Let's brew some oolong tea! Been down a bit of a tea rabbit hole and wanted to share!
Step 1: Get your stuff together! You need a water boiler, a teapot to brew tea in, a cup to drink out of, and a container to store brewed tea. The mesh filter is optional
Boil some water and heat up your teapot, cup, and container! The tea leaves I have here is from 合歡山, it's one of the peaks in Taiwan that gets snow. The tea that survive the wild temperature swings at the higher elevations often grow the slowest which gives the plant more time to store all of that wonderful tea goodness.
Step 2: Add some tea! For this type of tea, the dried out leaves are rolled up into a ball. Green tea (綠茶) has no fermentation, red/black tea (紅茶) is fully fermented. Oolong tea is a type of 青茶 which is on the green tea side of the spectrum, lightly fermented. A good rule of thumb is to add enough to make a layer in whatever container you're brewing out of
Step 3: Wash your tea leaves to wake it up! (醒茶) oftentimes people think washing refers to cleaning but this is an important step in the brewing process. The tea leaves need a chance to breathe after being dried out for so long. I normally just swirl a little hot water around and use the water to hear up my cup. Give your tea leaves some time to yawn, but don't let it cool down!
Step 4: Start brewing! Oolong tea is suitable for very high temperature water because it takes a lot of energy to break down what's in the leaves. Pour in boiling water and give it about a minute. all personal preference but a good rule of thumb is no shorter than 30 seconds, and try not to forget it for more than 3 minutes 🤭
Step 5: enjoy! I normally brew enough to fill up my container (茶海) so just repeat the process until it's filled up . Oolong tea can take a lot of extractions, normally by the fourth steep the flavor starts to go but if it's a tea you enjoy go ahead and keep going!
I like to keep the small pieces of tea that breaks off out of my container, so I use a filter, makes cleaning a lot easier 👍
Finally another tea head! Welcome! 😃👋 what kind of oolong today?
#teastr #teachain #gongfustr
高冷茶 refers to any tea leaf grown above 1600m, this one is from 合歡山 which is part of the Central Mountain Range of Taiwan. The tea leaves are thick to get through the harsh temperature changes and weather in the mountains, in Taiwan 青心烏龍 is type of plant grown in high elevations. This type of tea is harvested about twice a year as opposed to others which are harvested year-round.
In Taiwan, oolong tea mostly refers to any 青茶. 青茶 is a process of preparing of tea leaves to be lightly/partially fermented. This tea is on the green tea side of the oolong spectrum to bring out mostly flavor from freshness (青) of the tea compared to its flavor from fermentation (酵)
