HOW TO BREW PUERH TEA - MASTERCLASS

Katie heads this is done from a leaf in this video how to brew pour tea for those of you who are familiar with this YouTube channel you know how much I adore raw pure I love all tea types but if I was backed into a corner and I had to pick my desert island tea it would definitely be a raw pour and I realized that despite doing plenty of tasting videos and educational videos about raw pure tea I've never done a step-by-step brewing session with you showing you how I like to brew this tea and appreciate it so let's do that today if you've got an easy in front of you especially if you've got raw power then make sure you stick on the kettle and let's have a session together and if you are new to the game and you don't know what rural areas or you want to know more about raw power then check out the links in the description below plenty of videos all about raw party so that you can build up your knowledge in this amazing tea type and the reason why I love raw priority and it would be my desert island tea is because it is probably the tea which for me represents the intricacies of terroir more than any other team what do I mean by that I mean that the flavor profiles the diversity in taste and aroma finish texture of real priority is relatively unprocessed is really dependent upon the idiosyncrasies such as the soil the climate the surrounding nature of very specific mountain areas in Yunnan in China it's such an exciting world raw power those pure heads out there know what I'm talking about and all you seasoned poor heads if you're watching this thinking I know how to brew purity stick around because you never know you might find that you learn something new and you can certainly contribute your ideas in the comments section below so today we are going to be drinking nuzzled either it's been just under a year since I tasted this last so I'm excited to see how it's developed see how it's aged this is a 2018 kirk i raw pure it's not a GU shoe which means ancient tea tree but it is definitely old tea trees so let's begin first of all all I've got my guru here top tip there are a couple of gurus if you're watching on the weekend of this release there are a couple of gurus on sale on the website so I've got my guru here I've got the cake I've got my blue guy 150ml guy Juan I've got a Gong tau BAE and I've got a cup this is nozzle diver we're gonna open it up we're gonna start from square one so in case you've purchased a cake and you want to see how to do the whole process from beginning to end let's go and it's worth saying from the outset that everybody is different and every tea is different and so please use this video guide as a guide as a starting point for your brewing and your experimentation with peyote this is certainly not definitive you can have your own ways of brewing and in fact that's the joy of brewing gongfu style is adapting to your tastes and the particular tea in front of you and the reason why I find raw poety so fascinating to get the right brewing parameters on is because of the picking you can see here that the picking is varied we've got bugs here you can see these buds and then we've got larger leaves here we'll break it up and we'll take a look and see the leaves because of the fact that you've got a very varied picking from buds all the way down to larger leaves you've got a very wide spectrum of aromatics and compounds that you can extract and therefore when you're making your selections in terms of brewing you've got plenty of scope to play around in order to get the exact balance that you like right so knife goes in and you just lift knife goes in just lift very very simple different cakes have different levels of compression but this one is relatively loose so let's take out a nice chunk and what you want to try to do is just not break up the leaves not crack them as or as little as possible try to keep them as whole as possible like this separate out the leaves what I like to do in terms of quantity about 5 grams of leaf per hundred mill container so what I have here is 150 mill guy 1 which means I want minimum of about seven and a half grams of tea put this on here zero it down and I want to measure seven and a half grams just see how close I was going there that was six okay that's eight point three seven point nine seven point five three there you go so seven point five grams we're gonna quickly wrap this up make sure you keep your pure cakes wrapped in paper and stored away from odors in normal room conditions I've done a video all about how to store purity you can check that out yourself right so now we've got seven and a half grams of leaf and let's go through everything one step at a time first let's talk about the quantity that I've used here five grams per hundred mill the quantity is going to affect the richness of the brew and the thickness or texture of the brew so more leaf means richer and generally more texture so five grams per hundred mill is a good starting point I like to crank it up a little bit if I'm feeling like I want to treat myself next up water waters are very complicated subject in itself and certainly everyone has different preferences in terms of their water quality I am using here filtered tap water that's gone through a softener it's gone through a filter it's been grande Erised which is a different system for treating the water a grander system I'll put links to all of this in the description below and finally it's been left for at least five or six hours in a container which contains this bamboo charcoal I love this bamboo charcoal this is a great way to sort of remineralize the water and it certainly adds a certain depth and sweetness that you don't get without it I can't drink water now without it being affected