Monday, December 17, 2007
Posted by Miss Neddy at 08:00 AM | Comments (0) | Permalink
Categories: Tea Related

Reading a 1956 book by Gervas Huxley, entitled “Talking of Tea”. Old books offer a window into the past, not just on how things were done, but how people then looked at the even more distant past.

What surprised me was that teabags were more expensive then than loose leaf tea in the past, and yet teabags became increasingly popular due to the convenience of brewing a cuppa with one. So even as recent as a generation ago, most tea-drinkers would have been quite familiar with making tea with loose leaves rather than teabags.

There are several different ways of brewing tea, ranging from the formal traditional Japanese tea ceremony to the Australian way of boiling tea in a “billy” can. Tea can be cooked over an open fire, in an earthenware pot, in a metal kettle, or steeped lightly in a fine porcelain covered cup. The method I’m most familiar with is one of the traditional Chinese methods.

If you have a clay teapot, or especially if you have a zisha (purple clay) teapot, never ever scrub it or wash it with anything other than water. Clay absorbs substances very quickly, and if you use detergent on your teapot, forevermore your teapot will produce detergent-flavoured and -scented tea. So if you have a strongly scented tea (such as jasmine tea), you may want to use a glass or porcelain teapot instead. Aesthetically, a glass teapot is great for flower teas and white teas, because you can see the flowers or white tea bobbing in the hot water.

It is always good to give everything - your teapot and cups - a good rinsing with boiling hot water. This is particularly important if you are using the very small Chinese teapot and cups, because your tea will lose heat rapidly when poured into room-temperature cups. This used to be done for hygiene purposes as well, in times before the invention of detergents and dish washing soaps.

Scoop a sufficient amount of tea leaves into your teapot.

For small traditional teapots this means approximately:
1/3 to 1/4 full for green tea - use less for the flat Longjing (Dragon’s Well), as it is very strong. Try to cover the bottom of the pot and just a tad bit more.
1/2 to 1/3 full for wulong tea - actually this can vary wildly, depending on the kind of wulong, and personal preference.
1/2 to 2/3 full for white tea - the very loose leaves of Yinzhen Baihao (Silver Needles) means that even when you’ve almost filled the pot, you’re not actually using alot of leaves. So be generous for white tea.

For large Western-styled teapots, I would go with the old “one for you, one for me, one for the pot” method. Measure out approximately one “bag’s” worth of tea leaves for each person drinking, plus one more measure for the pot. I’ve tried this on my large glass teapots, and while the results weren’t fantastic, the tea was still very drinkable. For good wulongs, you can get away with using about half that amount, because the tea leaves can be steeped multiple times before they lose their flavour. Drop the quantity of tea leaves, but steep for a longer period of time.

When using a small Chinese teapot, pouring of the tea is very important. The tea that comes out later is stronger. One way of ensuring everyone gets a fair cup is to use a “fair cup” 公道杯 (Gong Dao Bei). Formally known as a cup, it actually resembles a small jug, where you deposit the tea first and then fill the cups from it. If you have a small or medium-sized milk jug, that will work in a pinch. Make sure you wash it thoroughly first though; milk is not an option for Chinese teas!

If you don’t have a milk jug…er, fair cup, pour your tea in this fashion: fill each cup only a fraction at a time and move from cup to cup continuously until all the cups are 70% filled. This ensures that each cup of tea is fairly even in strength. The first process of pouring from cup to cup is known as “General Guan Patrolling the City” (关公巡城); as the flow begins to slacken, and become drops of tea falling from the teapot spout, the act of depositing the last drops of tea evenly amongst the cups is known as “Han Xin Counting His Troops” (韩信点兵). Why such interesting terms for action of pouring tea? I’ll explain in a slightly later entry.

For the Chinese, the host usually drinks first. Perhaps to prove that his tea is not poisoned? Or more likely, to quickly test if his tea has been made well enough. The latter reason is usually why I drink first, and on more than one occasion, I’ve stopped my guests from drinking because I’ve just made some horrible mistake and the tea tasted bad.

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