Brewing Chinese Green Tea

Brewing loose leaf tea is a simple process. To extract the optimal flavor from loose leaf teas, it's important to understand the different tea types. Tea leaves are harvested by provenance, variety, harvest season, and style of crafting. So green teas are on the lighter end, the leaves are not oxidized, while black tea are fully oxidized and they're on the darker end. I will start with the green tea. I have two tablespoons of loose leaf teas here. I'm brewing this in a gaiwan. A gaiwan is a lid bowl. It's smaller in size because we will steep the leaves several times. These are young baby tips, so it's important to note that the water should be sippable and not at boiling. Hot water is added in to coat all the tea leaves so that the tea will steep slowly for about two minutes and we will try to extract the creamy sweet finish. Once the leaves are fully hydrated and they turn bright green, it is best to separate the leaves from the liquid. So I am decanting into the server. You could also decant into a cup that you will drink out of. The liquid is not very dark, but spring harvest greens have a lot of flavor. They're just missing the tannic acid. So once you finish drinking the first steep, you can also add hot water in for the second. The second actually has a lot more flavor and the steep time is a little bit shorter. So it's a little bit counterintuitive, but when working with loose leaf teas, it has so much flavor that you're able to re-steep several times. It's best to do this within a few minutes so you do not over extract.