The Theory of One Great Infusion
I’ve been doing some interesting tests today. Read The Theory of One Great Infusion to find out more!
I’ve also implemented a live chat widget on the site for those with questions about my products and such. =) Enjoy!
http://whisperingpinestea.com/brewingarticles_files/onegreatinfusion.html
That is very interesting. I’m going to try this.
I will. One thing I’m wondering is that once you start steeping with water at the boiling point, the temperature of the water will decline. So, if you steep 3 min., then re-steep for 5 min. with fresh boiling water, your water is hotter during the re-steep than if you just did one 8 minute infusion where the water during the last half of the infusion time will be cooling off quite a bit. That might affect the flavor for some teas.
Yes, that point was brought up at the bottom of the article. You can also see on the picture I took that the left cup (2 infusions) was slightly darker than the right cup (1 infusion). The flavors were not noticeably different as far as I could tell.
Interesting, this could save alot of time and energy!
The one thing I’d miss is the difference in flavour between infusions. I rather enjoy discovering the base of a flavoured tea and seeing how it peeks out over a series of cups
Only problem I see is that one great infusion takes a lot of time. I can’t wait that long for my tea!
Very true! It’s a great way to conserve leaves and make lots of iced tea though! :)
This is just common sense. Either use more tea and less time (but more infusions), or less tea and more time, obviously taking the volume of the brewing vessel into consideration as well. Using the method described above, though, there is a point, though, where the water will cool off too much to extract the tea well (or just cooler than most people want to drink their tea). I think this point is why you may get a little more mileage overall by using a smaller brewing vessel and more infusions.
A similar method is what MarshalN calls “grandpa style” http://www.marshaln.com/whats-grandpa-style/ which is similar, but involves topping off the tea with fresh hot water as it gets too cool or too concentrated. This is a very common method of brewing tea. As with the method above, it’s important not to use too much tea.
All that said, I think there is a lot to be said for brewing the tea much stronger, but doing short infusions, especially if the tea is good quality and can take being brewed strong. The methods above will tend to flatter lower quality teas a bit more, though.
One other thing you can do is to brew the tea in a thermos. That will keep the water a lot closer to the temperature you added it at. I have even done overnight brews this way (with leaves that were already spent), and the tea is still quite warm in the morning.
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