Green Tea Forum

Hushfield · Brown Belt Joined: 30 May 2008 Posts: 49

I've seen a lot of people here give advice on brewing times and what yields the best results for green tea. But I was wondering, how do you like your tea best: do you like it rather strong or do you prefer very short brewing times? I'm in no way asking what is best, just interested in personal preferences. Could you perhaps also include how long you generally brew your tea?

So for me that would be:
first infusion: 1min 50sec-2min10sec
second infusion: 10-15sec
third infusion: 10-15 sec

Of course it also depends on how much leaf you add, since I don't add very much, I guess the taste would be somewhere between (very) strong and somewhat lighter taste?

[edit]: all this is for regular sencha

britt · 2nd Degree Black Belt Joined: 22 Oct 2007 Posts: 175

Oni · 2nd Degree Black Belt Joined: 15 Mar 2008 Posts: 187

In general brewing with kyusu is said to be the casual way, between meal or with sweets, I recently ordered from horaido a houhin set, kyo yaki and the usual parameters, with one yuzamashi and 5 cups, they say it needs one table spoon or two teaspoons of sencha about 5 grams and the general 70-80 C temperature, 1 minute, I am very curious, I will post the photos and preferably sometime I`ll make a video too, stay tuned and find out the serious way like in ogasawararyuu on youtube (watch and learn).

syntheticpanda · 2nd Degree Black Belt Joined: 07 Nov 2006 Posts: 198

I usually like my tea on the weak side, particularly with sencha. I don't like a lot of astringency in it, so I err on the side of being a bit light.

Standard times are... ~60, ~30s, ~45s. It depends on whether you count the pour time, but that's average.

Chip · Posted: Jun 10, 2008 3:39 pm Post subject:

I like it to vary. Sometimes I will lower the temp just a bit to sweeten it and lower the astringency. In the morning, I like a little bite to it...so, I will up the temp a few degrees and make it a little more astringent.

I love being able to adjust better sencha to my taste at the moment.

Times vary from sencha to sencha...but my starting point is 90 sec.

Hushfield · Brown Belt Joined: 30 May 2008 Posts: 49

Thanks for the replies so far, this is really interesting to read. When you supply the infusion times for first, second and third infusions, there's generally a pattern which goes like :
1: long
2: much shorter
3: a little longer than 2
I assume this is because by the third infusion a lot of the 'teaness' (for lack of better word, feel free to educate me) has already been absorbed by the previous two infusions and you need to brew a little longer to get the same amount of 'teaness' (again...) in?

greenisgood · Black Belt Joined: 20 Jan 2008 Posts: 112

grassy, green, and slightly astringent...like my women

BryanP · Posted: Jul 19, 2008 3:48 pm Post subject:

I don't like mine too astringent. I like it light, but done so you get that nice veggie roll off of the tongue.

I usually brew for 6oz of water and 1 tsp of leaves with the following infusion times:

1st steep: ~60 seconds (to account for the pouring segement)

2nd steep: ~45 seconds (this is always the most tasteful)

3rd steep: ~70 seconds (any more and it becomes too astringent for my liking)

Martin · Posted: Jul 21, 2008 2:30 am Post subject:

normally i use the times ~ as mentioned above

i'm going through a fuka phase atm, and thats more like

50s
0s
30s

and the second cup still sometimes is on the strong side, but thats probably because my scales are broken and i guess more or less how much leaf i need, which is alot harder with the fuka.

BryanP · Posted: Jul 21, 2008 12:47 pm Post subject:

I'm actually starting to refine my brewing (ever since I got my handy dandy digital thermometer).

For Fukamushi Sencha, my infusion times are roughly the following (not including the pour):

1st steep: 30 seconds
2nd steep: around 10-15 seconds
3rd steep: around 45 seconds

2nd steep is the quickest and I love the richness @ 15 seconds when I pour 168F water into the pre-heated kyusu.