How to Brew Loose Leaf Black Tea
Drinking black tea can be separated into two major styles, Chinese and Western. Most Chinese people prefer to drink black tea in the traditional way, drink purely without adding any other flavor unlike Westerners love to add other flavor into black tea such as milk or sugar. The traditional way allows tea to exert its inherent aroma, and also can be intuitively evaluated the quality of tea. Especially high end black tea, it is all about the true exclusive flavor of black tea itself. High quality black tea is not recommended to mix with other flavor.
If you like to taste a cup of good tea, you will not only need to get clear what property the tea is and how the tea is being made, but also need to know how to prepare it base on the tea property. Generally, there are a few way to prepare black tea. It is all depending on your own preference and tea wares you have.
The best way to brew black tea is using Gongfu style. We are going to show you how to make an excellent black tea over a simple practice. You will need just one teapot with strainer to start. If you own a beautiful tea set, you may want to prepare it in Gongfu style, which we are going to demonstrate it in later article. We are leaving out those expensive tea wares today and prepare black tea in a simple way.
There are many types of teapots designed with strainer installed which are perfectly convenient for black tea brewing. We are going to example with these types of teapot, and that is the only one tea ware you need beside kettle and cups.
Kettle is a must-have tool for tea brewing. If you don’t have one, buy one immediately. You will need it every time you prepare any type of tea.
We are going through easier steps to brew a perfect cup of black tea. We may eliminate some unnecessary steps over traditional brewing guide.
Prepare a kettle of boiling water before you started. Rinse your tea ware with hot boiling water first, and then transfer an appropriate amount of leaves into the strainer inside the teapot. (Figure out how much leaves you need base on the standard ratio of leaves and water 1g to 50ml.) And rinse the leaves with the boiling water, and drain out immediately into cups in this case to rinse cups with that tea liquor.
Now it is the starting point of first infusion. Add boiling water into teapot and cover with lid. Wait for ~30 seconds to get ready. For first two infusions, brewing time can be set to ~30 seconds and add another ~10 seconds for subsequent brewing. You may add or reduce tea leaves to change the thickness of tea to your own preference next time brewing, but not during the same session.
