A disclaimer before we begin: This is not a science, this is entirely opinion based. Over the years of discovering how to assess tea better I have arrived at a method I have found to be very enjoyable, mentally enriching, and relatable to clients. I can’t recall where the original idea came from, surely it had to do with wine though. It was probably the ISG’s (International Sommelier Guild) tasting sheet. Whatever sheet it was that inspired this, I created the following sheet to help me record what I thought was important to observe about tea..
This was the original sheet from back in 2013. It’s also worth noting that I could do multiple sheets for the same tea made at the same parameters but on different days and arrive at totally different conclusions on each one. So I’ll repeat — this isn’t a science. Our sense of taste and smell, as well as all of the other variables (such as: how tired we are, how hungry we are, if there’s other aromas in the air, what we’ve ate and drank recently, etc.) make this an incredibly difficult task for consistency, although I have noticed that my various sheets for some teas are much more similar than others.
On these sheets, our eyes gravitate towards those graphs on the right first. This is deeply personal, and my skill with it only improves with experience. ‘A’ is for aromatics, how fragrant is it within my mouth. ‘C’ is for concentration, how much flavor backs up those aromatics, ‘As’ is for astringency, how much does it grip at my tongue. ‘F’ is for finish, after swallowing the tea how long can I perceive the tea for? ‘W’ is for weight, how rich it feels in the mouth.
When we look at the left side of the page we can see aromas and flavors among other things. This is where I try to relate what I smell and taste in the tea to other things to allow for reference. Some teas smell like basil, others like nectarines, etc.
As time went on I often found myself writing down information that I thought was important but had no place on the paper for it. I changed the layout and added a few things. The most notable changes were moving to a scale of 10 instead of 5, having more room for comments, and tracking the development of the wet leaf between brews.
Eventually I re-did the sheet again, changing the layout slightly because I was constantly running out of room to write. The addition of the ‘D’ bar to the graph (depth) relating to umami is new, tracking the recently consumed foods/drinks is new, the lighting conditions (daylight, incandescent, fluorescent, etc) as well as the vessels the tea is brewed in, consumed from, the water source used to brew it, and what it was boiled in. These were all factors which became known to me over time, as I gained experience. This is the most recent version:
Doing these sheets was life draining because on top of working a full day in the restaurant I would have to sit down in my tired state and methodically drink tea filling out charts. These sheets take 45 minutes each if I am fast, and about 90 minutes if I’m slow. I have filled out at least 552 of them (I counted the ones I could find for this article). I still do these papers to this day, but I think this phase of my life is almost coming to an end. For the past 6 years I have had a standard brewing method for ‘tea sheets’ at a 1:75 ratio, for 2 minutes, with boiling water. I realized early on that this wasn’t the ideal way to brew these teas, but in my mind this allowed me to judge all teas on an equal playing field and if I thought they were good, I could always follow up and adjust them in the future.
Doing an adjustment would require another form to be filled out, so I would spend several hours working with a tea with the full knowledge that I was not brewing it well but not stopping just so I could have it ‘on the record’. These re-brews are not included in the 552 number earlier, which makes the time commitment to this even more mind boggling upon reflection (it’s at least between 414 to 828 hours). While I don’t think my time was wasted, it could have been spent better if I approached this in a more organic and practical way (like I do today) rather than an emotionless tasting robot.
Where I am at mentally today is to begin by brewing 3 pots of the same tea with the same infusion time and temperature but at very different strengths (weak at 1g:75ml, medium at 1g:50ml, and strong as 1g:25ml). Of the 3 there will always be a hierarchy of best to worst, and some reasoning behind it. Was 1:75 too weak, and 1:25 too strong? Well this is generally the case. If the 3rd pot in the middle (1:50) is my best result and I compare it to the other 2, which direction should my efforts be directed? If I couldn’t choose the middle ground, which direction was better? and why is it better? So to continue I will brew a pot in the middle of that zone, and ask myself: was it better or worse than 1:50? I will keep repeating this ‘narrowing down’ process until I can go no further and I am confident that I have ‘dialed in’ on the ratio that I prefer.
Then I will consider the steeping time. My original tests usually start with 2 minutes, so for this segment of ‘narrowing down’ I’ll initially brew 2 other pots to compete with my ‘control’ based on my general opinion of the 2 minute brew. If I thought it was nearly perfect for me, I might do 1:30 and 2:30 and check where my opinion sways. If 2:30 was better, I might try 2:15, and 2:45, repeating the process until I get to my preference.
After I arrive at my preference, I can fill out my tasting sheet like what you saw above without feeling like I’m wasting my time. This seems a lot more efficient and intuitive than how I started my career. I also tend to let my brain run off on tangents while I am doing tastings and will often scribble down food ideas for doing pairings or special dinners with chefs. If the idea is within my skill range of cooking (extremely low skill) I will try to execute it myself and live the dreams of luxury.
Though you’d have to be an eccentric to taste things while jotting down notes on a sheet… I bet you’re one because you’re reading a blog about how some guy in Canada ‘evaluates tea’! Cheers to that, ciao friend.
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