Brewing White Tea - The Temperature Test 

+Miles Welbourn Thank you :)

+Cary Noel Yes there are no fixed rules and that's great because you can customise for yourself when you understand the brewing. We will definitely be doing more videos with Celine!

That's the great thing about brewing yourself, you can adapt to your taste.

Just got my first sample of Silver Needle from another company: Steep #1 -- 90C/195F for 1:30 Steep #2 -- 95C/203F for 2:10 Both steeps came out perfect! Oddly I almost liked the 2nd steep better than the 1st steep _(prob bc I reduced the amount of water for the 2nd steep which made it taste stronger)_

The instructions for Yin Zhen Silverneedle is written for western style brewing: 11g for 1L, 80°C about 3 minutes. I've tried out Kung Fu style: 8g for 350ml (Shiboridashi, jap. Gaiwan) 80 °C 1st for 15 sec (not to drink) then 2nd for about 1 minute. I thought I had to brew it longer, but this 1 minute was enough so the tee was dark and brown already. The taste was great like anis! I wanted to brew it at 90 °C for 4 minutes but we don't have any glasses yet. I'm about to buy a Glas bottle for cold brewing style soon. 🙏🏼

+Tea with Jeremy A bit strange but it works!

+Márk Sümegi that is a magical tea and will be a different flavour depending on temperature - we tend to brew with 95 degree water.

Hey Mark, What is the taste profile like on that?

Love comments like this, great to know that we have enhanced your tea experience!

+chinalife Tea House y

+1mataleo1 We find that Bi Luo Chun is one of the most picky about water temperature. It goes from weak to too bitter in a matter of 5-10 degrees. This is usually related to the size and delicacy of the leaves more than the shape in our experience. Have you found this to be consistent across a few batches of tea? It's strange because common knowledge is that Bi Luo Chun is more delicate than Long Jing. We will have to try!

+chinalife Tea House Interesting. The leaves of both my Bi Luo Chun and my Long Jing are pretty much identical in size and appearance once they are infused. I've only brewed at the higher temp for my 2 most recent batches; however, there are 2 things i should have mentioned: first, i found that at the higher temperature, the first few infusions can only be steeped for about 20 seconds; any longer and the tea very quickly goes bitter. Second, it is possible that my temperature measurements are not as accurate as the ones that you guys take because i use an alcohol-filled laboratory thermometer that needs to sit in the water for a time until the alcohol stops rising, so it is possible that the actual temp of my water may be slightly lower by the time the water hits my tea then it was when i actual took the reading. You guys have much more experience than me, so it is probably a lack of precision on my part. Anyway, sorry for the long comment, and thanks for taking the time to respond. I have learned so much from this channel over the past few years, and i always look forward to your posts. Thanks!

+1mataleo1 It is always tricky to know what is making the difference between something like 95 degrees for 20 seconds vs 90 degrees for 40 seconds or 85 for a minute etc. Is it the water temperature or the length of steeping? The beautiful (but sometimes infuriating) thing about brewing is that with 3 variables (amount of tea, temperature and steeping length) you have almost endless permutations to play around with and then..... you finish the batch and have to experiment again! AND we haven't even begun to talk about the teaware material and volume and the little tricks of brewing like preheating, shaking, microvibrations etc. Oh and we haven't discussed the type of water either! Becoming an expert in brewing requires an acceptance that no two cups of tea will ever be the same and to enjoy the fact that you will always be a student of tea. Eventually we all strive to brew from pure instinct after many thousands of brews of different tea. Thank you for watching and keep experimenting!

How's your consistency going? I'm still working on mine. I have issues getting the water to boil at the exact temperature.

@@Archloop Same . I'm impatient . lighter is better. It's hard to make it silver, and strong. I've made tea that wasn't that great, but when it cooled off, it was magic

+teamaker Fox Yes out of all the tea types we think that white is the most versatile for brewing and can be suited to almost any temperature water.

