White, green, or oolong teas without astringency?

22 Replies
Yaklex said

Harfatum,

Another angle to consider is brewing technique.
I’ve been frustrated trying to control astringency in green teas.
I couldn’t get it right, even when I lowered the temp to 145 and time to 1:30.

But I’ve had better success raising the temp to 212 and infusing only 30 seconds.
I control the strength by adjusting the ratio of tea to water.

This technique works well for greens because they support many infusions.
So if you want 32 oz of prepared tea, you can get decent strength by doing 4 – 6 infusions at 30 seconds each using 5 grams of tea.

This site demonstrates.
http://www.tuochatea.com/brewing_and_storage.htm

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As others have said with white, green and fresh oolong teas: experiment with brewing temperature, quantity of leaf and length of infusion. Each person has a personal preference, but ideally none of these teas should be astringent if brewed correctly as Yaklex has said above.

Start off with a temperature in the mid-eighties (degrees C) and work your way up from there. Also remember to bring your water to a “fish eye” boil first and let sit to cool down to the desired temperature as opposed to heating to the desired temperature. Bringing to that light boil changes the chemical composition of the water and actually helps open up the flavour of the tea leaves.

Lightly dust the bottom of your brewing vessel with leaf (shouldn’t quite be covered) and infuse starting at 30 seconds. Some teas like a longer infusion, some like less. Some like hotter water, some less heat.

But with quantity of leaf the rule is usually less is more.

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You can’t go wrong with silver needle and dragonwell, both teas are rarely astringent.

putting in too much leaf will get bitter astringent dragonwell sadly, or at least i can manage – though if you watch your leaf i think your right in that the temperature is much more flexible

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