Don Mei : Hey teaheads.
This is Don from Mei Leaf.
In this video : How to keep your loose leaf tea between infusions.
In this video we're going to try to figure out the best way to store your leaves between
infusions in order to maintain as much of the aromatics and flavour in the leaf.
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As a tea seller I'm continuously telling clients that they should infuse their leaves multiple
times.
This is, of course, especially true if you're brewing Gong Fu style, but even if you're
brewing western style you can usually get one, two, or even more really good infusions
out of your leaves.
If you're throwing away your leaves after one infusion then you're not maximizing the
amount of flavour and aromatics that you can extract from the leaves, and in essence, you're
wasting a little bit of your hard-earned money.
It's funny, because I've done hundreds of workshops, and I obviously do the YouTube
channel, and we have an online platform, and by far the most commonly asked questions are
related to this subject.
Usually I get two questions at every workshop that I give.
The first one is, "What's the maximum amount of time that you can wait in between infusions
before the leaf starts to go bad?"
The second question is, "How best do I store the leaf in order to maintain the aromatics
of the leaf between infusions?"
I've given pretty stock answers to those questions, but I thought I've never properly sat down
and done a semi-scientific test on it.
So that's what we're going to do today, and the tea that we’ve chosen to do this with
is Hou Kui.
Hou Kui is a green tea from An Hui county.
It's one of my most favourite green teas.
It's a really special, delicate green tea, the large leaves of the Shi Da cultivar.
We're not going to do a full explanation of Hou Kui, because that would take too long
today.
We'll probably do another video on Hou Kui at some point, but it is a delicious An Hui
green tea.
Just like other An Hui green teas - like Huang Shan Mao Feng, and yellow teas from An Hui
county - they're very elegant, very delicate, very light, very pure.
And despite the fact that they are large leaves they are extremely pure tasting, so you're
not going to get a lot of flavour, but the delight in this tea are those really light
aromatics.
This is why I've picked this tea for this test, because if any tea is going to suffer
from being left a long time, or being stored incorrectly, it will be this one.
My assumption is that if we figure out the best way for Hou Kui then that should apply
to all teas.
So what I've done, is last night - about 12 hours ago - I made a single infusion of Hou
Kui.
I have then taken the leaves and stored them differently.
This one here was simply taken out of the Gai Wan, placed on some kitchen towel, and
left in an odourless place - somewhere clean and odourless - to essentially air dry.
This one here we did essentially the same thing.
We infused it once, we enjoyed the tea, and then what we've done is taken the wet leaves
and put them in a sealed, Tupperware dish, leave them out in room temperature, but covered.
This one here we've done exactly the same thing, but we've stored it in a fridge.
So we're going to see how temperature affects the flavour aromatics, and the consistency
of the flavour.
Finally, this one here was done about an hour-and-a-half ago.
So about an hour-and-a-half ago we brewed up one infusion of Hou Kui, and we have kept
it in the Gai Wan, and now I have just moved it into a bowl.
All of the leaves have been brought to room temperature, so they're all the same temperature,
but they've all been stored slightly differently - in terms of covered or dry, different temperatures
- and we can also taste the difference between 12 hours and about one-and-a half, or two,
hours.
So, it's going to be taste test time now.
In order for me to do this properly, without any assumptions, I would like to do this blind.
Now I'm going to pause the video, we're going to get Celine in here, I'm going to cover
my eyes, she going to brew these up.
We'll add a few more seconds to the dried leaf, so we're probably going to brew these
for about 25 seconds, and the dry leaf maybe 30, 35 seconds.
Obviously, because it's dry it's going to take a little bit longer for the water to
enter the leaf.
So hopefully we'll get a relatively even extraction from all of them, and then we're going to
do our blind tasting to see which is best.
Okay.
We're back.
Now what Celine did was mix up all of the bowls whilst my eyes were covered.
Underneath the bowls - I forgot to mention - I had already written the type of storage.
So underneath the bowls we know the type of storage, but she mixed all the bowls up - so
I don't know which one is which here - and then she brewed the teas.
