Steeping Question

[tobor8man]

This from Wikipedia:

Generally, 2.25 grams of tea per 170 grams of water, or about two teaspoons of oolong tea per cup, should be used. Oolong teas should be prepared with 180°F to 190°F (82°C-87°C) water (not boiling) and steeped 3-4 minutes. High quality oolong can be brewed multiple times from the same leaves, and unlike other teas it improves with reuse. It is common to brew the same leaves three to five times, the third or fourth steeping usually being the best.

I have seen variations on this theme. I have also read what you don't want to do is steep the tea a long time, like twelve minutes.

What I don't get is this: Say you do three infusions, 4 minutes each, saving the liquor of each infusion and mixing them together. How would this taste any different than doing one infusion for twelve minutes using three times the water? Or even using the same amount of water then diluting the liquor after twelve minutes of steeping, assuming the steeping water is kept hot during this time.

In each case the tea leaves are sitting in hot water for twelve minutes. This is not alchemy. Surely we are not reaching saturation of some substance by leaving the tea in the same water for so long. Any bad tasting substance will come out of the leaves in the same way with three short soakings as opposed to one long one. Chemically the same substances should leach out of the leaves in any of these cases.

Now I get how each of the three steepings may taste different, and that maybe the later steepings will taste better, and that you might not want to wait twelve minutes for tea. But what I do not get is why steeping for twelve minutes is considered such a no-no. Why is leaving tea leaves in hot water for twelve continuous minutes considered so wrong, but pulling them out after four and eight minutes acceptable?

[cheaton]

You are correct to a point. The more water to tea you have the longer the infusion to reach the same level of infusion. You can make iced tea by putting tea into cold water and leaving it to steep overnight in your refrigerator. However, the more tea you use and the shorter your infusions the more infusions those leaves will last.

You'll find most Oolong drinkers on this site use a more "traditional" style of brewing in which you use small teapots and large amounts of leaves (relatively speaking) and very short infusions ranging from instant "flash" infusions to to 1-2 minute infusions for later infusions. What you tend to try and shoot for is the pot is completely full of leaves by the time the leaves expand all the way. For tighly rolled oolongs this may mean you fill the pot 1/4-1/3 the way full of dry leaves, and for looser more volumous oolongs 2/3 to 3/4 full of dry leaves. With this method you can get 6 or 7 good infusions from that same 3 grams of tea, albiet in a 90ml pot.

That 12 minute infusion would probably only yield one good infusion do to "cooking" the leaves for such an extended period of time. It's all about how much of the nutrients, essential oils, and material you're removing from that single leaf with each infusion. Obviously the longer the infusion the more is removed from each individual leaf. The more leaf you have the more material you can infuse into the water in a shorter amount of time thereby preserving and extending the life of each individual leaf. And you can argue extremes in both directions.

Bottom line is, more leaf + less water + shorter infusions equals more leaf life and more infusions. I didn't even begin to discuss the affect water temperature can have on this overly simplified equation.

[Rainy-Day]

tobor: why don't you try it and then I think you will see that there will be a large difference in taste.

[silverneedles]

because the chemicals that come out do change with time and temperature (they combine with each other resulting in different compounds that will affect the flavor and maybe aroma of the tea).