smack myself, i've been using 190F water for oolongs,
and just today when most of my supply (~5oz left total :P ) is running
out,
i turn it up to 208F...

oh man, it came out so good...
i now feel sad for not having tried this from the beginning
but i had figured... 190 is hot enough... IT ISNT !

aaaaaahhhh

On Aug 20, 8:18 pm, SN wrote:
smack myself, i've been using 190F water for oolongs,
and just today when most of my supply (~5oz left total :P ) is running
out,
i turn it up to 208F...

oh man, it came out so good...
i now feel sad for not having tried this from the beginning
but i had figured... 190 is hot enough... IT ISNT !

aaaaaahhhh

That's good to know. I've been doing under 200 for my oolongs.
Toci

I always use boiling water for tea. I think greens and oolongs taste
better at moderate temperatures but that has no relation to brewing.
If you use glass pot and glass it'll cool down fast enough. You'll
get an edge from green tea that you can't get with any other
temperature. These days I want a punch from any tea I drink. I've
given up on nuances. If the leaf is larger than BOP I'm drinking it
off the top these days. I pay my respect to the tea by tossing down a
couple of leaves.

Jim

SN wrote:
smack myself, i've been using 190F water for oolongs,
and just today when most of my supply (~5oz left total :P ) is running
out,
i turn it up to 208F...

oh man, it came out so good...
i now feel sad for not having tried this from the beginning
but i had figured... 190 is hot enough... IT ISNT !

aaaaaahhhh

I brew my green oolongs around 195, however if I am using an oolong
that is darker with the long twisted leaves, in order to enjoy the
stronger fired flavour I definately run a little hotter. It also
depends how the quality is. normally I find the higher the quality the
more forgiving the brew is, you can go up to ten minutes steeping and
go even higher on the heat. All boils down to ones tatse requirements
are.
Maurice
www.tea-junction.com

SN wrote:
smack myself, i've been using 190F water for oolongs,
and just today when most of my supply (~5oz left total :P ) is running
out,
i turn it up to 208F...

oh man, it came out so good...
i now feel sad for not having tried this from the beginning
but i had figured... 190 is hot enough... IT ISNT !


I dunno, I have some oolongs for which 190 is too hot. And others for
which it's not hot enough, too.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

I always use boiling water for tea. I think greens and oolongs taste
better at moderate temperatures but that has no relation to brewing.
If you use glass pot and glass it'll cool down fast enough. You'll
get an edge from green tea that you can't get with any other
temperature. These days I want a punch from any tea I drink. I've
given up on nuances. If the leaf is larger than BOP I'm drinking it
off the top these days. I pay my respect to the tea by tossing down a
couple of leaves.

That am funny because these days I use very low temp for all brewing, even
blacks. I do about 160 for greens, 180 for oolongs and 200 for blacks. To
me the resulting flavors are much more pleasant and I can drink the tea
immediately.

(Scott Dorsey) writes:

SN wrote:
smack myself, i've been using 190F water for oolongs,
and just today when most of my supply (~5oz left total :P ) is running
out,
i turn it up to 208F...

oh man, it came out so good...
i now feel sad for not having tried this from the beginning
but i had figured... 190 is hot enough... IT ISNT !


I dunno, I have some oolongs for which 190 is too hot. And others for
which it's not hot enough, too.

In the immortal words of Larry Wall, "There's more than one way to do
it."

More specifically, any decent tea will have a whole gang of nice
qualities - that's why you *like* it - and it's very improbable that
the whole bunch can be maximized by one brewing setup. So, basically,
any brewing temperature will be a compromise. I may go for months
happily brewing a given tea the same way each time, but then I feel a
longing for the other taste or aroma I know I can get from it with,
say, a different temperature.

But congratulations, SN, on finding a setup that causes your tea to
give you much more pleasure!

/Lew
---
Lew Perin /
http://www.panix.com/~perin/babelcarp.html

On 2007-08-21, Lewis Perin wrote:
(Scott Dorsey) writes:
SN wrote:

i've been using 190F water for oolongs, and just today when most of
my supply (~5oz left total :P ) is running out, i turn it up to
208F...
oh man, it came out so good...
i now feel sad for not having tried this from the beginning
but i had figured... 190 is hot enough... IT ISNT !

