Waaayyy overshot the amount of tea leaf on this cup so the oolong was especially tannic and grassy, but underneath that coarse taste and texture was a spectacular jammy apricot note just begging to be noticed and loved. If my tea leaf measurements had been better I think the combo of the floral elements of this oolong with this apricot note would have been a total winner. What happened, though, was that I just poorly under leafed a TGY gongfu session earlier in the morning so I think I was (subconciously) overcompensating in my eyeballing…
So much self sabotage with the oolongs lately!
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I find that getting the right amount of leaf in a cup, is one of the bigger challenges in my tea tasting. It is such an empirical process! I tend to weigh out my leaf, until I am very experienced with a particular variety at which point I can eyeball it. As you are very experienced, Ros, I am wondering what your process is. Do you weigh it? Spoon it? Or just eyeball it? Do you use some particular guideline? Or is it pure instinct?
I feel like I’ve gone through pretty much every process you can think of at one point in time, haha. I used to very, very religiously weigh out all of my teas – straight, flavoured, you name name. Then I gradually switched back to weighing for straight and spoons for Western cups/flavoured/etc. Now I pretty much exclusively just eyeball it. I think, in part, it’s because I got familiar enough with the weights to not need the scale as much and also in part because focusing so heavily on precision was taking some of the enjoyment out of drinking the tea – it made it feel a bit more like a task. I still weigh/measure everything out when I’m working because in the lab precision is very important – but the moment a tea is for me it’s just whatever instinctively goes in the cup/gaiwan/part or what “looks right”. Long answer, but hopefully that helps!
Great explanation, thanks!
I find that getting the right amount of leaf in a cup, is one of the bigger challenges in my tea tasting. It is such an empirical process! I tend to weigh out my leaf, until I am very experienced with a particular variety at which point I can eyeball it. As you are very experienced, Ros, I am wondering what your process is. Do you weigh it? Spoon it? Or just eyeball it? Do you use some particular guideline? Or is it pure instinct?
I feel like I’ve gone through pretty much every process you can think of at one point in time, haha. I used to very, very religiously weigh out all of my teas – straight, flavoured, you name name. Then I gradually switched back to weighing for straight and spoons for Western cups/flavoured/etc. Now I pretty much exclusively just eyeball it. I think, in part, it’s because I got familiar enough with the weights to not need the scale as much and also in part because focusing so heavily on precision was taking some of the enjoyment out of drinking the tea – it made it feel a bit more like a task. I still weigh/measure everything out when I’m working because in the lab precision is very important – but the moment a tea is for me it’s just whatever instinctively goes in the cup/gaiwan/part or what “looks right”. Long answer, but hopefully that helps!
Great explanation, thanks!