Hey, when a green tea says to brew at 180 deg F for about 3-4 minutes, does that mean to maintain the 180deg the entire 3-4 minutes, or just heat the water to 180 then remove from heat and pour over the tea?
thanks
Re: brewing temperature?
just heat the water to 180 then remove from heat and pour over the tealp84 wrote:Hey, when a green tea says to brew at 180 deg F for about 3-4 minutes, does that mean to maintain the 180deg the entire 3-4 minutes, or just heat the water to 180 then remove from heat and pour over the tea?
thanks
I just started to enjoy chinese green tea, there are some that can sit in water a long time and no problem, switch you kettle of when you see small bubble like fish eyes, pour a bit of water in your cup, rinse it and put in the leaves in the prewarmed cup, put only a little amount of water on the leaves only to cover it so that it gets wet, wait a minute, and pur up with 100 ml water, so the total is 150 ml water plus tea, wait two minutes, or start tasting, stir with the lid of the gaiwan if you like to even out the flavout, currently I have Supreme Tai Ping Hou Kui, that requires a little bit higher temperature to extract the delicate flavour, and Supreme Lu An Gua Pian, that requires a bit lower temperature and less brewing time, it has similarities to sencha, and Supreme Huang Shan Mao Feng, that is currently the highest quality chinese green tea I have seen, the leaves are so simetrical and small, each and every leaf is one unopened bud and a smaller leaf, this requires lower temp that the previous two, and it has still strong taste and aroma.
Leave it to Oni to give a response like this to a simple questionOni wrote:I just started to enjoy chinese green tea, there are some that can sit in water a long time and no problem, switch you kettle of when you see small bubble like fish eyes, pour a bit of water in your cup, rinse it and put in the leaves in the prewarmed cup, put only a little amount of water on the leaves only to cover it so that it gets wet, wait a minute, and pur up with 100 ml water, so the total is 150 ml water plus tea, wait two minutes, or start tasting, stir with the lid of the gaiwan if you like to even out the flavout, currently I have Supreme Tai Ping Hou Kui, that requires a little bit higher temperature to extract the delicate flavour, and Supreme Lu An Gua Pian, that requires a bit lower temperature and less brewing time, it has similarities to sencha, and Supreme Huang Shan Mao Feng, that is currently the highest quality chinese green tea I have seen, the leaves are so simetrical and small, each and every leaf is one unopened bud and a smaller leaf, this requires lower temp that the previous two, and it has still strong taste and aroma.
An interesting thing that nobody seems to notice is that the temperature of the water when it hits the leaves can be easely measured, but what about the brewing temperature changes that go on in the body of the vessel in which you brew tea, I measured a bit, and discovered that glass heats up super fast to high temperature, but it drops as fast too, porcelain keeps a bit more heat, and zhu ni keeps heat at a constant high, if you brew green tea with the cover off in a gaiwan, you encourage the heat to escape quickly, so I you need to put your thermometer in the gaiwan and brew some tea, I think when they say brew green tea at 80 C or 180 F, they mean that the leaves should stay in 80 C water at least for a short period of time, so if you heat your water only to 80 C in the kettle, pour from a height, the temperature won`t reach 80 in the gaiwan or the glass cup, I think if you heat the water to 90, the bubbles only breaking the surface of the water, and pour from a height, and only cover the leaves, for a small interval of time your leaves would heat up to 80 C, and after that pour up your cup with 85C water and wait until the leaves are brewed.