TeaEqualsBliss

Most tuo cha I’ve used in the past fall apart while in the hot water, especially on longer steeps. If you’re doing short steeps, give it a minute in the water and then poke at it with a chop stick.

Trying to break them up dry will just damage the leaves a lot unless you have an actual tea pick which is really tedious.

Sorry…I meant to say it was completely apart before even putting IN the water. I didn’t purposely do that…it fell out of the tissue paper that way…eeeek…

nod I got that. I was reacting to the “so I didn’t need to break it apart” thinking you meant if it had been whole, you’d have broken it apart prior to steeping rather than during.

As an aside, the person who suggested that “washing” includes a five minute steep you throw away is definitely a minority view. Washing is just that. Washing. You rinse the tea, and immediately drain and then do a proper steep. Steeping for five minutes and then throwing it out isn’t washing, that’s just throwing away a steeping. Some people may be into that kind of thing and that’s fine, but as far as use of terms go, that’s not a washing.

OH! I got ya now! LOL – Sorry! I am trying to multi-task without much success today! hahaha!

And for my washing…I did just a simple wash…I didn’t ‘wash it for 5 minutes’ as the other review suggested…I did do a simple rinse I guess you could say…

Sorry – again I probably should have been more descriptive in my tasting note with that part

That was just a rant/warning because I read that other poster’s entry and was all “whoa… way to waste the best part of the tea”.