丨 This article was originally produced by Xiao Chen Tea
丨 First published in the headline number: Xiao Chen Tea Affair
丨Author: Village Gu Chen
《1》
In the winter, the flowers fall.
The messy year of 2021 is finally over, and a colder winter has followed.
When drinking tea has become a habit, the first thing to do when you come to the office is to boil a pot of hot water in case you can make tea and make tea at any time.
I still remember that there was a time when, like a demon, I was keen to take a travel tea set to the outdoors to make tea.
Sometimes, drive all the way up Tou Ling with Li Mahua, find a good place, and sit all afternoon.
Three or four old friends, boiling old tea, chatting about the sky, lining the beautiful waters of the Ming Mountains, taking the breeze as a couple, and getting the feeling of no self.
Occasionally, I would bring my computer, stay outdoors, start working, and have fun.
Because of the quietness of the natural environment itself, coupled with the company of tea leaves, that period of time is natural and comfortable.
Lu Yu, who loves to drink tea, did not also write with a brush when drinking tea, and writing and writing, it became the "Tea Classic" that touched countless tea lovers?
I remember it often and miss it deeply.
And boiling tea, seemingly simple, but also often overturned.
No, a few days ago, there were tea friends to ask, why is the white peony boiled out, so bitter?
Look, what I'm saying is coming.
Ordinary people boil white tea, there must be a few misunderstandings, today to give you a detailed analysis, to avoid everyone repeat the same mistakes.
《2》
Myth 1: White tea is not old enough
The tea friend mentioned above, the white tea he chose to cook, is the 2021 Queqiao Immortal, which is a first-class white peony.
Obviously, it is still a new white tea, how can it be directly boiled and drunk?
Generally speaking, teas suitable for boiling and drinking need to be fermented to a relatively high degree or have a certain year.
As for the new white tea, neither is accounted for.
The reason why it is bitter is because the substances in the new white tea are extremely rich and extremely active.
Including theanine, tea polyphenols, caffeine, polysaccharides and other ingredients, the content in the new white tea is very high.
It is precisely because of this that when we brew new white tea with a lid bowl, we can feel the freshness, empty inspiration and clear sense of freshness in the tea soup.
But this beauty is easily destroyed by boiling tea.
The biggest difference between boiling tea and brewing tea is that the former is a continuous high temperature, while the latter can achieve rapid tea separation.
Putting the new white tea in the boiling teapot will inevitably release the nutrients in it in excess, making the tea soup thick and bitter.
Just by looking at the deep yellow and green soup, I felt that I had no appetite for an instant.
It is already conceivable that if you take a sip, a thick layer of folds will immediately grow on the tongue.
That feeling, like accidentally eating an unripe persimmon, is astringent and numb, and there is no "freshness, aroma, mellowness and coolness" that new tea should have.
To make tea, we usually choose aged white tea cakes, old white tea cakes, or old loose white tea.
Because in the process of white tea aging, it will undergo the transformation of substances, the bitter substances will gradually decrease, and new substances will be generated.
Over time, it has the characteristics of being suitable for boiling and drinking.
As long as the proportion of tea is controlled and not boiled for too long, it will not be bitter at all, but sweet and mellow.
And the new loose white tea, must not be used to boil, otherwise it is the scene of disaster.
If you really want to cook the cake of the new tea, it is also recommended to brew it for five or six times and then boil it on the heat.
《3》
Myth 2: It takes more than half an hour to boil white tea
As the saying goes, concentration is the essence.
Therefore, some tea friends are afraid of missing the nutrition of old white tea when boiling tea, so they directly throw dry tea into cold water and boil tea on fire.
During the tea making, I would do something else, water the flowers, do yoga, or deal with some work.
Wait until the whole room is full of tea aroma, rich fragrance, before the reaction, tea is cooked.
This boiling is half an hour, or even longer.
In the end, it was found that the boiled old white tea not only had a strong soup color, but also had an extremely bitter taste.
Tea polyphenols and caffeine in tea leaves, a large number of precipitation, serious excess, proper strong tea, the taste is not bitter to blame.
What's more, where can the rich inner white tea withstand such a toss? What a waste.
The mellow and smooth soup is masked by the bitter taste of the thick and bitter, and the real flavor of the old white tea is completely missed.
Boiling white tea is used as a boiling Chinese medicine.
Boiling Chinese medicine, paying attention to the efficacy, it is natural to boil slowly and slowly, and the essence of it is slowly stewed out.
