Reading Chinese Menus: Dishes: 茶 — chá — tea

[kake]

Photo © Modomatic, used under cc-by.

Tea is a huge subject. The most I can do in a single post is give an introduction, and offer some pointers to places where you can find more in-depth information.

The prices of good Chinese teas can come as a bit of a shock if you're not aware of how to use the leaves efficiently — the last batch of white tea I bought was £6.50 for 25g, which at first glance seems ridiculously expensive. However, like most good loose whole-leaf teas, you don't actually need that much of it to make a good brew, and the leaves can be brewed up to three or four times, with the flavour changing subtly each time.

The most important factors for a good cup of tea are:

• The varietal and quality (grade) of the tea leaves you brew with.
• The temperature of the water.
• The length of brewing time.

Other factors can have an effect too. For example, if you reboil a kettle over and over then the oxygen content of the water decreases, and some people find there's a discernable effect on tea brewed with this water. Tea made with filtered water, or with tap water from different regions, may also taste different. However, assuming you use the same type of water every time and fill your kettle fresh every time, it's the three things above that deserve attention.

The optimal water temperature depends on the tea. Hopefully, either the packaging of the tea or the person you buy it from will provide this information, but a reasonable rule of thumb is 80˚C for green teas such as dragon well and white teas such as silver needle, 85-90˚C for oolong, and 95-100˚C for black teas and pu-er (which is sometimes classified as a green tea and sometimes as a black tea).

Brewing time varies depending on the amount of leaves that you use, and whether they've been infused before — second, third, and fourth infusions require progressively longer times, and while a first brewing may be perfect in only 2-3 minutes, the fourth may take as long as 15 minutes to extract all the flavours. As vatine points out in comments, different teas have different-sized "windows of opportunity", too — with some teas, you have to get the timing very precise, while others are more forgiving.

Note also that not all Chinese teas are actual teas, i.e. infusions made with the leaves of some varietal of Camellia sinensis. Chrysanthemum tea (菊花茶/jú huā chá), which I mentioned on Wednesday, is an infusion of flowers, and hence caffeine-free.

For more information on tea, the Single Estate Tea blog is worth a read, as are the Chinese Tea Files, Life In Teacup, The Mandarin's Tea, 0olong's overview of tea and tea types, and Life On Nanchang Lu's guide to pu-er tea.

If you have any questions or corrections, please leave a comment (here's how) and let me know (or email me at kake@earth.li). See my introductory post to the Chinese menu project for what these posts are all about.

Comments

[jana]

Very interesting. I LOVE tea, yes with capital letters :) Chinese green tea is one of my favorites, in addition to Japanese green tea. One of my cabinets is jam packed with all kinds of tea. I need my cup of tea in the morning like other people need their daily coffee fix, and whenever I'm in a tea shop I'll have to stop myself from buying more tea or teapots... ;)

[kake]

Ha, yes, I am also a tea person way more than I am a coffee person! In fact I can't remember the last time I drank a cup of coffee. I do like the taste of coffee, but I like it very strong, and I fear the caffeine addiction.

[0olong]

Despite being much more of a tea person than a coffee person, and fearing the caffeine addiction, I seem to have given in to it anyway. I really need to get enough sleep one of these days, and break out of the habit...

[vatine]

Brewing time also varies a lot depending on what tea you're brewing and the quality of the leaves.

As an example, the "ordinary" lapsang souchong from Teboden ("the tea hut", used to be my preferred tea vendor while at uni) should be allowed to steep for roughly 3m45s, less than that and you get a weak, unpleasant tea and any longer it turns bitter and unpleasant.

Whereas the "superior" version of essentially the same tea is acceptable with a steeping time anywhere from 4 to 8 minutes and needs to be left to infuse for at least 25 minutes before becoming unpleasantly bitter.

Ideally, either the tea packaging or the tea vendor's list of teas should indicate a brewing time that can serve as an initial guide for experimentation.

[vatine]

Readers in Sweden may find Teboden's pricelist interesting (they do postal orders, but I don't know if they do postal orders to outside of Sweden).

[kake]

And readers in the UK might wish to look at Postcard Teas (RGL review of the physical shop) and maybe Tea Palace. Both will deliver within the UK, and the Tea Palace at least delivers to various other destinations including Europe and North America.

[kake]

Thank you, yes, I should have mentioned that different teas require different levels of precision — I've edited it in to the post now.

