Brew Tea The Simple Way

Brewing tea is so simple, so good, why should you use dusty broken old leaves in bleached square dirty teabags instead of beautiful leaves awaiting for a touch of boiling water to open themselves to you ... why ?

Because 99% will answer it is easier, easier to use a teabag then loose tea, less mess, cleaner, faster. Perhaps they are right, but it is wrong to use commercial teabags in our daily tea diet. It is like going to fast food chains for every meal, it is like drinking full of sugar so called soft drinks, it is like having a freezer full of refined/processed products delicately renamed "Ready to Eat" meal. Wrong, wrong and wrong again. This kind of diet is the straight highway to a world of medical issues... But I m getting carried away here. 

I ll show you a method so simple, so easy, so lovely, for you to to brew real tea leaves in order to get the real taste of tea and at the same time to impress your co workers and friends with your newly acquired tea brewing skills.

You need at least a little teapot, one or two nice cups where you can pour the whole brewed tea into (if you feel like sharing), a tea strainer and of course hot (almost boiling) water (preferably spring water, or not too mineral). 

Warm up !!! Water boiled, pour some in the teapot and the cups to "sauna" them, make them warm, and discard the water. In the warmed teapot, pour 5 to 7 grams of tea. Here we will use Shin Chin No. 17 Oolong Tea, but you can use any type of oolong tea or black tea. A small note, this is not the proper method for quality green tea such as high grade Gyokuro or First Harvest Dragon Well for instance, where water should be around 60 degrees Celsius (140 for Fahrenheit speaking people) and steeping time around a minute. Back to our Oolong, pour enough water to cover the tea, twirl it a bit, and discard the water. You will "awake the tea" (or the dragon, for more poetry) 

First brew, fill the teapot with hot water. If boiling, it will only take 15 seconds for the leaves to start to give their love. If not boiling, an additional 5 to 10 seconds would be needed for their oolong aroma whisper. Then pour all the tea in the cup. Use the filter so you don t get to chew on some organic big leaf.

Second brew, repeat with no waiting time. Pour boiling water on the leaves, then fill the cup with tenderness. Drink, enjoy, think, contemplate, admire, create, or perhaps work. Brew after brew, the leaves will gently open and fill the tiny teapot with exciting flavors, aromas spread in the air. Use your imagination, and think about the vegetal scent, surrounding made of green bushes and pine trees, mountains, mud, rainy weather, singing insects and light breeze. Tea tasting is linked to imagination, use it, if you still have some ...

Essential tool, the strainer. By using a tea strainer, you will always get a nice clean and pure cup. Don't be afraid to over use it, it is your friend, a friendly tea cup cleaner for ever.

Third, fourth, fifth, etc... No waiting time

At the sixth or seventh, the tea would have already given a lot of generous flavors, and the aroma is going to, like a broken flower, fade away. You can still brew the tea, but you will need more steeping time. 

Repeat until you re satisfied, or until it's time to switch to another tea, or a bottle of wine, red please, it is dinner time already.