How does the process of brewing tea work

October 5th 2023 by Joshua Linvers
https://www.sommerier.com/?p=3463

I think it’s best as an analogy.

As a person who brews tea, you’re not an artist, you’re more of a manager. It’s up to you to give the artist the resources they need to enable them to present their imagination to the world.  

Very few people start their careers as the world’s most successful managers. It takes time, dedication, and many, many failures to really learn the lessons needed to succeed. Having a mentor like the internet to look to for advice is an invaluable resource; but its up to you to understand the principles, because the internet cannot (as of right now) brew your tea for you.

Imagine any tea as simply a palette of paints that alone can do nothing but exist, and any water as a medium that paint can be applied to. In the art world, one could paint onto absorbent washi paper, slick computer printer paper, a sheepskin canvas, metals, ceramics, etc. A seemingly simple change in your water can drastically change the outcome of your tea; as much as an original Banksy image can appear grand if spotted on the side of a building but be forgettable if viewed online. It would be important to understand if your tea is a ‘watercolour’, that having ‘absorbent paper’ is useful – or if using ‘spray paint’, that metal or ceramics might just be the medium needed to get the best result. What I mean by water quality in this context is the hardness, pH, orientation, and trace minerals. Water quality is an important but advanced topic, but it should be fundamentally understood that good water can make a mediocre tea good, but bad water will make even the the best tea bad.  

When you add hot water to tea leaves, an artist appears within the teapot and begins to paint a picture. This artist is usually a specialist, and can usually paint one kind of image very well. If they are given the same set of tools to work with, they will always strive to create the same image. Their materials are organic, and they do lose potency. The vibrancy of fresh tea will disappear over time, and this degradation is more obvious in green tea than in other types. Trying to paint a lush forest with only dulled greens and greys isn’t impossible, but it’s a lot harder than an artist who has access to a plethora of fresh, vivid colours. Sometimes you have to cut your losses and bin that old paint. If you want to live in a world of beauty, you need to use beautiful things.

I think it’s agreeable that an artist could at one point in the process envision an end to their piece. If an artist was held hostage and forced to paint beyond this end, a once great picture might suffer from the concept of over-painting; including details that detract from the original concept and ruin the focus of the image. In another example, the artist may conceive a new, great idea only to realize there is not enough paint remaining or not enough canvas space to bring it to completion. Flavors and aroma compounds in tea are released at different rates, sometimes stopping the extraction before the latter soluble compounds become prominent enough to show themselves will produce a better result overall.

The temperature of the water will change the speed which the artist paints. Sometimes rushing the artist will cause them to make mistakes, other times it will lead to fantastic, flowing line-work that can only be obtained by the swift and confident movements that a do-or-die deadline will invoke. Every tea + water + temperature + time combination is unique, it’s up to you to understand and manage your artist as they work through different mediums.

Even doing this professionally for a decade, it can take me 5 or 6 pots of tea to conceptualize what the artist can (or is trying to) pull off. Sometimes I’ll never get it; sometimes they are uncooperative, other times I’m ignorant or even against what they are trying to show me.

I implore you to consider getting a notepad, scale, and timer if you ever consider doing this at the highest level. I just don’t believe it’s possible to manage an artist (or several) with all their little idiosyncrasies from sheer intuition alone. Sure, with great materials and artists convening on a project the likelihood of success (whatever that means) is high, but with just a little more effort, you won’t get mundane works one day, and legends the next. The world can be ideal by design, but that’s up to you. Taking notes of your teas brewing strength, how hot the water was, how long you steeped it for, what you ate recently, will allow you a great deal of predictability in future brews. I find tremendous value in this information, and suspect you would too. Cheers!