[superpitching]

I reckon you should do a post about chilled teas! I.e tea inna can, tea inna bottle etc. (You can even do coffee in a can/bottle - or perhaps that should be one for me, rather than you :)).

My problem with the chilled teas is running the risks of them being oversweetened w/ approx 20 tonnes of sugar. I got a random bottle of Oolong tea before going to the cinema and think I developed diabetes before the end of the film! Curses...

PS I am afraid that in Chinese restaurants I order 'chinese tea', which inevitably is 'jasmine tea' which is GOOD ENOUGH FOR ME. In fact the only place where I've seen much of a 'tea menu' is Ping Pong (and that's only an excuse to rip you off and serve tea in a glass - wrong, despite what our continental coursins may think)!

[kake]

Yeah, I've never bought an iced tea inna bottle that I actually liked — way too sweet. I've been making my own recently and it's much nicer.

The thing about ordering tea in Chinese restaurants is that a lot of them do actually have more kinds of tea! They just don't always tell you about it. It's like the secret food menu, really...

(Oh, and is that screened anonymous comment from you, and if so would you like me to unscreen it? It doesn't seem to be finished...)

[vatine]

Waitrose at least used to have a selection of unsweetened tea in cans. The Japanese green is the only one I've tried and that was OK. Not bought any since ca 2004, when I stopped working close enough to a Waitrose that walking there was a suitable "get lunch" strategy, but may be worth investigating if convenient.

[0olong]

Yay for chilled teas! My favourite is hojicha, which chills gloriously, even though most oolongs are very good chilled too. There's a lot to be said for cold barley tea as well, if we're allowing teas that aren't made of tea...

It puzzles me a little that so much of the chilled tea people sell is green tea, which almost always gets bitter when it cools down. I figure this is part of the reason most commercial cold tea products are over-sweetened...

[kake]

I sadly suspect that a big reason for selling chilled green tea is that green tea is firmly fixed as a Super Health Food in the minds of the British public, and hence can be sold for more money.

I've recently been drinking a fair bit of chilled sweetened green tea, though. bob bought some cherry-flavoured green tea from Greenwich market a while back — it's undrinkable hot, since it tastes so artificial, but with a teaspoon of sugar per 750ml and an hour in the fridge, it's actually quite nice.

[holdthesky]

Interesting to read about Russian Caravan tea on that site (one of my favourites). I should have guessed it was about the caravans crossing the majestic steppe.

I'd not really thought about it until now, but I'd an image in my head of a mobile home, perhaps on the south coast of England, where a migrant worker lives, and brews up a big pot of tea on a propane hob after a day perhaps cleaning a hotel and then sits down for a nice cup of tea.

[kake]

Which site were you reading about Russian Caravan tea on? I can't find it on the ones I linked, and it does sound intriguing!

[holdthesky]

Ooh, I can't remember now. Perhaps it was a couple of links away. Damn. There was a thing about it published in Dublin in 18-- where they talked about it taking on a small quantity of moisture each night as it's unloaded from the caravan onto the snow. How is my google foo? "russian caravan" dublin siberia moisture Ah, that quote was from wikipedia. I wonder how I got there?

[kake]

Interesting, thanks. I'll keep an eye out for it — looks like Whittard stock it, at least.

[shuripentu]

*boggle* How can pu-er be classified as a green tea? It's superblack, if anything; AIUI what we call 'black tea' in English is called 'red tea' in Chinese, because 'black' is reserved for pu-er.

[kake]

As I understand it (which is not to any great extent), there are different types of pu-er which are fermented to different degrees, so some will be considered green and others black.

And yes, as far as I know, you're right about the black tea/red tea thing. I actually found this out just a couple of days before I had it demonstrated to me via an interesting context-switching error. I was talking to a member of staff in a restaurant about the dish I was going to order, using a few Chinese terms but otherwise all in English, and then I asked for some iced tea and instead of asking if I wanted green or black, she asked if I wanted green or red — which did sound peculiar in English, but I knew what she meant :)

[0olong]

Yes, there do seem to be 'uncooked' varieties of pu-er which could reasonably be considered green. On the whole, I think pu-er demands two categories of its own alongside black, oolong and green tea. And toasted tea, actually, which is pretty fundamentally different again.

[0olong]

I meant to say, though, that I've never entirely got my head round pu-er. I think I need to spend some more time at 'Kung Fu Tea' in Edinburgh's West End...

[kake]

Perhaps next time you're in London we could see if Postcard Teas will do us a pu-er tasting.