Brewing Guide

Tea is forgiving, but it rewards intent. The same leaf brewed at the right temperature for the right time gives a cup that the same leaf brewed wrong cannot match. What follows covers the fundamentals. Each origin's own page carries the ritual specific to that tea.

The fundamentals

• Use good water. Filtered, low in minerals, drawn fresh. Water that smells of chlorine gives a cup that tastes of chlorine.
• Heat to the right temperature. Boiling water for everything is a habit, not a virtue. Green teas want it cooler. Black tea, oolong and pu-erh want it hot.
• Time the steep. A timer is not optional. Thirty seconds is often the difference between a sweet cup and a bitter one.
• Brew when you are ready to drink. Tea left sitting in the pot keeps extracting, and keeps getting worse.

By style

• Japanese green. Cool water, around 70C. Short steeps, forty seconds to a minute. Deep-steamed leaf gives itself up fast.
• Stem tea. Cooler still, and gentle. The sweetness comes out without heat, and heat only makes it dull.
• Darjeeling. Just off the boil, three minutes, no more than four. Past that the tannin sharpens and the muscatel recedes.
• Earl Grey. Full boil, three to four minutes. A real Ceylon base takes the heat and the bergamot lifts off it.
• Oolong. Hot water, short pours, many of them. Thirty seconds first, then longer. The leaf reveals itself across a session.
• Pu-erh. Full boil. Rinse the leaf briefly and discard, then three minutes for the first cup and longer for each after.

The sachet

Every tea we sell arrives in pyramid sachets, twelve to a box. Drop one in unopened and let the leaf open inside it. There is enough room for a whole leaf to unfurl, which is the entire reason we use them.