" (Pinyin), or "kung-fu" (Wade-Giles). Still now the term "gongfu hongcha" is used in China to denote whole-leaf black tea, such as whole-leaf Qihong (Keemun), Dianhong (Yunnan blach), etc. In Taiwan I have seen people preparing these kinds of tea using gongfu brewing style with very good results. In order to do it I think it is important to use a good quality whole-leaf tea which will unroll step by step at every infusion, adopting very short steeping times. Any broken-leaf tea will definetly not do. I have personally tryed with Yangxian Suhong (Jiangsu black from Yixing) and got at least three good infusions. In any case, I do not drink much black tea, and, when I do it, most of the times I use a relatively big pot and add water two or more times when it gets almost (not complitely) empty. L
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