I dunno, I have some oolongs for which 190 is too hot. And others
for which it's not hot enough, too.

In the immortal words of Larry Wall, "There's more than one way to do
it."

Not only that, but "oolong" describes a pretty broad spectrum of teas,
which range widely in terms of oxidation / roasting / age / etc. For a
highly oxidized / roasted oolong, many people would want to use hotter
water than for a really green one.

I usually use boiling or just-off-a-boil water for the first brew of
almost all oolongs to open up the leaves. I remember being surprised the
first time I saw someone do this with a pretty green oolong, because I'd
always heard it's better to stay around 185-190F.

Often, I use cooler water after that, either because I'm too lazy to
reheat my water or because it tastes better.

w

I'm with Will--boiling water on oolongs to open the leaves up, then
once they have opened a little (the leaves tend to have the beginnings
of a softer texture) I use slightly cooler water. And I try a range
of temperatures if I'm feeling experimental. Once the leaves start
getting towards the edge of spent I use hotter water.

I think some greens can stand up to boiling water but I've gotten
bitter bitter bitter results with certain more delicate leaves, so I'm
usually careful and test the green out starting at lower temps (as low
as 140).

On Aug 21, 12:16 pm, Will Yardley
wrote:
On 2007-08-21, Lewis Perin wrote:

(Scott Dorsey) writes:
SN wrote:
i've been using 190F water for oolongs, and just today when most of
my supply (~5oz left total :P ) is running out, i turn it up to
208F...
oh man, it came out so good...
i now feel sad for not having tried this from the beginning
but i had figured... 190 is hot enough... IT ISNT !
I dunno, I have some oolongs for which 190 is too hot. And others
for which it's not hot enough, too.
In the immortal words of Larry Wall, "There's more than one way to do
it."

Not only that, but "oolong" describes a pretty broad spectrum of teas,
which range widely in terms of oxidation / roasting / age / etc. For a
highly oxidized / roasted oolong, many people would want to use hotter
water than for a really green one.

I usually use boiling or just-off-a-boil water for the first brew of
almost all oolongs to open up the leaves. I remember being surprised the
first time I saw someone do this with a pretty green oolong, because I'd
always heard it's better to stay around 185-190F.

Often, I use cooler water after that, either because I'm too lazy to
reheat my water or because it tastes better.

w

On Aug 21, 2:57 pm, Space Cowboy wrote:
These days I want a punch from any tea I drink.

That sounds pretty familar. For the last 12 or more months I´ve been
mainly living on stout Assams/Eastfrisian blends, single estate
Ceylons and broken -brrrisk- Darjeelings with the odd fancy high-grade
DJ or Oolong thrown in for a change of pace. While I use a rolling
boil for Assams I´m still picky [read: neurotic] with the temperature
for my DJs, always eager to get the maximum flavor out of each one of
them, each and every time.
One thing I learned from the Friesen which I found makes a real
difference is not to add all water at once, but to prepare an extract
in your prewarmed pot [keep that pot/water sufficiently hot at all
times]. Just take enough boiling water to cover the leaves, let steep
and finally add the remaining water. I´m slowly adapting this
technique to other blacks, even DJs with interesting results. Whatever
I tried so far, I get different flavor spectrums compared to
conventional steeping. While not all teas I´ve tried seem to benefit
from it, almost all Assams and Ceylons I´ve tried, and even some of my
beloved DJs do.

I've given up on nuances.
I can´t say that for myself, except that I´m even less interested in
delicate greens or anything even remotely watery.

Karsten [Managama Ceylon in tazza]

writes:

[...]
One thing I learned from the Friesen which I found makes a real
difference is not to add all water at once, but to prepare an extract
in your prewarmed pot [keep that pot/water sufficiently hot at all
times]. Just take enough boiling water to cover the leaves, let steep
and finally add the remaining water.

Sorry, I'm not quite clear about this. Add the remaining water to the
steeping leaves, or add the remaining water to what you might call the
zavarka (the concentrated liquor previously poured off)?