Yes nice one. We find Darjeeling to have a a similar brewing profile to Eastern Beauty. It depends on what flavours you want to get out of your tea (and how oxidised the tea is) but we would recommend about 80-90 degrees. You can watch this video to view a comparison of brewing temperatures: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-DhRtQhMUXQo.html

yep try!

+Disconnectmyself Yes this is an interesting tea because there are so many fake artificial scented versions on the market with lots of stupid stories about why it has a milk aroma. OK we will try to do a video!

+chinalife Tea House Thank you. That would be amazing! :)

Boil temperature water is good for this tea. The floral will be so intense

+Chen Zeng I prefer the sweeter aftertaste.

Agree that Silver Needle needs higher temp and more leaves to experience the true flavour.

also a longer brew time. sometimes I'll let it sit for a good 5 minutes because the buds take longer to penetrate. still experimenting with brew times though, so I may adjust this.

You can get kettles with thermometers or use your own thermometer (I recommend an electronic one as they are faster).

It really depends - there is a lot of flexibility depending on what you are after. In this video we brewed for about 4 minutes.

In this video we were brewing a more of a hybrid grandpa style so we were using about 3.5g for 200ml water and brewed for 4 minutes for a full extraction. You could brew Gongfu style using about 3.5g/100ml volume and reduce the infusions to about 10-20 seconds and taste your way through more steepings.

Thank you so much!! This is very helpful! =DDDDDDDD Cheers!!

+Maddy ferric yes! You should always rebrew tea including whites. You can let lave ip to a few hours in between brewing.

Alright, thank you! I've never been sure. Would it have to steep for longer or would it risk getting bitter?

+Maddy ferric usually start steeping longer after a couple of infusions. It is very difficult to make good white tea go bitter. It depends on your tea but you can infuse for a while. We always recommend brewing Gong Fu style for a richer flavour.

+chinalife Tea House thanks. :) knowing this makes my day

Yes once infused the buds can be a copper brown colour. Is this what you are seeing?

Mei Leaf yes some buds are even a little darker. But I once read that a quality marker for good yin Zhen is that the infused buds show a very pale light green color so I was confused. Another question: what is the best way to store and unbox the tea? For now they are still in the box and plastic bag they came in but I will probably switch to a nice tin. And should I sift the tea to get rid of the tea dust and little broken buds before I'm putting it in the tin?

Depends on style of production as the Yunnan and Zhejiang versions have a longer oxidation than the classical fuding varieties. I tend to prefer that style recently as the fuding variety can be a tea which looks beautiful but lacks sweetness (I know that many will disagree). We are thinking if buying in Fuding and Yunnan/Zhejiang this year so that people can compare. Storage in a tin is best although the box is ok as long as you plan on drinking in the next couple of months. Usually any tea dust or broken leaves are sieved out during the rinse (Gong Fu Brewing) so I wouldn't worry about them myself but you can sieve if you want to.

oh ok. Then I must have bought some of the Yin Zhen from the Fuiding varieties (Bought it at 'TeeGeschwendner' a German Tea-Franchise, which unfortunately didn't include the origin of the tea...) It too has some sweetness but starts to get a little bitter in the second infusion (3min 80°C). And after trying some of your Yin Zhen I realised I was missing out... :D I really enjoy your tea!

Totally agree. I'm from US too but I still just use Celsius for brewing tea. Much easier.

We've been getting around to this my whole life! I was raised metric and it still hasn't quite happened. Worst of all it's mixed, and that creates endless problems of its own. Well, maybe after WWIII?

Multiply by 1.8 then add 32. Or just memorize 80 85 90 95. 176 185 194 203. You can round those up or down a degree or two to make it even easier. 85 is the easy one 85 = 185 then for every 5 degrees c equals about 10 degrees F. If 85 = 185 then 80 = 175 90 = 195 95 =205 approximately.