How to Make Oolong Tea: 5 Ways to Brew a Better Cup of Oolong

Categories: Oolong tea
Tags: gaiwan, how to make oolong tea, how to make tea, Yixing Teapot
Post date: March 11, 2010
Comments: 3 comments

Chicago Tea Garden’s Competition Grade Ti Kuan Yin.

As last week’s focus on Ti Kuan Yin made clear, I’m focusing quite heavily on oolong tea this year. Along the way, I’ve improved my brewing technique through trial and error, so I thought I would share some of the lessons I’ve learned.

Before we get started, one very important note: Experiment! Take my advice as a starting point, not the ultimate authority.

1. The vessel

There is an extensive array of vessels you can use to brew oolong tea (or any tea, for that matter). Personally, I prefer using a yixing teapot or a gaiwan.

A gaiwan is a simple three piece brewing device, most often made of porcelain or glass. You can pick them up online for about $10 – $15, or try your local Asian grocery store to see if you can find one there.

Yixing teaware is renowned for its superior quality. It’s porous, which means that it absorbs the flavours and aromas of the tea; for this reason, it’s a good idea to devote a yixing teapot to a specific type of tea.

If you have another type of teapot, you can still make a great cup of oolong tea. The trick is to give the leaves plenty of room to expand; if your teapot has an infuser basket, make sure it is wide and tall enough. If it doesn’t come with its own infuser, you can just place the leaves in the bottom of the pot, but be sure to drain the pot completely after steeping the leaves ? if you leave the leaves sitting in water, they will continue to steep, so you won’t get as many steepings out of them.

Gaiwan

2. Heat before use

I highly recommend heating the gaiwan, yixing or other teapot before using it. Not only will the heated vessel keep the tea hot for longer, it will also stabilize the temperature of the teapot before you start steeping, so the water won’t cool down as rapidly after adding it to the vessel.

Also, if you heat the vessel and then place the dry leaves in it, you can take in the aromas of the tea before steeping. Trust me: You’ll be amazed at how much more you can smell when the tea sits in a heated vessel.

All I do is pour a little boiling water into the vessel, give it twenty seconds, and then empty it.

3. Water temperature

Most people will tell you to use near boiling or boiling water for oolong tea. Personally, I prefer to use slightly cooler water for teas that are less oxidized and higher temperatures for more heavily oxidized oolongs. After all, the less an oolong has been oxidized, the closer it is to a green tea ? hence, it makes sense to me to use cooler water temperatures, as you would for green tea.

4. Leaf quantity

When I’m using a gaiwan or a yixing (which are smaller than your average teapot), I cover the bottom with leaves. I know, I know. That’s terribly imprecise, but it yields good results.

If you’re working with a larger teapot, the cover-the-bottom strategy might not work. In this case, what I would recommend is to start off with 2.5 teaspoons of tea leaves for every 250ml of water.

You can also use less leaves and allow for a longer steeping time, though you won’t be able to get as many steepings out of your tea in the long run. Depending on your purposes, that might be ok.

5. Timing

The length of your steepings is directly related to the amount of leaf you’re using. If you’re using the cover-the-bottom strategy, or using 2.5 teaspons of leaf for 250ml of water, you need to use shorter steeping times that you might be used to. You could try this rough guide:

• 1st steeping: 0:30
• 2nd steeping: 0:30 – 1:00
• 3rd steeping: 1:30 – 2:00
• 4th steeping: 3:00
• Add a minute for each subsequent steeping.

Let your taste buds guide you. If your 2nd steeping at half a minute was a little watery, allow for a longer 3rd steeping (perhaps two minutes).

If you need or want to use less tea leaves, increase the amount of time you allow for steeping the tea. For example, if you’re using the traditional one teaspoon per person approach, I would suggest having 90 seconds to 2 minutes for your first infusion, adding a minute or more to subsequent infusions.

Above all, experiment. Making tea isn’t a one-size-fits all sort of thing: you might prefer stronger or weaker tea than I do, or the oolong tea you’re brewing might need a longer or shorter steeping time than I’ve suggested above. Experimentation is key.