washin' my tea

A side effect is that this also removes most of the caffeine from the brew since caffeine is highly water soluble.

Mike

Mike Petro

It's an excellent idea; you never know how much the tea is handled at market or whatnot. In some of the cheaper blocks of pu that I've bought, they were quite dirty. Often you can find hair, and once while I was in a shop, there was a piece of a fingernail in the tea. Spooky!

You've also described the first step of gongfu cha.

I'm not sure about the word "most", especially in the context of compressed tea.

/Lew

Falky fooIDfhe.2955$3% snipped-for-privacy@newssvr13.news.prodigy.com5/14/05

I find with really top notch -- IMHO, of course -- Taiwan and Taiwan style Oolongs, it's really hard to disgard that wonderous pre-first steep.

Michael

I'm with you on that. I confess to sometimes using the rinse of a mild new bud-only Puerh, too.

/Lew

I'm quite torn on this myself. I usually wash all of my tea before drinking, especially if one of my Chinese friends are over, but the higher grade stuff it's hard to throw away. The scent of the first brew is enough to make me want to consume! But, even with the stuff that goes for around 100 bucks for 1 jin (half kilo), the boss still throws away the first steep like it was toilet water.

I've been just letting my really good stuff steep for about 5 seconds on the first wash. I don't think I could let it sit for 30 seconds!

For teas of Chinese origin, I too routinely perform a quick rinse. But with Japanese teas, never.

--crymad