How to make the perfect cup of tea

In addition to being a beer snob I am also a tea snob. I have usually 5 or 6 different teas at my desk and a special doo hickie that seeps the tea leaves and drips the water out of the bottom. I rarely drink tea out of a bag and thought I was the cats pajamas for drinking tea out of my doo hickie.

Cats pajamas no more.

There is an art to brewing tea and I got schooled on how to do it the proper way in Hong Kong. 

To start, the Chinese word for tea is Cha. Its the only Chinese word I remember because It's the exact same pronounciation and spelling in Portugese. It's also pronounced the same in Thai and is quite similar in Hindu (chai).

Well anyways, here's detailed instructions on the art of brewing tea.

Ingredients: Tea leaves of your choice. I went to MingCha (MingCha.com.hk) in Hong Kong. They ship to the USA and offer an outstanding product.

Equipment: Water, boiler, thermometer, 4 piece tea set with a thing to pour your leaves in, a tea sipping cup & lid, a cup for letting tea sit and cup to sip sip your tea out of. For the photo below, the top left triangle thing is the tea leaf container. The middle is the water boiler. The item he is pouring water into is the tea seeper, to the right is the vessel and cut off is the tea cup.

Step 1:

Heat your water to between 86 and 92 degrees. Typically it's lower for green teas and higher for black teas.

Step 2: Pour around 3 grams* of tea into a container and then place into cup

Step 3: Heat the seeping cup to temperature of the hot water by pouring water in it and letting it sit for a minute or 2. Don't do anything with the tea leaves.

Step 4: Dump the hot water out of your tea cup and place the tea leaves into the seeping cup. Then pour the hot water into the seeping cup and dump quickly 5 seconds later. This does 2 things: washes the tea leaves of chemicals and debris and will also remove some of the caffeine while getting the tea leaves up to temperature.

Step 5: Dump the correct temperature water into the seeping cup and the one your going to sip out of. When pouring water into the tea leaf cup, pour in a circular motion around the edges to get the leaves stirring. When the water touches the tea leaves, start the timer with a minute remaining on it.

Step 6: After one minute, dump the hot water out of the tea vessel and cup. 

Step 7: Once the water is out, pour the tea seeping cup into the tea vessel, making sure all of the leaves stay in the seeping cup. Also, make sure all of the water is out, otherwise it oxidizes the tea.

Step 8: Pour the appropriate amount of tea from your vessel into your sip sip cup.

Step 9: Bottoms up

Step 10: Here's the interesting fact, you can repeat the same steps up to 10 times. I found the best teas were on by 2nd and 3rd brew. Each time you brew, the color gets a little darker. To the left in the photo is the first brew and to the right is the 2nd.

And that's the detailed science to brewing the perfect cup of tea.