Why Does MORE LEAF MAKE BETTER TEA - Brewing MASTERCLASS
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- čas přidán 3. 11. 2018
- Do you want to know how to brew loose leaf tea properly? One of the most important things that you can do is to brew Gong Fu Cha style by increasing the amount of tea leaves. A higher leaf to water ratio is used throughout China and it is the secret to making top tasting tea.
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So how does the leaf to water ratio affect the quality of your tea? In this video, I go through some of my thoughts and apply my experience to an imaginary model of tea brewing to help you build a clearer picture of what is happening whenever you are brewing.
The key advantages of increasing leaf to water ratio are:
1. Increase richness, strength, viscosity and finish.
2. Reduce brewing times to give a clearer picture of the character of the tea and maintain high aromatics.
3. Increase the number of infusions that you can experience in a session
If you are brewing ‘Western Style’, then please try using higher leaf to water ratios and write down your thoughts in the comments.
I would be happy to hear your experience with Arc Brewing - please try it out and fire over your thoughts on this experimental brewing style.
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Simple guy here : I see diagrams, I hit Like.
Your diagrams are still the best :p
Alex and Don Mei - the kings of diagrams! :D
I am trying to find a 4d graph maker 😁📈👍
@@MeiLeaf You shuld get someone to actually design your ramp-comparison. I mean a drawing, possibly with animation. That'd be awesome.
AhimSaah I was thinking the same thing. Or an animation.
I've been binge-watching your videos and am completely new to (good) tea. Thank you for spreading tea education!
I LOVE this channel, Checkout Tea House Ghost and Global Tea Hut as well
I was just playing with using excesive tea leaves yesterday to know the difference.
When I do comparisons like these, I also like to have a glass of water around and take a sip to clear my mouth. After drinking many teas in a short amount of time, the differences between them become less and less noticeable as your mouth and tongue gets coated with it. This works especially well when you are considering a purchase and have to try the candidates in a short time span.
I love geeky Don! 😍 Have a wonderful sunday teaheads.
The conceptulization of smell to sound EQ is perfect
More good stuff. Bringing back memories of university studies and concepts like solubility, saturated solutions, size of molecules, vapor pressure, temperature curves, etc. Little did I know then that someday I'd find a use for all that!
Awesome exactly what i needed
I really enjoy these long , in depth , information dense videos. Thanks Don!
The videos are like the process of brewing gong-fu. :)
MORE TEA MASTERCLASSES PLEASE!
As always----so much info!
Thanks, Don, for all the education you are giving us!!
Just love the way you describe things about tea.. You made me tea geek and i will spread it around. Keep on!
Your videos on brewing are always top quality. Great work, Don!
great diagram. very easy to understand
The analogies are splendid! Thanks for the great and structured content.
NERD! 😜 You've put an amazing amount of thought into this. I like the camera/shutter speed analogy.
Many thanks for the science of tea.
I will always love gyokuro... ❤️😍
I had wished that there was a Live Session last night, but that’s okay-this will do! Brewing Little Tong Mu and Amber GABA today. CHEERS
good topic
It's totally true！ So make sure to use smaller tea pot and more tea leaves!
Thanks!
Thank you so very much for your generosity!
Its interesting that in Japan their is also a Kind of gong fu Style. I heard that japanese tea Masters sometimes use extreme amounds of leaf compared to water. Sometimes their use 3 to 4 teaspoons for just one tiney cup, so in fact even more that gong fu Cha. Peace to all :)
wish i subscribed or knew about your channel much earlier. I only started doing this recently and really started paying attention to the ratio and water temperature.
Welcome to the channel and I am happy that you are experimenting with the art of brewing.
Have you ever considered doing a video about brewing with silver?
