Today, Ivy will demonstrate for us how to brew black tea. When brewing black tea, we recommend using glassware. This is because of the strip shape of black tea. Tea that has a strip shape has a much higher surface area than balled tea. Because of this, it's very easy to over-extract the tea when brewing.
Using glass helps dissipate heat, which results in a more flavorful cup of tea. We also recommend using water that has cooled down for a few minutes after boiling. Try to get your water to about 85-90 ° C.
Ivy adding No. 18 Red Jade to her teapot.
We start by adding tea to our preheated brewing vessel. For 150ml, we recommend using 4g of tea. There's no need to rinse black tea; we can now move right into brewing!
We recommend following this table for brewing times:
1st Round: 40 Seconds - The purpose of a longer 1st round is to allow the tea leaves to fully expand.
2nd Round: 35 Seconds - Because the leaves have fully expanded now, we need to decrease the the brewing time. If you do not decrease the brewing time, the tea will be too strong.
3rd Round: 45 Seconds - For the third round we need to increase the brewing time. This is to make a more even cup. We are trying to make sure the flavor is not too weak, and not too strong.
For succeeding rounds, we recommend adding 15s per round.
This brewing guide is just our recommendations, not rules. We feel like this style is a good starting point, however, we also strongly encourage you to try your own brewing style with our tea.
What do you think about this brewing style? Is it too weak, too strong? If you have a personal brewing style, please feel free to share it with us! You can reach us at wangfamilytea@gmail.com, or at our social media pages, links for which are at the top of this page.
Thank you for your time,
The Wang Family