or treated by this bamboo charcoal I'll put links in the description below if you want to pick up any bamboo charcoal right so the water is heating up to 95 degrees that's 205 Fahrenheit it was already hot so this is now warm I am now going to pour this warm water into the Gandhi Bay transfer the heat I'm actually going to add even more hot water in here I want everything warm the reason for that is because first of all when you are serving your tea you don't want the tea to cool too quickly but in this case the most important thing here is bringing the tea ware to temperature so that when the leaf goes into the guy won the heat is already affecting it and the aromas are starting to be released I am we're getting a lot of aromatic release here all the volatiles are starting to emerge I'm going to leave it in here for about five seconds just to allow the heat to start to have an effect and cause the aromas to really build up in that guy one okay so let's give these leaves a smell so first of all lid now I like to bring the lid just below my nose oh oh it's been a while since I've tasted this tea it's definitely darkened mmm I'm getting Tuffy's salted caramels new gars a little bit of orange now you can alter the way that you pick up aromatics by the way that you smell so short sharp sniffs will capture more of those high bright aromatics and focus them up your nose whereas longer deeper slower sniffs will bring out more of the warmer notes in the tea so let's go with the short ones yeah more of the orange zest coming through and then long I'm getting more of those aromatics that come from toffee and malt okay now the dry leaf same thing Oh little incense note coming through brown bread ice cream sultanas for sure I'm getting deep deep raisiny notes coming through ah it's like raisins and butter and toffee and a bit of honey as well coming through beautiful right now let's take a look at these leaves now that they've been prised apart and they're all nice and open we can see that we've got a variety of of leaf from the buds and the larger leaves and the color is key so if I have larger leaves and darker color that means the T can be brewed hotter and harder we're gonna go through what I mean by harder brewing in a little bit if it's more young leaves and it's greener then I would advise that you brew softer by default and of course you're now trying to dial in your parameters you're gonna get to know a tea and you'll change your brewing parameters with every session and even during the session but just as a starting point when you're looking at the leaves you're looking at color and picking and what I see here is a nice variation between buds and larger leaves and I'm seeing a slightly darker color obviously than it was a year ago when it was harvested because it has aged and therefore I can brew this a little bit harder what do I mean by hard brewing versus soft whirring soft brewing means that you're extracting at lower temperatures or you're brewing for shorter periods of time it's all about getting a lighter more gentle extraction versus hard brewing where you are brewing either longer or at hotter temperatures and how does that affect the experience in the cup well with aromatics and taste if you brew cooler or you brew shorter in general you're going to preserve more of those hi-brite aromatics so you're gonna get more brighter delicate notes in the tea versus brewing harder where you'll have more strength and the aroma profile will move more towards the deeper bass ear profiles of the tea what about bitterness and astringent see softer brewing will mean lower bitterness and a softer texture in the tea versus hard brewing which will increase the bitterness and increase the dryness not necessarily a negative thing here bitterness and astringency is something that people desire when drinking teas but finding the right balance is up to you next up is the aftertaste very very important with pure tea appreciation and tea appreciation in general how long is the finish how long does the taste persist in the mouth and how strong is it so with softer brewing in general you're gonna have a shorter aftertaste and it's going to be lighter versus hard brewing where you'll get a longer and stronger aftertaste also physicality is a very important part of tea appreciation it's not just about stimulating the aromatic and taste buds in your nose and mouth it's also the physical sensation in your mouth this sort of tingling sensation the juiciness all of this different these different sensations which come about when drinking tea when you brew softer you're gonna have less physicality it's going to be lighter versus hard brewing where it's going to be more pronounced and then finally the number of infusions how many infusions you're going to get out of the leaf well obviously if you're brewing at lower temperatures or you're brewing for shorter periods of time you can get more in fusions out of the same amount of leaf versus brewing harder so I hope that that is clear we're gonna talk that through a little bit more during this session I'm gonna pour this hot water into the cup just to warm that up I've got 95 degree water here because I want to start at a sort of cooler than boiling water that's 205 Fahrenheit because I want to get to know the tea I don't want to hit it and extract too much potential bitterness or too much potential Australian sea from the get-go I want to get to know the tea first up what we're going to do and remove this aside let me pour this away I'm gonna give the little fish tipet a little dousing now we are going to rinse the leaves water goes in I'm pouring more around than on the leaf we're going to go all the way up top you don't have to but I like to because it makes it easier for me to just skim