Six grams in 150ml competition cup for two minutes twice, huh? Is this how it’s being steeped in competitions? Because I thought those were super long steeps, like five minutes.
Good question! Thanks for asking. The purpose of the brewing method that we used was to get a result that is within a similar range to a gongfu brew. Basically, to get a substantial enough brew without over brewing it, and then repeating it once to get more of a full spectrum of what the tea has to offer. Competition brewing methods, on the other hand, are designed to bring out the shortcomings in a batch of tea. In Taiwan, for tightly rolled oolongs, 3 g of tea is brewed for six minutes in a 150 mL tea judging cup. This hardly brews a substantial cup of tea. However, the extended brewing time will reveal undesirable characteristics, such as astringency, grassy notes, bitter notes, burnt flavor, stale flavor, etc.