Sometimes when I have water and I don't want to get up, I will brew a little bit hot, then as it cools down, and then at a lower temperature for quite a while and mix them in the gong dao bei. It's kind of cool blending it all together. Just a fun experiment
Another great lesson! I prefer Gong Fu style but I rarely do it because of the practical consideration you mention. I rarely have time to go thru a lot of infusions (some teas seem like they can be infused 10 times or more and who wants 10 cups of tea even though 100ml is a tiny amount in each cup) so I end up probably wasting tea when I brew Gong Fu style even though it is a much better way to brew most tea. Many times I just want perhaps two (200 ml) cups of tea after work and so I try to put in enough leaf to get two infusions but hitting that mark correctly is not easy either.
What I do when I want to get a gong fu brew for work or excercise is the night before or early in the day I do a gong Fu session. Each time I infuse I drink a small bit (I use the meileaf tea cup half way) then put the rest in a thermos or glass bottle. I keep infusing untill I fill the bottle. This way you get to sample each fresh infusion just as you brew but also have a good batch of tea throughout the day, or the next day.
Lots of info from all his vids,wish he could come to Minneapolis for demonstration.
Great content. One thing I don't necessarily agree with is that gonfu is the only worthwhile way to brew biluochun. In my opinion biluochun is a fantastic tea to drink grandpa style.
Hi ,I love your videos especialy the experiment ones .Trough experiment we can learn .I have a question ,in your tea sessions do you came up with a minimum steeping time ?I tried to steep my pi lo chun 3.5g of tea in a 80ml gaiwan (80g of water to the lip with the leaves in it) for 6s 1st infusion then 4s then 3rd inf 6sec and so on . Isteep for 6 time 12s last infusion (total of 480 g of drikable tea) .I start to count when i put the lid on the gaiwan (is it ok? Or i should count when the first drop of water lands on my leaves?)Thank you . I learned so much from you .I’m so gratefull for the info you provide .
super geeky, love it!! are you growing November moustache, Don?
I like experimenting with temperature and it can make a lot of difference to the taste. Never tried option 3 - gaiwan in ice water and hitting it with 95 C, must admit, I am a bit worried about breaking the teaware...I am clumsy enough at best of times .....
Petra I just broke my first ever Tea ware the other day! My favorite Mei leaf double wall glass-waaaaaa! 😢It slipped on the edge of the sink and fairly exploded-glass everywhere. I have two more on the way👍 They get slippery.
@@joetexas1546oh no...but breathe...it is just teaware not a leg...😘
Petra The curse is Over!
Third video and Tea brewing is just like my last marriage, got it ,don't need the ramp/marble thing.
A great video, indeed! I love the ramp metaphor, it is a very useful way of visualising it. However, I've noticed a major flaw in your arc brewing technique. How could you compare the 95 C 20 sec tea to the 95 C 35 sec tea brewed in ice, not knowing whether the differences are caused by the fact that the latter was brewed in ice or whether it was the difference in brewing time? I suggest you experiment with only one factor in tea brewing at a time, so that you know what influences the infusion in what way.
Excellent experiment, honorable tea guide! A question? Following your example on other videos where you steep over two dozen times the question is why not use 1 gram of my expensive teas or less with 50 ml and just have which 500 ml of tea which is more than most can hold comfortably in one sitting or even 20 steeps if sharing? The proportion is then the same as your favored ratio, but less leaf and more tea. Most gong fu tea sets I found have tiny pots and cups to accommodate this method so one wonders if that is the expected method. A 50 ml size cupful is just right for a few reasons too. Also, according to some research a 30 second steep only extracts 10 percent of the caffeine, and if we use that as an index of the others "marbles" that constitute the taste factors then there is much more taste to be had and we are wasting good tea without getting the max number of brews from the leaf we use. I actually prefer the taste of the subsequent brews, and by then I am buzzing anyway! Using scales is probably a good idea for consisteny and a graduated measure to get the bearings, and then color and experience can be the guide with different teas. Thank you for your teachings and guidance that we value very much!
Funny enough I did my own experiment last night. Used some Eastern beauty testing between Western and gong fu style. Night and day, Western brewing you barely got any flavor but gongfu brewing you get a noseful and mouthful of grapes, peaches and roses.
