1. Heat the pot: Heat the teapot with boiled water to eliminate peculiar smell. Heated pot can help to release the tea scent.
2. Place the tea: The mouth of the teapot is usually small, so one should first put the tea in a special half-ball vessel and hand it to guests for them to appraise the shape of the tea leaf. Then, put the tea into the pot with a teaspoon. The amount of the tea is about 1/3 of the teapot.
3. Warm the cup: Warm the cups with boiled water that heats the pot.
4. High pour: One needs to lift up the kettle high to make a good tea. The tea leaves turn over and scatter in the pot after water pouring in from a high level. This is known as high pour, a better way to get out the aroma of the tea leaves.
5. Low pour: After the tea is ready, one can pour it into a handless cup. This time, one should keep the pot's mouth as low as possible and close to the cup to minimize escaping of the aroma. This is known as low pour. Normally, pour the first-round brewing and the second-round brewing into one cup, one will have a better taste tea. Repeat this when one makes the third and fourth brewing, and the following rounds as well.
6. Distribute the tea: Tea is distributed into cups from the handless cup, with an amount of about 7/10 of the cup.
7. Offer the tea: Offer the tea to guests in teacups together with cup pad.
8. Smell the tea: Before tasting the tea, one should first look at its color and smell its aroma.
9. Taste the tea: The Chinese character 品 (taste) is three 口 (mouth) that are put together, which means one should taste one cup of tea in three sips. Before sipping and tasting the tea, one should smile at the tea brewer for one or two seconds to express appreciation.
Tips of Tea Making
Making a pot of tea, one should pay attention not only to practicability and scientificity but also to its artistry. Practicability requires one to take into consideration the actual need and condition, whether to make an ordinary big-bowl tea or a pot of top-grade tea. Scientificity requires one to know well the specialty of each kind of tea as well as the scientific brewing techniques in order to bring out the best quality of the tea. Artistry requires one to choose suitable tea sets and adopt graceful and civilized brewing manners.
1. Know well the specialty of each kind of tea
Before making a pot of tea, one should first know well the specialty of the tea. By doing so, one can choose the most appropriate brewing technique suitable to a specific tea and bring out its best quality. One fascinating thing about tea is that its quality is affected by various factors, such as weather, land and grower. Even the same cluster of tea leaves, grown by the same person in the same place and at the same time, their quality differs slightly from each other. If one masters the characteristics of various kinds of tea, she/he will be able to make at least a good pot of one special kind, which is both appealing and tasty and invites the feeling of being fascinated at the first sight and first sip.
2. Control the amount
How much tea should be put into the pot depends on the specialty of each kind of tea as well as the brewer's habit. Generally speaking, the standard amount (the amount used by the professional tea brewer when making a pot of tea) is 3 grams of tea brewed with 150 cc water for 5 minutes. Usually use cap-cup to drink non-fermented green tea, fermented black tea, slightly fermented white tea and scented tea. Use the purple clay pot to make half-fermented Oolong, with an amount of 2/3 teapot if use uncooked tea, 1/2 to 2/3 teapot if use half-cooked tea, and 1/3 to 1/2 teapot if use cooked tea. All these are general standards, and one can adjust the amount according to one's own habit. The following principles may of a reference: 1) increase the amount if one likes to drink strong tea; 2) reduce the amount when brewing top-grade tea; 3) shorten each brewing time when using a large amount of tea while increase the number of times.
The ratio of water to tea leaf depends on the quality of tea and the drinking method. Generally speaking, famous tea or top-grade tea requires a ratio of 50:1, and ordinary black, green, white and scented tea 75:1. Black tea fannings should go with milk while ice tea should accompany ice cube, so strong tea is required with a ratio of 50:1. The ratio of water to Oolong is 25:1, and one should use a small cup and drink with small sips due to the thick consistency.
3. Choose appropriate tea sets and water
When making tea, one should pay attention not only to tea leaves shape, color, scent and taste but also to the teapot's quality and artistic design to set off the elegant tea leaf. Generally, big teapot is chosen when one wants to satisfy thirst while small pot is used when one desires to taste and appreciate tea. The size of teapot also depends on the number of drinkers.
Tea of top quality should be brewed with top-grade water to fully bring out its best. Longjing Tea (Dragon Well Tea) and Hupao Spring (Tiger Spring) are reputed as the two superb things of
Hangzhou City. Even though the tea-brewing water deserves careful study, one should bear in mind the actual condition when making tea. Water, which reaches drinking standard and will bring out the best of tea, can be chosen to make tea. If condition allows, one can use natural spring water or lake water or river water, which is a better choice for sure.
The boiling time of the water should be under strict control to avoid under-boiled or over-boiled. Water should be boiled with violent fire and water is ready when numerous small crab-eye-shaped air bubbles rise to the surface and big fish-eye-shaped air bubbles have not yet come into being. Water should not be boiled with slow fire, because the gas dissolved in water will gradually lose over a long-time boiling and tea brewed with such water will lack freshness.
4. Control the water temperature
Since different kinds of tea are produced in different environments and have their own specialties, they require different water temperature suitable to bring out their best quality. So control on the water temperature during tea brewing is a key. Generally, better use boiled water to brew old tea leaves, while cool down the boiled water a little bit to brew tender tea leaves. To be more specific, some kinds of tea, such as Oolong and Pu'er, cannot be picked until new twigs mature. The leaves of such tea are not so tender that the
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