On Oct 31, 3:15 am, Lewis Perin wrote:
DogMa writes:
Lewis Perin wrote:
... I sure wouldn't subject a delicate
green tea to boiling water even for a very short steep.

Ditto. Likewise for all but highly fermented oolongs, reds and shu
Pu-erh - and for me, I'd apply the logic to all greens.

To my taste, most un- or partially fermented teas respond almost
instantly to boiling water not only by losing some desirable notes,
but (worse) by developing "cooked vegetable" flavors that never go
away on further steeping at any temperature.

It is for this reason that I simply do not believe that even the
world's most experienced tasters can gauge the "quality" of green teas
to be cool-brewed from a boiling cupping. It's not just a matter of
mentally rebalancing a sensory portfolio; there are non-linear
chemical changes going on. [...]

I hope you aren't assuming that the non-linear changes - let's call
them "cooking" - happen only at or near boiling and that aside from
that it's just a question of how fast the stuff in the leaves comes
out into the liquor. I sometimes brew teas with room-temp water and
*very* long steep times, getting good results with some greens. But
my tepid-brewed tea tastes quite different from tea brewed as cool as
140F, which is considered a pretty low temp by most people. So, in a
sense, brewing Biluochun, say, in a way most people would call quite
conservative still cooks it.

I am mystified by the common practice of "awakening" fisted leaves at
the boil, then steeping the resulting cabbage in tepid water.

Not sure that "tepid" is the right word here. Some dedicated
gongfucians try very hard to make sure that each steep is ultra-hot.

I almost always work up from the coolest brew that will make a
pleasant taste, to much higher temperatures when delicate notes are
gone anyway.

That's certainly one valid way to do it. But I tend to take what I
sardonically call The Tragic View of Brewing Tea: for any one tea,
there's no one method that will get all of the tea's best qualities
into the cup.

Or, looking at it another way, I like to eat lots of foods raw. But
there are lots of foods, including some in the first group, that I
like cooked. I wouldn't want to restrict myself to a raw-food diet.

/Lew
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Lew Perin / - Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

Hello to all who have posted on the temperature of the brewing water
for green tea.
To my mind, a look at the manufacturing process of green tea may lead
to a better understanding on the subject under discussion.
The texture of the tea flush after steaming (Japanese Method Of Green
tea Manufacture)or after Panning ( chinese method of Green tea
manufacture )becomes soft, which is not the case , in the case of
black tea manufacture.
Further, the flush leaf temperature never reaches the boiling point of
water- during the process of steaming or panning. And during the final
drying of the green tea, the leaf temperatures are less than boilng
point of water.
So an interesting query emerges- in hot brewing. is there any
relation between the optimum brewing water temperature and the
processing temperature achieved by the green tea during its
manufacturing process.Thanks in advance to fellow members who will be
responding to this query.