off this froth which is not bad it's just sort of pectins and sugars in the tea but I like to have a clearer liqueur and pouring off some of this liqueur just so that I don't burn myself and then into the Gong debate goes the rinse I'm going to pour the rinse into the cup and I'm gonna leave this guy one for about ten seconds just to again allow the steam to start to open up the leaves what happens then is that means that my first infusion can be shorter so I can preserve those aromatics but it won't be too light because the leaf has had a chance to open up so I'm gonna give tea to my little tea pit here and I'm gonna pour it away and I'm gonna make sure that it is clear of any little bits of tea dust that's one of the advantages of reaching the tea leaves is that you're pouring away some of the finer particles so now I've got a clean gong dabei I've got my cup which is nice and warm and being seasoned already now let's get our nose into these leaves again lid first Annegret again short sniff and long sniff oh I'm still getting some of the fresh notes of that sort of fresh laundry smell that we picked up when it was fresh but definitely I'm getting gooseberries I'm getting new gah salted caramels forest honey's really really sweet but still with a slight zestiness a slight gooseberry tang to it all right now now that these leaves have had a chance to dissipate the steam if I put my nose directly into the wet leaves instead of smelling the leaf first instead of smelling the lid first then I'll get a nose full of steam and that will hamper and affect my ability to smell so now you can see these leaves are not steaming but they're still warm or malt loaf or toasted malt loaf a bit of face cream some lemony note coming through as well maybe more in the pomelo lemony grapefruits and some flower lilac perhaps so take your time explore this is the joy of pure drinking you don't have to move on to the brew you know actually what's really great is as the leaf starts to cool the aromatics in the nose start to change as well now let's go for our brew we've got 95 degree water 205 fahrenheit now watch how I pour this in I'm not gonna hit the middle of those leaves I'm gonna pour around we'll talk about that in a little bit but just note that I'm pouring it in I'm not gonna go necessarily to the top but close enough remember we measured this according to the capacity I'm gonna start a stopwatch and I want 15 seconds here for my first brew now some people like to prove very very short some people like to brew longer I think 15 seconds is the right amount for assessing your tea for starting so that's 15 seconds again I'm not worried about those little bits of leaf that go in I prefer to maintain texture if you do then use the filter very important do not leave the lid on now very important that you take the lid off we want to preserve now the ability to get as much out of these leaves as possible so leaving the lid on would cause too much musty nurse and steaming to go on in the guy one that's not good it will damage the overall resilience and taste of the tea so now we're going to pour some tea and I don't like to go too high to the top I like to bring it to about three-quarters of the cup so that I get some room from my nose to pick up a little column of the aroma here smelling the liquor is something that you can do I like to do it a little bit obviously every time you're drinking you're bringing aroma into the nose as well as the liquor into the mouth and I'm getting a sort of pandan creaminess coming through here okay first up texture texture is nice and medium thick I would say medium thick texture if this was a goose shootie which is the ancient tea tree material you'd expect it to be slightly thicker very very nice though so I like to concentrate on texture first this because you only get one opportunity to assess texture before your mouth gets used to the texture and it becomes harder to discern so medium thick now we focus on taste I'm getting really really nice level here of aromatics and base notes so I'm happy with 15 seconds at 95 degrees if I'd brewed longer I think it would have made a stronger tea for sure but it would have been it would start to reveal a little bit too much dryness and astringency and too much of the Basie notes so I'm picking up those honey's I'm picking up cream so the brown bread ice cream which is one of my most familiar tasting notes with her chi tea which is where this tea comes from is definitely there mmm really really nice I'm getting that grapefruit tang as well a little the grapefruit zest so take your time sip a long sip slowly you can choose if you want to give it a little slurp I like to slip a little bit but not too much I find if I add it 8 the liquor and I try to do all of that thing that a lot of tasters do for me I've done videos about this before for me I don't particularly like it because it brings too much humidity I think up my nose and it becomes harder for me to have retro nasal aroma what do I mean by retro and hazelnut aroma what I mean is when the liquor is in your mouth if you breathe out through your nose you're gonna pass a lot of nice aromatics through your nose and you're gonna be smelling in Reverse it's a great way to amplify the experience of the tea mmm and I get more malty note coming through when I do that definitely more malted creams coming through it's not just tea do that with everything whenever you're eating breathe out through your nose it really really amplifies the experience really really lovely so now that we've got the initial taste in our mouth let's start to focus on the finish and the aftertaste and I have to say that it's already building after just a couple of cups of this tea and I'm already starting to feel the body sensation but