Steps to brew tea

Tea culture has a long history in China. Drinking tea nourishes the body and mind. Tea has many benefits to the human body. Many people like to drink tea. On weekends or holidays, it is a very pleasant thing to sit together with a few friends to drink tea and chat. Although many people love to drink tea, they don’t know how to make tea. In fact, the method of making tea is not as complicated as imagined. What are the steps for making tea? Let’s take a look at it next.

1. Awakening Vessels

The so-called awakening of tea utensils is the process of wiping tea utensils with wine, in order to prevent the tea soup from being contaminated by the taste of the utensils themselves. First, heat the vessel and then wipe it with wine. The utensils are then heated, and the volatility of alcohol is used to take away the smell of the utensils themselves. On the one hand, this prevents the tea from having the smell of alcohol; on the other hand, alcohol itself has a disinfecting effect, and this process is also a process of disinfecting the tea utensils.

2. Roasted Tea

Roasting tea is one of the most important processes in brewing tea. The quality of roasting tea determines the tone of the entire tea-brewing process. Roasting tea is actually the process of roasting ripe Pu'er, one of the raw materials for making tea, and it is also the process of waking up the tea. Because the nature of ripe Pu'er tea will gradually become more restrained and mellow during the storage process, one of the purposes of roasting tea is to awaken the tea nature. At the same time, due to technical reasons of storage, ripe Pu'er will more or less produce some green and musty smell during the storage process. The second purpose of roasting tea is to remove the green and musty smell. During this process, you need to pay attention to the amount of water used to brew the tea and the temperature of the pot, so it is also the most difficult step to master in the entire tea-roasting process. Successful tea brewing will make the originally compressed tea become looser and warmer, and as the high-temperature steam circulates and evaporates in the pot, the musty smell will also disappear. Since brewed tea will be looser, it is easier to pick out the tea stems, because the tea stems will affect the taste of the whole pot of tea and make the tea soup have a bitter taste. Zhu Yuanzhang's view that brewing tea was "extravagant" probably originated from this! Because the whole process of brewing tea is actually a process of refining the essence and refining the coarse, not only is the operation process sophisticated, but it also appears to be very wasteful. Therefore, for Zhu Yuanzhang, who came from a commoner family, it is obviously unacceptable to such a "luxurious" lifestyle.

3. Grinding Tea

The purpose of grinding tea is to separate the tea leaves from the tea stems, so you cannot use brute force, but rather skill. During the process of moxibustion tea, we will pick out some large tea stems, but the small ones cannot jump out, so this is achieved through the process of grinding the tea. Grinding tea mainly uses wrist strength, so every one of our tea ceremony masters must practice Tai Chi to improve themselves.

4. Sieve Tea

The ground tea needs to be filtered through a sieve. We only need the finest part, which we call tea powder, and the rest should be thrown away. Maybe that’s one of the reasons why it feels like a waste.

5. Decoction and water adjustment

Water is the mother of tea, and the utensil is the father of tea! The ancients said: "Ten parts tea is seven parts water; the nature of tea must be revealed in water, eight parts tea with ten parts water is also ten parts; ten parts tea with eight parts water is also eight parts." This shows the important role of water to tea!

Lu Yu classified water in The Classic of Tea as follows: "The water used should be mountain water at the best, river water at the middle, and well water at the worst." However, due to the severe pollution now, we cannot simply continue to use this classification! The reason for boiling and adjusting water is to make the water taste better! There are three kinds of boiling water. The first one is when it boils like fish eyes with a slight sound. The second one is when the edge is like gushing springs. The third one is when the water is surging with waves. Water above this level is old and cannot be consumed. Therefore, before the entire tea soup is formed, the water must be kept at one or two boils!

6. Tea Making

Tea powder is used to make tea. Tea is like a medicine inducer. Some Chinese medicine prescriptions must have a medicine inducer, otherwise the efficacy of the medicine will not be achieved. The medicine guide actually guides the medicinal effect into the diseased area, while the tea guide guides the tea qi to flow through the meridians of the human body, so drinking boiled tea will have the effect of dredging the meridians.

7. Preparation of Incense

The incense is made of moonlight white. Moonlight White needs to be roasted, ground, filtered, and then vibrated to complete the process. Zhenxiang adopts the techniques of Tai Chi, emphasizing yin and yang, and the unity of all things.

8. Tea soup

There are three parts of the raw materials for brewing tea: the main ingredient, the tea lead and the fragrance! The main ingredient and tea lead are both made from cooked Pu'er tea. The main ingredients, tea guides, fragrance, water boiling, and water adjustment are all preparation steps before making tea. Only at this point does the actual brewing process begin. When the water in the pot is about to boil for the third time, stir it counterclockwise to form a vortex. This is to slowly inject the tea into the pot. This is a very beautiful process. Then add the main ingredient; after that, adjust the tea soup to allow the leaves of the main ingredient to fully expand; finally, add the fragrance and continue to mix. At this point, the tea is ready!

9. Notes

When brewing tea, special attention is paid to the temperature of the tea, so you must pay attention to the control of the temperature. This is a process that requires long-term practice to master.