Tag Archives: brewing tea

We Be Brew(s)in’!

One thing I love about tea is the fact that you can make it so many ways! I touched on a few typical ideas that are pretty simple to enact in my earlier post about tea in the office, but I didn’t get into much detail. I’m not going to get into all of the possible ways to brew tea, but the ones I’ll cover today are Western style, gong fu style, and Moroccan style.

Western Style
The most common style for those of us in the Western world to brew our tea is Western style (I’m a fount of knowledge!). The Western style brewing method is pretty basic. You use a standard teapot, brew the leaves to their full potential, and drink.

Technically, it doesn’t have to be a teapot. You can use a tea bag or even one of those single cup infusers. This is really the only brewing method where people add milk to the tea with any regularity, though that’s more a reflection on Western style tea drinking than brewing. Western style brewing is generally done by steeping the tea a single time. It wasn’t until Westerners began brewing tea in single steepings that the large teapots really came to the fore.

With a large teapot and a single infusion, it’s made easier to enjoy one heck of a tea party with all your friends! Continue reading →

There’s T(ea)rouble A-Brewin’!

More than anything else, the number one reason most people I know aren’t “tea fans” is because they haven’t been brewing it correctly. Most notably is my friend who now is writing her own blog about her tea adventures as she makes her way through 175 different teas in 365 days. This time last year, if I offered tea to her, she would have wrinkled her nose in disgust and turned it down solidly.

Around 6 months ago, she decided to try tea again, but this time she paid more attention to how it was made. Instead of putting a tea bag in a cup of scalding hot water and leaving it for, oh… 10 minutes… she used water that was hot, but not boiling, and she removed the tea from the water after the recommended time frame. And lo and behold… it tasted good!

Shocking, I know.

Now, before I really get into this, I just want to note that there are a number of different methods for brewing tea. Today, we’ll keep it simple and about as basic as possible – with a typical Western-style brewing in a teapot (or infuser in mug) that most of you are likely to use.

The main thing to remember when brewing tea is that the temperature of the water and the time the leaf is left in the water can be extremely important. In fact, let’s start there… with the water. Continue reading →