Drinking tea is different, not only to bring benefits to the body, but also to pursue taste.
Excessive amounts of tea polyphenols and caffeine, drunk into the stomach, are not only not good to drink, but also not good for the body.
Boiling old white tea does not actually take too long.
Directly boil dry tea, it is recommended to boil water first, and then pour tea.
After patiently waiting for the water to boil, put the dry tea in, and when it boils again, you can turn off the heat.
In the process of stopping boiling, with the residual temperature on the electric ceramic stove, the tea leaves in the pot are still slowly releasing endoplasm.
Therefore, there is no need to worry about the taste of the boiled tea soup.
The rich old white tea is like a towel full of water, and with a gentle twist, it can squeeze out a lot of splashes.
Such a metaphor, I believe that everyone can look at the tea making time more objectively.
If it is boiled at the bottom of the leaf (the tea leaves are brewed to the last remaining leaves), then you can choose to pour cold water into the tea.
At that time, the lid bowl had released most of the nutrients in the white tea.
The use of boiled tea as a supplement to brewing tea is also to allow those nutrients hidden deep inside to be thoroughly stimulated.
Therefore, let the bottom of the leaf warm up with the cold water and boil together.
Longer contact, so that they have a deeper "feeling", but also let the remaining nutrients be squeezed dry.
It can be seen that whether it is boiling dry tea or boiling the bottom of the leaf, it does not take half an hour.
Boiling dry tea is just a matter of tens of seconds,
It may take longer to cook the bottom of the leaf, but a few minutes is enough.
It is hard to imagine what the old white tea will become after more than half an hour of boiling tea at high temperatures.
《4》
Myth three: Feel free to throw tea
There are many tea lovers in their daily lives, it is easy to ignore the step of "weighing tea".
Even some extreme people will say, why drink tea? There are too many rules and regulations, and the casual nature of drinking tea is lost.
As soon as this statement came out, I was a little embarrassed.
How does it affect casualness? It's just an excuse for being lazy.
Of course, most tea customers do not deliberately do it, but because they do not know the importance of weighing tea.
I remember once, another tea friend came to complain, and also encountered the problem of making tea very bitter.
As usual, ask "What is the amount of tea?" What kind of tea is boiled? How long did it take to cook? ”
About a minute later, the other person sent a picture and said: Almost so much tea.
When I opened it, I was really frightened.
A piece of white tea cake that has been pried extraordinarily thick, to the naked eye, is 10 grams or more.
If brewed in a standard lid bowl, it is the amount that can be brewed twice.
Instead, I thought, maybe the teapot of the tea friend's family is particularly large?
2 liters of boiling teapot, with so many tea leaves, in fact, it is not particularly much, just right.
But things did not reverse, tea friends said that their home teapot is not large, that is, the most common 500 ml.
500 ml of water, throw 10 grams of dry tea?
Even buy Karma, it's crazy.
Normally, boiling old white tea in the mountains, 1.5-2.5 grams, with 300-400 ml of water, is the golden ratio of boiled tea.
You can also increase or decrease appropriately according to your own tea drinking taste.
Generally speaking, if there are few people, boiling two or three pots is enough to drink all day.
Increasing the amount of tea without authorization is, of course, no longer the standard flavor, but becomes thick and bitter.
There are also some tea friends who boil old white tea out of the color of red wine or soy sauce, and they dare not take a bite just by looking at it.
《5》
Although boiling tea can free hands, it is also very exquisite.
Without mastering the method, it can only be a good tea in vain, empty sighs.
Personally, I still like to brew first and cook later.
First use the brewing method to release its contents evenly from one bubble to the other, and finally cook a pot.
In this way, the entire endoplasm of old white tea can be fully displayed through different forms.
Treat good tea, or cherish some good.
The hard-won old white tea cannot be treated casually and boiled at will.
Treat good tea well, and good tea will also reward us with the best flavor.
More about boiling tea
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When boiling tea, how to boil dry tea and leaf bottom, the village girl Chen made a trick, so that boiling tea is a hundred times better
How to cook white tea better? Village Gu Chen summed up the 4 major tea brewing mistakes, and it is not difficult to cook tea at all
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Xiao chen tea village gu Chen, columnist, tea industry original new media "Xiao Chen tea matter" chief writer, has published a white tea monograph "White Tea Tasting Notes", 2016-2020 has written more than 4,000 original articles.