hello everyone welcome back to our Channel today we're bringing you step by step brewing
instructions for black tea featuring my voice and Zhen's hands I know I know this freaks a
lot of you out but hopefully you'll bear with us as her hands and my voice walk you through
this delightful pathway to delicious tea traditional western tip style is always
a great way to brew black tea we're using our trusty old cold brew bottle for brewing today
because not only is cute and displays the brewed leaf beautifully but it's also what
we use every morning that's right we're not gongfu tea snobs here especially at 6:00 a.m. this is
an easy and quick brewing vessel any teapot mug travel mug or similar sized vessel will
do for this method so here's the old trick you all know pour in the dry leaf to lightly
cover the bottom of the vessel and add hot water and wait that wasn't so hard was it
this black tea takes about two minutes to steep until it's ready to drink
to brew a black tea and a gaiwan all you need is a gaiwan of course a sharing pot
and a teacup a filter would be helpful if the tea you're brewing has smaller leaves
but I won't be needing one today since the tea I'm brewing has nice big tasty leaves making
it less likely for them to escape from the gaiwan when I pour it out don't miss the chance
to smell the wonderful aroma of the leaves here dry berries fruity sweetness and caramel I can't
wait to take a sip I don't rinse black teas so we'll be diving right into the first infusion
if the age-old question to rinse or not to rinse perplexes you check out
the video we made that explains the whens whys and hows of rinsing tea
I'm not 100% sure that we covered the hows but go check it out and leave me
a comment if we missed that and we'll do another video on that just for you
black tea is the most familiar tea for many tea lovers and if you're anything like me
it was probably your introduction into the vast deep weird and usually wonderful world
of tea this black tea is called Guan Yin hong it's a black tea made from tie guan
Yin cultivar you heard that right tie guan Yin though this is a popular oolong
tea cultivar that many of you already love it can also be processed into black tea
black tea has a pretty wide variety of liquor colors differences in the cultivar which part
of the plant was used and the processing details can give us anything from a light gold color all
the way to a reddish-brown Guanyin home has a golden amber liquor color and this will be the
parameter that we use to decide each infusion time we're shooting for this color consistently
I got five count 'en five infusions from this tea and I could totally get a couple more with
longer steeping but since I'm going to brew the same tea in a yixing teapot again I didn't feel
the need to show off believe it or not black tea is a great tea for yixing clay teapots the
aroma of black tea is usually robust enough to brew in a vessel this porous and black tea is
considered by many experts to give the fastest results when it comes to seasoning a teapot I
wonder if those experts have a contest for this anyway if you're just getting into clay teapots
we have a great video providing some useful guidelines when choosing your first purple
clay teapot this one here is my dedicated black tea teapot this cute little spout gives it a
gentle slow flow which I'll be taking into consideration for my infusion times you'll
need to be a little clever here as well if your teapot has a different shape or as both sides
feel free to add or reduce the steep time and as always let the liqueur color be your guide
Guan Yin hong is a rich black tea with delicious sweetness and no bitterness or
astringency when brewed in a large teapot but it's also wonderful when brewed gongfu
style I love to see how the flavor profile develops and transforms with each infusion
I really hope this video gave you some helpful tips on brewing black tea and
encourages you to try gongfu black tea please give us a thumbs up if you enjoyed the video
and don't forget to subscribe for more videos about tea and chinese tea culture
I really do love hearing from all of you too so please leave a comment down below
if you have any questions or want to tell us what you'd like to see in future videos
in the end I brewed the leaves six times
until next time keep steeping