/Lew
---
Lew Perin /
http://www.panix.com/~perin/babelcarp.html

I used hot boiling water for oolong too especiall wuyi oolong.
I did tried brewing long jing with hot boiling water but very short
infusion time like 8-10 seconds. It didnt taste bitter. But if you
steep longer yes it does taste bitter.
So it my short brewing method for green tea with hot boiling water.

writes:
One thing I learned from the Friesen which I found makes a real
difference is not to add all water at once, but to prepare an extract
in your prewarmed pot [keep that pot/water sufficiently hot at all
times]. Just take enough boiling water to cover the leaves, let steep
and finally add the remaining water.

Lewis Perin replied:
Sorry, I'm not quite clear about this. Add the remaining water to the
steeping leaves, or add the remaining water to what you might call the
zavarka (the concentrated liquor previously poured off)?

Lew, I thought the standard samovar usage was to have the zavarka,
with leaves, in the top pot (chainik) and boiling water (kipyatok) in
the urn beneath? If for some reason I were doing this with Darjeeling
then I would definitely want to pour the zavarka into a third container
after a minute or two, but this would constitute a samovariation on the
usual practice. That's why we need a nice mellow stew-resistant tea
(Dilmah is a good brand).

More generally, I like this strategy. Right now I am drinking a
delicate ti Kuan Yin from a guywan which I refill with boiling water
when maybe 20% of the liquid is remaining.

Best,

Rick.

On Aug 23, 6:08 pm, (Richard Chappell) wrote:
writes:
One thing I learned from the Friesen which I found makes a real
difference is not to add all water at once, but to prepare an extract
in your prewarmed pot [keep that pot/water sufficiently hot at all
times]. Just take enough boiling water to cover the leaves, let steep
and finally add the remaining water.

Lewis Perin replied:

Sorry, I'm not quite clear about this. Add the remaining water to the
steeping leaves, or add the remaining water to what you might call the
zavarka (the concentrated liquor previously poured off)?

Lew,

for some reason I can´t see your direct reply here [google], it only
shows up in Richards post.
Anyway, just add the remaining water to the steeping leaves. Most
Frisians I know use a teasock these days, some leave it in the pot,
some remove it after a while. If I were to guess I´d say the majority
leaves those leaves where they are, some rock sugar and thick cream
will take care of the brew. Real eastfrisean cups don´t hold much more
than say around 1-2 fl. oz of tea.

Karsten

(Richard Chappell) writes:

writes:
One thing I learned from the Friesen which I found makes a real
difference is not to add all water at once, but to prepare an
extract in your prewarmed pot [keep that pot/water sufficiently
hot at all times]. Just take enough boiling water to cover the
leaves, let steep and finally add the remaining water.

Lewis Perin replied:
Sorry, I'm not quite clear about this. Add the remaining water to
the steeping leaves, or add the remaining water to what you might
call the zavarka (the concentrated liquor previously poured off)?

Lew, I thought the standard samovar usage was to have the zavarka,
with leaves, in the top pot (chainik) and boiling water (kipyatok)
in the urn beneath?

I haven't actually seen a samovar in action, but I just reread the
"How to make it" section of the Russian Tea HOWTO, and you're right.
I'd forgotten that, and I was thinking of the zavarka (tea
concentrate) as having been poured off.

If for some reason I were doing this with Darjeeling then I would
definitely want to pour the zavarka into a third container after a
minute or two, but this would constitute a samovariation on the
usual practice. That's why we need a nice mellow stew-resistant tea
(Dilmah is a good brand).

More generally, I like this strategy. Right now I am drinking a
delicate ti Kuan Yin from a guywan which I refill with boiling water
when maybe 20% of the liquid is remaining.

I'm not sure that's actually the same strategy. In your gaiwan the
leaves will cool down a lot before you've drunk 80% of the liquor.
Similarly, the remaining, cooled liquor, not to mention the cooled
mass of leaves, will moderate the effect of the boiling water you add.
By contrast, the samovarian leaves continue to cook at a high
temperature.

/Lew
---
Lew Perin /
http://www.panix.com/~perin/babelcarp.html