Thank you don for making this channel you really got me into the different aromas of tea and your happiness and expression for this type of liquor is contagious I've just ordered 5 different teas and a bit of tea were items from your shop keep up the good work !!!!!
Hi Don! Always great content. Are you saying “naught point 9”? this must be a UK thing. Just trying to understand! Thanks! Love to you all at ML!
Yes nought point nine
nought is usually zero... i only know because i watch a lot of soccer lmao
I like the analogy with the ramps and the marbles but it breaks down when brewing multiple times with the same leaf. You would assume then that either you extract all the slow marbles that were left behind and your tea tastes completely different or the different speeds of marbles don't correlate to their taste. In the latter case longer brewing doesn't necessarily mean different taste from that model.
You will exactly extract more of the 'slower' marbles with subsequent infusions which is why the tea does taste different with other infusions. You will continue to extract the faster moving marbles as long as there are more of them to give you. Eventually the balance shifts more and more to the taste of slower extracting compounds
Hi Don, excellent video again! Just a question, because I’m playing with Japanese Senchas at the moment: I’m not quite sure whether the Japanese teas would behave differently as they were designed for longer steeps to start with. I know you mentioned it a little in your Chinese vs Japanese tea video - but would you really increase leaf water ratio on the Japanese teas like you recommend here, or were you referring to Gongfu vs western brewing only? Thanks!
In my opinion Don sad in one video that "we need" to mix in Japanese tea between western and gongfu brewing and increase the brewing time to 30-60 sec. In traditional tea ceremony they brew the tea 1 min and the next 2-3 brews for 20-30 sec.
I drink my Gyoruko in a Gaiwan(125ml) and if all leafs spread out and opened, my gaiwan is filled with 1/2 to 2/3 of the hole Gaiwan with tea. I brew my tea maybe 10-15 seconds almost 7 times.
SeiqLay oh wow, that’s indeed very different from the Japanese instructions! Need to try. I increased my sencha ratio from 2,5 to 3,5g today, keeping other parameters the same. Definitely more delicious, but the bitterness was also coming through. I’ll try to decrease the brewing time then. Thanks!
@@mariannefleur6671 Yeah if you think that you found your favorite tea ( that is not to expensive for your experiments ) try many diffrent ways of brewing. At the end you need to love the tea fluid not Don or me. ;P
At the other hand I drink my Milky Oolong with two tea spoon of tea in 1 liter of water. I let the tea leafs in my water for the hole time.
Marianne, with Japanese you need to just experiment. I like to go somewhere between Chinese and Japanese, but be careful, it also can differ if they are fukamushi and asamushi. If you add too much fukamushi and leave long time, it can get bitter...even if the tea is super quality. Best s to as SeiqLay said, experiment and brew how you like it, does not matter what everyone else says ;-)
I am of the opinion that all tea should be treated the same way in the sense that it is all about trying to understand the character that you wish to express in your cup and then working with all of the parameters to achieve your aims. Japanese tea is no different and will benefit from higher leaf to water ratio as long as the brewing times can be changed to get the right balance of flavours. We have not begun to discuss leaf permeability (that might be the next video) and will change the way that the tea brews. Japanese tea has high permeability in general which means that overextraction is more likely and so the safety option is to brew with less leaf to have higher error margins. I am trying to break all of the individual parameters down into understandable parts before we can reassemble into a multi parameter theory.
Would you still use the gong fu method for teas like an Assam?
Gong fu generally works for all tea as long as the tea is processed with gong fu in mind i.e. whole, unbroken leaves of Chinese origin.
Don, do you think the arc brewing should be done with the brewing vessel in a bowl of just ice? or a bowl with ice and water to increase the vessel's exposure to cold temperature?
Ice and water would be ideal.
If you have a bowl of just ice cubes, the surface contact with the gaiwan would be very limited so the heat transfer will also be very little. Unless you manage to make a block of ice with the shape of your gaiwan, which would be a very geeky and aesthetically nice way to perform this arc brewing 😀
Gong Fu question for Don or other fellow tea head: Is there any advantage to quickly cooling the leaves between brewings, for example, to briefly dip them in cold water? Could this improve the taste of the later infusions of the leaves during a session? I am concerned that the warm, wet leaves are still "stewing" while waiting for the next extraction, even though they are not in hot water.Any thoughts? Perhaps a future tea experiment?
