I remember, back in China, the old people would steep a pot of tea leaves 6 or 7 times a day. The flavours would not change much between the first pot and the 7th.
Nowadays I see people steep once and dispose of the tea leaves immediately. Is there really a difference or is it just preference?
Re: Schools of thought - steeping
Do you remember the taste of the tea you had back in China? What type was it? A puerh tea or something else?
Re: Schools of thought - steeping
Back in china most of the people I met had a bottle with a mesh in the neck, take the mesh out, drop in tea leaves, put the mesh back in, fill with hot water and put the sipper lid back on. During the day when the water got low, refill with hot water from boiling water dispensers. Particularly common in winter when the bottle doubled as a hand warmer, summer they would drink cool iced tea from chilled bottle vendors. 40 degrees is a bit warm for hot tea.
In China most water is not drinkable out of the tap and no-one trusts public drinking fountains, so it has to be provided boiling. The same tea leaves would last all day.
Mostly the tea used this was was ordinary large leaf tea about 2" or longer, sometimes torn so a 3" leaf would become two 1.5" parts.
No buds or tender new leaves, they seemed to be mostly older larger 4th or 5th leaves.
In China most water is not drinkable out of the tap and no-one trusts public drinking fountains, so it has to be provided boiling. The same tea leaves would last all day.
Mostly the tea used this was was ordinary large leaf tea about 2" or longer, sometimes torn so a 3" leaf would become two 1.5" parts.
No buds or tender new leaves, they seemed to be mostly older larger 4th or 5th leaves.
Re: Schools of thought - steeping
many reasonsstormwolf wrote:I remember, back in China, the old people would steep a pot of tea leaves 6 or 7 times a day. The flavours would not change much between the first pot and the 7th.
Nowadays I see people steep once and dispose of the tea leaves immediately. Is there really a difference or is it just preference?
1) tea leaves are really expensive in the past, none of those mega crazy fertilizer and pesticide laden modern day teas, meticulously made. good tea leaves in the 70s were at the price point of around 1/4 of a monthly wage per jin (600g). the mentality was as though tea leaves were like ginseng roots where people would steep everything out as much as they can
2) tea quality change, no longer made of those slow growing leaves, no longer having such great flavour, after a couple of steeps the tea thins down in aromatics etc.
Re: Schools of thought - steeping
Hey guys great posts and info here. However, I noticed that this post is in the “Miscellany” section of the TeaChat. The “Miscellany” section is specified as being the section for topics “completely off the Topic of Tea”. Moderators please feel free to chime in here as necessary, but I strongly feel that this post should be moved the “General/Other Tea” section which is specified as being for general/other topics related to tea. I believe this to be a breach in protocol as it may be detracting from posts created in the “Miscellany” by other members of the TeaChat forum.
Re: Schools of thought - steeping
Bagzdeep,
I do not understand how you are not cutting it the theater life because you are very detail oriented person.
I agree that this post is in the topic category.
I do not understand how you are not cutting it the theater life because you are very detail oriented person.
I agree that this post is in the topic category.