that's for later on so the finish here and the physicality what I'm looking for is how does it mean my mouth feel after I've swallowed the true appreciation of pure tea and most teas in general is obviously the whole process but a fundamental importance on aftertaste because for me aftertaste speaks of the quality of the tea material aroma and taste can be manipulated quite well by good producers they can take leaves that are not the top top quality leaves and they can manipulate to bring out more flavor and aroma but the taste and the mouthfeel is something that you cannot fake and here I'm getting a juice in I'm getting a dry - juiciness here the sides in the back of my tongue are flooding with saliva and that saliva is a sort of zesty grapefruit flavor with them a little touch of jasmine coming through jasmine and grapefruit really really lovely so I'm very happy with the level that I've brewed this t95 5095 degrees or 205 Fahrenheit for 15 seconds for me has been a good sweet spot from my beginning of this tea now if I'd felt that it was too light then I may think let me crank up the temperature a little bit or maybe extend the brewing time even longer but right now I'm very very happy so let's brew up the next one we've still got 95 degree water here and again I'm going to pour on the sides we're going to talk about that in a second I'm going to pour on the sides and then I'm going to put my timer on now we're going to add five seconds here so this is now going to be a 20 second brew keep my eye on that again I'm not going to pour through any filter I like the texture that this gives me without the filter here we go second infusion also I like to get every single drop out here so take your time you know I tend to be a bit in a rush when I'm doing these videos because I'm conscious of your time take your time and another little trick here you go special trick for you guys watching here we I call this the roll up okay this is a advanced guy one technique for only you people out there that are watching this video the roll up take your knuckle put it in here right you basically grab the lid with your thumb and your middle finger and the index finger knuckle in here you put it in at an angle backwards to how you bored and then you roll up and then you'll get a few extra drips out so we call that the roll up so you've got your standard pool then after you pour just lick look at the the axis going the other way and then roll up and you get every last drop out you don't want any liquor or water to be you know hanging around in those leaves you want to hit to be dissipating steam and also having low moisture in there right second infusion is waiting for me let me put the kettle back on ooh a lot of minerality is coming through in the cup and you'll find that when you have left the tea for a little bit the aromatics start to dissipate naturally so you start to lose some of those bright aromas and you get more of a structure of the teeth so what I like to do is once I found my sweet spot and we happen to chance upon it right now then I like to sort of add 3 to 5 seconds per infusion for about probably the first five or six infusions so I don't mess with temperature once I know the temperature is good and then after that I can start to crank up the temperature when I feel like the leaves need a little bit more energy to get more extraction and by that point a lot of the high aromatics of the leaf will already have have been sort of used up in the in the first five or six infusions and so now what we're trying to do is get the water into the leaf and get more of the extraction that's happening from the plant matter as opposed to the aromatics which live more on the outside of the leaf let's see what the second infusion is like nice rich golden color beautiful sort of egg yolk orange more minerality again I'm happy with the dryness I'm happy with the bitterness if you felt that it was too bitter or too dry then you can reduce your temperature or reduce your brewing time so you're going more in that soft brewing spectrum if you want more then go harder okay another way that we can control how hard or soft our extraction is is by the pour where you're pouring the water over the least if I pour the lead pour the water directly on the leaves in China they call it the done the char done which basically means the gallbladder of the tea which I know sounds some kid weird but if you pour the water directly onto the char Dan or the gallbladder of the tea then you're going to extract more bitterness and more astringent see and you're going to be moving the spectrum some from softer brewing to harder brewing so it's not just the temperature it's not just the time but how you pour the water has an effect so if you have a poety a raw purity which is very soft and very gentle and you want to bring out a little bit more of the bite then pour directly into the middle but if you've got one that's a little bit more sensitive as a bit stronger has a little bit more of that sort of aggressive note then pouring around is very very important I'll show you that so I'm gonna intentionally break the chard on or gallbladder by pouring directly in same temperature water that is now going to make a difference I will time it again and now we're going to do 25 seconds going through this rather quickly so the tea pet gets a lucky lucky day for the tea pet a lot of tea for you if your guy one is too full then just use the lid to take some of that liquor off 25 seconds same temperature water let's see what breaking the gallbladder or the char Dan has in terms of effects are getting every last drop then the roll-up get those last stragglers and then lid off make sure that you let those leaves dissipate and cool down so I'm going to quickly sip this tea