How To Brew Longjing Tea

by Huai
(Singapore)

I've been going through your website but couldn't find a section on "how to brew tea". I've only used teabags, never loose leaves, so please enlighten.

As a sidenote, there is this elaborate, ceremony-like method of brewing tea in those upmarket tea houses, including pouring hot water over the zhi sha teapot first, pouring the infused tea into a tall cylinder-like cup, then pouring into the actual drinking cup etc. Is that simply for show or it helps to bring out the tea flavour?

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How To Brew Longjing Tea

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Oct 06, 2007

Reply from Julian
by: Julian

Dear Huai

There is a short description of the brewing in the dragonwell page:

http://www.amazing-green-tea.com/dragonwell-tea.html

A longer article describing the entire green tea brewing process will come out by year end.

In short, green tea brewing is fairly simple. For Longjing tea, you need 3 things: good quality water, glass, and water at around 85 degrees.

The beauty of Tribute Longjing is that because it is so good, it can tolerate a wide range of temperature and brewing time.

I recommend 3 grams. But for my personal consumption, I use much much less. I think you can do the same, once you come to grip with its subtle complexities of favours.

As for Zishahu, people generally use it for oolong tea and red tea, but not green tea.

Green tea you either use glass (to admire the beautiful one-bud-two-leaf) or gaiwan (to admire the pale-greenish tea liquor).

Pouring hot water over the Zishahu is to warm the pot up.It has been said that pouring boiling water into a glass/pot immediately cool it by 5 degrees.

When making oolong tea, 90 degrees to boiling water is usually recommended.

It is going to be exciting when you get it!

Oct 06, 2007

Reply
by: Huai

I need some details on the brewing.

Instead of letting the loose leaves 'dance' in the hot water, can I enclose them in a strainer in the hot water, so as to avoid the leaves getting into the mouth while drinking?

And a suggestion for your website. For chinese names, is it possible to have chinese characters written beside the romanised translations? For instance in

http://www.amazing-green-tea.com/long-jing-tea.html

you have some chinese characters names, but not for all names. With chinese characters, it would be more meaningful for those readers who can read chinese.

Oct 06, 2007

Reply
by: Julian

As mentioned in the previous post, simple (but 95% effective) brewing instructions can be found in

http://www.amazing-green-tea.com/dragonwell-tea.html

It is fine to use strainer, tea ball or similar devices. Dragon well tea doesn't expand that much upon brewing (unlike tieguanyin tea), so you don't need to give it a lot of room.

Simply infuse for the required time, decant to 1/3, then infuse again.

Or keep it very simple. Most of the times I simply pour hot water into the cup, finish it, then re-fill again.

As for Chinese characters, I use them very sparingly because most of my visitors do not read Chinese, do not install Chinese software in their computer, and inevitably will see only lots of error squares in their monitor.

I am worried that seeing those squares will destroy their experience. So I tend to keep these chinese words to a minimum.

I really appreciate for someone like you knowing the Chinese words adds a lot of to the experience.

I intend to translate the site to Chinese at a later date, so hopefully you will see a true bi-lingual articles (especially on the non-health section) sometimes in the not too long future.

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How To Brew Longjing Tea

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