Interesting question and definitely worthy of more experimentation. It may be that accelerating the cooling hinders future extractions though as the leaves will take more time to reach extraction temperature for certain desirable compounds.
I can imagine a few possible issues that this cold water rinse might cause:
1) with cold leaves and teaware, when you get to the point of adding hot water for the next brew, the heat transfer will instantly cool down the hot water to some extend;
2) this "stewing" of hot leaves might in fact be the beginning of the extractions for the next infusion, so by skipping it you might lose some of the extraction;
3) the cold wash will end up washing away some of the good stuff too.
The logic of people who use half of the leaves with 2x longer time brewing is like you can use the same leaves for infinity amount of tea liquor as long as you brew it forever.
85c on Bi Luo Chun? I always use 80c and typically don't rinse it because it's a green. Should I be rinsing it?
It is not required to rinse the tea leaf. The purpose of rinsing is to open up the leaves. The exception is hei chas where rinsing is required.
@@kwjan right. I was more asking why one would opt to rinse a bi luo chun, seems counter-intuitive to me
Couldn't agree more, a green brewed for a minute or more is a waste of tea!
How many teaspoons are 5 grams? (Living in Canada here, and I don’t have a scale....)
another canadian here! should just be one heaping teaspoon (if youve got the measuring type) and then ill place that in a small teacup to get a visual feel of what 5g of that tea looks like, so then next time i just do it by eye
3.5g seems so little... I always use at least 5g, even for green teas
Agree - a 100g bag of green tea usually lasts me from 8 - 10 servings.
Why does *Mei Leaf make better tea
Fixed your typo for you.
One question about gong fu brewing....do I have to rinse the leaves every time I do my infusions? Or is it only once, at the beginning?
Only once! After the first rinse, all infusions are good ones.
Is there a way to convert from western to gong fu? For example 2.5gr 250ml at 80ºc for 4 minutes how much would it be in gong fu or is it not possible to make a conversion like that?
If you check any Mei Leaf tea they give the recommended brewing time and amount for both styles. If you want to do some calculations yourself, in general you can shift between western and gongfu brewing (and all the intermediate stages between the two) by keeping the amount of leaves and the brew time inversely proportional to each other (which is what Don did in this video) - so you may multiply the amount of tea by 4 and divide the brew time by 4. For the water amount, you just simply scale the tea amount proportionately with the water amount. The temperature should generally be always the same for each type of tea independently of how you brew. So in your example 2.5g/250ml/4min(240s) would be "equivalent" to 10g/250ml/60s or 10g/125ml/30s (which will have a similar strength but more flavour as explained in this video).
What is a linear relationship?
Here's an example: It's a man's world, but the ladies own the house and the house always wins.
A simple relationship between two factors (in this case amount of leaf and brewing time) that would be represented as a straight line on a graph - so that using a tenth of the leaf means equivalent strength would be to brew for ten times as long, half the leaf would mean brewing double the time and so on.
A better example: you increase temperature by 1 degree, your richness increases by x. You increase your temperature by 10 degrees, you increase your richness by 10*x. The x never changes, the relationship is 1:1 linear. A non-linear relationship changes over the parameters. So a non-linear example would be that you change the temperature by 1 degree, the richness changes by x, you increase the temperature by 10 degrees, you increase the richness by 20*x, you increase it by 20 degrees, and the richness even decreased by 2*x (not a linear predictability). Good luck!!
Jonas Svedas k? K!?!?!? Where is the k axis? Mind blown..
Mei Leaf fascinating, what reasons can you think of as to why Time vs Leaf Weight might not be in a linear relationship when it comes to strength (if I've understood correctly).
Feed loss after about 20min
Never mind worked when I refreshed.
This is too gecky. No way I am weighing my water