turn off this ticking watch so I've got a nice reference of how dry and bitter the tea has become in that second infusion where we poured around noticeable difference a noticeable difference in specifically the dryness because this tea is not bitter at all so this tea is very very nice and soft and has some bitterness but not as much as some of those powerhouse areas like Lao Manor and Lao ban Chang and those real real powerhouse mountain areas but I noticed the level of astringent see in dryness is definitely higher when you break the the gallbladder or the char down of the tea now some people are very precious about it some people like to only pour in one area some people like to pour the water for each infusion in different areas for me I don't like to pour directly in the same place every time if I'm brewing with a side pour so I'm brewing softer brewing then I like to make sure I move around I don't like the method where there's some people use where they're pour on one side water and they'll always sort of pour out the tea from the other side so the water is always going through in the same direction I don't think that that contributes to a nice balanced display of the tea through different infusions I think that if you're always pouring through the same direction through the leaf you are not getting the true diversity of the flavor of the tea I like to go around if I'm pouring with the side pouring method and also just to follow on from that after I get to say infusion eight nine ten and I feel like the tea is flagging a little bit I like to actually move the leaf around a little bit more be a bit more aggressive about it sometimes what I'll do is I'll shake it flip it take the tea and intentionally scoop it back in so that I've moved and rotated the leaves again what I'm trying to do is make sure that we're not just always extracting from the same sides of the leaf the same surface of the leaf in the same direction I don't think that that works I think it's much nicer if you vary it up but I don't do that I won't move it around until the tea has started to flag a little bit and it needs a little bit of help and I want to try and get more out of the tea leaves right cheers everybody so we've talked about soft brewing we've talked about hard brewing we've talked about temperature we've talked about time we've talked about the pouring method we've gone through the different stages of appreciating aroma and taste of the liquor very very important the smell of the empty cup and I would normally have done this even after the first infusion so smell of the empty cup again for me speaks of the quality of the leaves just in the same way as the aftertaste does the more minerality the more compounds the the tea has the more it'll build up on the surface of the porcelain and you're gonna get an aroma and the aroma that I get here is definitely one of honey's trickles a little bit bready almost sourdough bread so you're getting that crust of sourdough but also the fermented Tang from a sourdough bread body sensation raw pores are renowned for having strong effects on the body they can range from sort of woozy and warming all the way to rush and uplifting I think that nozzle diver is giving me this beautiful gentle energizing feeling I'm getting a warm sensation a slight perspiration but definitely an energy lift from this tea really really enjoying it so let's recap 5 grams per hundred mill 95 degree or 205 Fahrenheit water pouring around the sides at the beginning the first infusion I like to start at 15 seconds and then add 5 seconds per infusion the amount of infusions that you're going to get out of your tea depends on the tea and depends on whether you're going on the softer brewing so lower temperatures shorter periods of time there even therefore you're going to get more infusions if you go harder hotter and longer less infusions generally speaking you're looking to get about 10-12 maybe up to 15 infusions depends how far you want to take it please feel free to experiment though these are only the starting points and all the brewing recommendations that we put on our packs our starting points if you want to bring out more of those bright aromatic notes if you want the tea to be softer gentler and lighter then go for a softer brewing method if you want to be a bit more bitter a bit more bite give you a bit more of that strong aftertaste and a physicality then go harder and find your happy medium and make sure that you make those adaptations during the session as well you don't have to stick to it if you started at a certain temperature you're going to stay at that temperature play around this is the joy of gongfu brewing it's the way that you're going to get to know the leaf and you're gonna become a master brewer yourself let us know how you brew your purity in the comments section below that's it two heads check out our other videos taste our teas wherever you are in the world by browsing our website or visit our tea house in London other than that I'm Don from a leaf thank you for being part of the revelation of true tea stay away from those teabags keep drinking the good stuff and spread the word because nobody deserves bad tea bye

Channel: Mei Leaf

Views: 146,276

Keywords: tea, mei leaf, don mei, loose leaf tea, puerh tea, puer tea, pu erh tea, tea tasting, tea shopping, chinese tea, tea ware, teaware, tea gifts, gong fu tea, gong fu brewing, how to bre, brewing puer, brewing puerh, brewing pu er, how to brew tea, nuzzle diver, tea brewing, brew tea class, lesson brew tea, gushu puerh, gushu pu erh, yunnan, gaiwan, brewing gaiwan, how to brew gaiwan, how to gong fu brew, how to stop tea bitter, brewing instructions tea

Id: xY9w7GezgpU

Length: 35min 19sec (2119 seconds)

Published: Sat May 18 2019