Thursday, March 5, 2020

Traditional tea brewing is overrated

What is the best way to enjoy a batch of fresh high-mountain oolong tea such as Taiwan's esteemed "Jin Xuan"?

Just put hot water on it, wait for 5-10 minutes, and enjoy the whole thing. Seriously. The only benefit to the traditional short steep times of 40-60 seconds is that you can taste how the flavor of the leaves changes over time, like telling a story over time. That's nice, but what if I want to taste the whole story in the same sip? Steeping for a long time gives you its entire complex flavor in a single serving, rather than giving you slices of its full glory diluted across multiple servings.

I challenge advocates of traditional brewing to administer controlled taste testing experiments to the general public comparing short-steeped tea to long-steeped tea and see which one is more popular. I would bet some money that the long-steeped tea would be more popular.

Also, do NOT throw away the first batch. The initial steeping has the strongest, best flavor. The reasoning that it gets rid of pesticides isn't correct, because you're actually getting rid of tea flavor at the same rate at which you're getting rid of other chemicals. You may as well just throw away the first 10 batches to get rid of 99% of the pesticide and also end up with 1% tea flavor. Also, "awakening the leaves" not only has no scientific basis, but also is simply a logical fallacy: It's not like throwing out the first batch is going to make the water spend more time with the "awakened" tea leaves than it would've if you'd just left it in.

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