Let me bring these a bit closer.
Now, I want to taste these quite quickly, because with tea - especially green tea - as
you leave it, it will start to change, and I'm really testing myself here to see if I
can pick up the absolutely tiniest subtleties in the storage method of the leaf.
So this is going to be a bit of a test to me.
They were brewed at about 80 degrees, and as I said 20-odd seconds for the ones that
were stored covered, and Celine added about 10 seconds the one that was dry.
I don't know anything here.
Let me just start over here and let's have a little sniff.
So I'm using these glasses here.
Give me a large area for the aroma to build up.
Let me smell.
Ah!
Beautiful.
It smells of orchid.
Very nice as well.
Smells of orchid as well.
And again.
Hmm.
That one less so.
Interesting.
Okay.
So from smell, these two smell the strongest, but this is very, very subtle.
We're talking about the smallest changes here.
Right.
Let's have a taste.
Okay.
It's got the orchid aroma.
It's got a freshness of freshly cut grass, and it has a slight astringency that I wouldn't
normally expect from a Hou Kui.
Less astringency on this one, fuller flavour.
I'm just going to have to A-B them.
But slightly deadened.
There's something not quite right about that.
Let's try this one.
Okay.
This one has a good balance.
Less astringent than this one.
It has all of the flavour profiles, maybe losing the top notes though.
Losing the aromatics that I think are more in the first one.
So we're not getting a perfect answer here.
Final one here.
Not really sure about that one.
Doesn't really do it for me.
It tastes a bit, it's got the same astringency as this one here, it doesn't have the top
notes.
So which is my favourite?
Oh!
It's so difficult.
We're talking about the most minute differences.
Okay.
I'm going to make some decisions here.
This one is the most balanced.
I don't think it's been affected by whatever storage method it is.
Maybe it's the fresh one.
I don't know.
Then I would say that after that my favourite is probably this one.
I would say that these two are the winners.
There's very little to tell between the difference here.
Very little.
I would probably say this and this is second place, and these.
I would say go : one, two three.
Okay.
I have no idea.
Let's see.
So number one.
Number one is dry - dry storage.
Okay?
So this is the one that was left on kitchen towels just to air dry.
Number two was fresh.
Okay.
So I was choosing between these two.
Fresh - in other words it was brewed a half-hour ago.
What we can tell from this - and again, this is just one type of tea, but you're welcome
to copy this experiment - is that fresh tea and dry storage is probably the best way to
store your tea.
That's great for me, because that's what I've been advising people for the past seven, eight
years, telling people, "Do not cover your leaf.
Do not store it in the fridge.
Instead, just put it on a kitchen towel and leave it to air dry in an odourless place."
All right.
Number three.
Fridge.
Fridge storage is number three.
That's the one that kept the most amount of the high notes, but the astringency - the
dryness that comes - seems to come when you cover the leaf, because this one here will
be covered.
So the least favourable methods of storing your leaf is covering the leaf.
If you are going to cover the leaf then fridge storage is better, but I would avoid covering
the leaf.
When you cover the leaf it seems to increase the astringency.
It seems to increase the dryness of the tea.
The best ways are fresh and I had real trouble the winner out of these, which goes to show,
actually, something really important.
That even after 12 hours, if you dry your leaf well - as long as it's left in an odourless
place to stay dry - then it is very close to something that is about an hour-and-a-half,
or two hours, old in terms of the last infusion.
So they're very, very similar.
The takeaway points here is try to drink your tea fresh, but you can leave it up to 12 hours
between infusions.
And if you are planning to store your leaves for that length of time then my advice to
you - as I've always been giving - is to take the leaves out of the Gai Wan, just spread
them over some kitchen towel, and leave them in a nice, dry, dark place without any odour,
and that will be the closest you can get to the fresh tea.
I hope that this has been useful to you, and now I've got a video to link to whenever anybody
asks me this question, so it's a win for me.
That's it teaheads.
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Other than that, I'm Don Mei from Mei Leaf.
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