The Ways of Tea Brewing

3 min read

In the development of Chinese tea culture, the ways of tea brewing underwent incessant improvement and innovation by the early people, and the results were really very rich and colorful. From the most primitive way of chewing fresh leaves to quench thirst, and to today’s using boiling water to brew the tea directly, the way of tea brewing has undergone a long course of development and evolution. Looking from today’s perspective, there are mainly the methods as follows: Tea steaming: Before the Tang dynasty, the tea drinkers mostly used the way of tea steaming,i.e. putting tea into the tea utensils directly and cook it. Usually, people first ground tea into powder and then heated the water in a kettle. When water was lightly boiled, they would add tea powder into the kettle, then continue to heat it until the water was fully boiled and there appeared tea foams, which, sma1l or large, were all the essence of tea. Then people would bail the tea foams out and put it into another container to use later, then continue to heat the water to let the tea and water further mingle together until the water was boiled for the third time. Then the tea foams were put back to the kettle and the tea steaming was finished when the tea foams was well-distributed in the water.”Dian-cha”: In the Song dynasty the method of “dian-cha”predominated. This method of tea brewing did not steam tea in the kettle directly. Firstly, the cake tea was ground into powder and put into a bowl for later use, while water was heated in the kettle. When the water was lightly boiled, it was poured into the bowl. The process of pouring water usually was divided into seven times. The first time of pouring water into the bowl should make the tea foamed, the second time of pouring water should pour water sharply onto the bowl’s surface and then make water circle the bowl once, and the third time should pour water around the bowl for several times. In order to make tea and water better mingled, there should be four more times of pouring water to complete the tea preparation.

“Dian”jasmine tea: It is to put several buds of plum blossom, osmanthus flower and jasmine together with the powdered tea into the bowl, then pour boiling waterinto the bowl. People can hold the tea bowl and watch the hot tea hasten the buds blossom. The tea looks beautiful and feels fragrant.

“Mao tea”: It is to add dried fruits into tea and pour boiling water into the bowl, and then people could drink tea and eat the fruits. This kind of tea is usually plucked and processed by the tea men themselves in the mountains and they also prepared dried fruits to entertain themselves.

Tea Brewing: It was the most widely used way since the Ming and Qing dynasties (1368~1911). Although there might be some differences in tea kind and production area, this method of tea brewing is mainly to pour boiling water onto the tea leave: directly. The point of tea brewing is to use hot water to set off the taste, colorand aroma of tea, and the concentration of tea should vary according to differentpeople, time and demands. People today usually use a small amount of water to wash the tea leaves before brewing and then pour boiling water into it for drink.