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Michael Plant

7/12/06

>
> xDustinx wrote:
>> I just received a celadon gaiwan from The Imperial Tea Court in San
>> Francisco and I'm pretty excited about it. So far I've brewed some Pi
>> Lo Chun and Tung Ting Jade Oolong in it. Both times I put enough tea
>> leaves in to uniformly cover the bottom in a relatively thin layer.
>> Probably about two teaspoons worth. The first infusion was a minute
>> long with both teas. I noticed that the first infusion tasted slightly
>> bitter, which is not something I'm used to with the other way I brew
>> tea (infuser basket in a mug for whatever time the instructions say).
>> The next couple infusions after the first however, are not bitter, but
>> not quite as flavorful as my normal brewing method. Should I adjust
>> the amount of tea leaves, the infusion time, or is this normal? I'm
>> completely new to gaiwans so any general advice would be helpful as
>> well.
>
> It takes some fine-tuning, and the answer is that you should adjust
> both the amount of leaves and the infusion time for every different tea
> you make. I got a little digital scale from Amazon and have been
> adhering to a strict one-gram-per-ounce-of-water rule, and that's
> really helped me focus on the timing. One other resource that has been
> very useful has been blogs such as Chadao and Teamasters that discuss
> technique and timing. Chadao members are particularly good about
> posting the steep times. I never liked pu'er, but that was because I
> was steeping like eight grams of it in a small yixing for two minutes,
> and now that my technique is improved I am getting dangerously obsessed
> with it.

Dustin, taking off from what Alex wrote, what brewing temperature are you
using with those teas? With the BLC at least, I'd say you overdid it in
your gaiwan. Really good BLC is pretty damned delicate and unless the
water was quite cool, a minute is quite long. 140F is possible. But, perhaps
you know all this already. Luck.

Michael
>