TRIBUTE TEA - Tea Preparation

Many people believe boiling water is best for all teas - a notion reinforced by countless store-bought tea packages. But many years of tea drinking and experimentation have taught us at TRIBUTE TEA that this is not the case.

If you consider the seemingly limitless variety of different teas, it doesn’t make sense that they should all be prepared the same way. Unfortunately, it is this great variety that makes it difficult to speak of tea in generalities. Nonetheless, we will attempt here to outline some basic guidelines for the preparation of tea.

First, a word about leaf: the veritable teaspoon is not always a good indication of the true amount of tea you’re putting in the pot. 1tsp. of a tightly rolled tea like Jasmine Pearls, for example, is a lot more tea than a tsp. of a large-leaf Puerh or Bao Zhong.

The ideal serving is about 3 grams of leaf per 4-6oz serving of tea... which is good advice if you happen to have a postage scale handy, which, of course, most people don’t. What we recommend instead is practice. The best way to develop expertise in preparing (and tasting) tea is to build up experience (and thus a broad frame of reference) by drinking as much of as many different teas as possible. Following this path, your skills will grow pot by pot.

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	Many people believe boiling water is best for all teas - a notion reinforced by countless store-bought tea packages. But many years of tea drinking and experimentation have taught us at TRIBUTE TEA that this is not the case. If you consider the seemingly limitless variety of different teas, it doesn’t make sense that they should all be prepared the same way. Unfortunately, it is this great variety that makes it difficult to speak of tea in generalities. Nonetheless, we will attempt here to outline some basic guidelines for the preparation of tea. First, a word about leaf: the veritable teaspoon is not always a good indication of the true amount of tea you’re putting in the pot. 1tsp. of a tightly rolled tea like Jasmine Pearls, for example, is a lot more tea than a tsp. of a large-leaf Puerh or Bao Zhong. The ideal serving is about 3 grams of leaf per 4-6oz serving of tea... which is good advice if you happen to have a postage scale handy, which, of course, most people don’t. What we recommend instead is practice. The best way to develop expertise in preparing (and tasting) tea is to build up experience (and thus a broad frame of reference) by drinking as much of as many different teas as possible. Following this path, your skills will grow pot by pot. (NEXT)
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