About a year ago I started to drink tea more seriously, and mostly
I've been drinking oolongs that I've purchased online from places like
enjoyingtea.com and theteafarm.com. I'm getting a little bored with
their offerings and I'm curious about moving up to higher grade
stuff. But, before I do that and start spending more money I want to
clarify the steeping of Oolong.

I feel like there is a lot of contradictory stuff out there on this.
I originally read that you want 1tsp per 6oz water, which means about
1 and a third tsp per cup and temperatures around 190F, which I
estimated by boiling the water and then letting it sit for a minute.

But I also see that another method is to use a lot more tea, and
higher steeping temperature, for less time. Is this the more correct
way to do it? Is the other way simply an adaptation of black tea
brewing for Oolong, not necessarily the best way to steep Oolong? If
I was to try the second method, how much tea should be used?

Any information or clarity would be helpful.

On Oct 7, 5:49 pm, Ferris > wrote:
> About a year ago I started to drink tea more seriously, and mostly
> I've been drinking oolongs that I've purchased online from places like
> enjoyingtea.com and theteafarm.com. I'm getting a little bored with
> their offerings and I'm curious about moving up to higher grade
> stuff. But, before I do that and start spending more money I want to
> clarify the steeping of Oolong.
>
> I feel like there is a lot of contradictory stuff out there on this.
> I originally read that you want 1tsp per 6oz water, which means about
> 1 and a third tsp per cup and temperatures around 190F, which I
> estimated by boiling the water and then letting it sit for a minute.

I drink loose leafs for about 6 years and I've never had good results
for my taste with using recommended amounts of leaf. I use much less,
but that depends on the tea. For green oolongs especially I can't
stand using too much leaf. I use about 1.5-2 spoons (I don't measure
just drag it out with a chopstick until it looks about right) to a 3
cup pot. For dark oolongs it's a different matter, I could use a bit
more. This depends very much on your taste and on whether you drink
the tea with some kind of food. I usually prefer tea just by itself
and then I don't like if the flavor is brewed too strongly. If I have
sandwiches or something sweet along, then stronger tea is good, maybe
even with milk, but good freshly ground coffee is even better then.

I don't like the taste of water that was cooled down from a boil. I
have a pot now that's got a dark enamel on the inside, therefore I
can't see if bubbles are forming and how big they are, therefore what
I do is this: I wash my hands and when I think the water may be ready,
I hold my hand over the kettle and feel if the steam rising is hot
enough. I find this way of measuring to be most practical and precise
for me, but it may not look very nice if you're brewing tea for other
people and then you might want to time it. Or get a glass kettle ($30
at specialteas) or an electric pot with adjustable temp (around $40 at
uptons), but I haven't used an electric pot so I'm not sure if it will
make water taste differently, but when I used an enamel kettle on an
electric heater, it made the tea taste different in a way that I don't
like so I stopped doing that. I'm afraid that may be an issue for me
with electric kettles, but many other people use them without
problems.

Try if you can feel a difference when you stop water before boiling.

>
> But I also see that another method is to use a lot more tea, and
> higher steeping temperature, for less time. Is this the more correct

This means you should use a gaiwan or even better a zisha clay 'gong
fu' tea pot. They sell those on the site you mentioned. The idea is to
use so much leaf that it will unfurl to fill whole or almost whole
volume of said pot or gaiwan. Naturally this means using much more
leaf, and you also need to use high grade leaf. This means it's an
expensive pleasure, kind of like espresso with coffee. It costs much
more, it's more hassle to do but the tea will taste and especially
smell much better if all goes right. It depends on the tea, I got some
lousy results with an otherwise fine keemun I have. I had excellent
results with some yunnans, with some oolongs from adagio and an ok
result from another honey phoenix oolong, but I almost never do this
because I don't have a way to heat water in my room and I don't want
to keep running into the kitchen every couple of minutes, and I don't
have a vacuum bottle that'd be large enough for this.

Besides, a really good high grade tea that is made properly is already
so tasty that I don't really wish to make any improvement over that.
However if it was more convenient for me I might have used the gong-fu
method often..

> way to do it? Is the other way simply an adaptation of black tea
> brewing for Oolong, not necessarily the best way to steep Oolong? If

No, it's not an adaptation from black to oolong. It's an accepted way
of making black, pu-erh and oolong teas and in fact it's most often
recommended for oolongs. One issue, though, that I ran into with gong-
fu'ing oolongs is that if the oolong is a green type or between green
and dark, it always brews too quickly for me so that even if I pour
out the water in a few seconds, it's already too astringent for my
tastes. But with a dark oolong it works perfectly for me. Maybe others
will recommend a way around this. Using less leaves maybe?



> I was to try the second method, how much tea should be used?

Get a really tiny gaiwan or a gong-fu pot and put about 1/4 to 1/3
volume of dry leaf; again this depends on how big the leaves are and
how firmly they will pack, if they are very loose then you can even
fill half the volume. When it's brewed, it will expand to fill most of
the pot. Then do a series of steeps, around 6 to 8, starting with a
30-45 second steep and then gradually increasing the time. As I said
with greenish oolongs I overbrew even when I do a couple seconds. But
as I also mentioned it seems that I prefer much lighter brews than
other people.

There are online tutorials for brewing tea using gong-fu method, they
will give you different times, amounts, etc, but that's because all
teas are different and tastes of tea fanatics are also different and
therefore you tend to optimize for your favorite tea, pot, taste when
you write a guide.

Generally, in regard to not being sure if you're brewing the tea the
right way.. Until recently, I was always wondering if I'm doing things
just right. Sometimes tea would be perfect, at other times it was
excellent, often just good and pretty often not too good. When I tried
higher grade teas I found that they are much more reliable. They are
always great and it's hard to mess it up, even if you do something
wrong it gets only a little worse, not much worse. Medium range teas
are at times almost perfect but when the temp is a bit off, or when
they cool off in a few minutes, they quickly become ordinary or plain
bad. I'm never really sure I'll get the next brew right. So, now I
plan to go back to medium grade teas and try a bunch of them and see
if some of them are close to reliability of the top notch teas..


>
> Any information or clarity would be helpful.

Other tangential (seemingly) things can be as important, though. Like
the water you use, the tea pot, whether you wash it after use
_including_ the lid, preheating the pot can be very effective..

HTH!

On 2007-10-07, Ferris > wrote:

> But, before I do that and start spending more money I want to clarify
> the steeping of Oolong.
>
> I feel like there is a lot of contradictory stuff out there on this.
> I originally read that you want 1tsp per 6oz water, which means about
> 1 and a third tsp per cup and temperatures around 190F, which I
> estimated by boiling the water and then letting it sit for a minute.
>
> But I also see that another method is to use a lot more tea, and
> higher steeping temperature, for less time. Is this the more correct
> way to do it?

There isn't really a "correct" way to do it. Oolong represents a very
wide range of degrees of roasting and oxidation (from very close to
green tea to very close to red (black) tea), and there are a lot of
different styles of making tea.

I usually use a medium or high amount of leaf in a small brewing
vessel (2-5 oz) and drink multiple infusions.

Temperature isn't necessarily related to the amount of leaf; it has to
do with lots of factors (type of tea, how you're pouring the water, how
many infusions you've already done, personal preference, etc.).
Experiment and see what tastes good to you. I usually use boiling or
very-near-boiling water to open the leaf, even with fairly green
oolongs, and then slightly cooler water later on. Some people say that
lower temperature water will make lower grade tea taste better while
hotter water may be required to bring out the nuances of a particular
tea.

w