You will need: leaves, water, kettle, gaiwan, cup.
- Leaves
- Which leaves? Good quality loose leaves are the most important but not the only thing you will need. Put those teabags away and invest in some nice leaves. Life is too short to drink bad tea.
- Water
- Is water important? Many new tea drinkers tend to forget about water quality but tea is mostly water. Having good water is extremely important. The finest leaves will be ruined by terrible tap water.
- Which water to use? It depends on your local situation, you can do some tests of what you have available and compare them. I would try to find local spring water to buy in bulk. In general best results seem to be from soft spring water（although not too soft/distilled) such as 30-80 ppm total dissolved solids. its a trial and error process.
- A way to heat water
- Kettle: To boil water an electric kettle is a very convenient way.
- Which kettle to get? Ideally I would look for a kettle that doesn’t have plastic parts in contact with the water and has a precise pouring to avoid a boiling water mess on your table. However as long as you manage to boil the water anything is fine.
- Gaiwan
- What is a gaiwan? It sounds like a fancy name but is just a lidded bowl, from chinese gai 盖=lid and wan 碗= bowl。A simple tool that will be perfect for brewing almost any tea.
- Which gaiwan to get?
Since gaiwans can be quite cheap and easy to break you can get a few sizes. Different sizes will be used depending how many people will drink but 80-100ml is a good starting point. - Where to buy a gaiwan? Depends on where you live: your local asian stores, online tea and teaware stores, taobao, aliexpress, amazon, ebay. Anywhere you can find one. I wouldn’t spend much for a basic factory made one. We sell this one for example.
- Cups
- Obviously needed: ideally a cup small enough to rapidly cool down tea to drinkable temperature and not lasting enough for it to get too cold. Mug like cups for example will go from lava hot to too cold making them not ideal.
Other useful items:
- Gong Dao Bei (sometimes called cha hai or fair cup)
gongdao (公道 ) means justice bei (杯) means cup. In short is a small pitcher where you can pour the tea in from the gaiwan to even it out (as the first tea coming out will be less intense than the last drops therefore the name “justice” or “fair” cup). Moreover it will make it easier to pour in multiple cups when more people are drinking. Any small pitcher or cup with a spout will do. It might or might not have a handle. Like the gaiwan, this tool can also be quite cheap.
- Towel in case you spill something. any towel will do.
Things you might need in the future after you become so experienced with tea that you don’t need to read a FAQ page:
- Teapots can be fun but are a bit more complicated and expensive. Unglazed clay also influences the tea flavor so I suggest to start from the gaiwan but if you like the look of a teapot why not, tea should be fun.
- Scale can be useful for precise comparisons but you can live without it and be fine depending on your level of precision.
Not really needed:
- filters, strainers, thermometers, tea tables, tea trays, weird contraptions, temperature controlled kettles, tea pets, easy gaiwans, timers, apps, social media connections, miniature marzipan pigs holding tiny coins in their mouths, being in a rush.
Never use:
- Infusers that in any way will restrain the leaves such as balls or any silly novelty infuser you got gifted by someone who doesn’t drink tea.
Why? Because leaves must have enough space to be free to expand and infuse to their full potential. If you must use an infuser (you really don’t) at least get the largest basket shaped infuser you can to allow some space for your leaves.
This guide is to be intended as a suggestion and an insight on how tea, in particular the yancha wulong we provide, is commonly prepared in China. Remember that the most important thing is always to find your own personal way of enjoying tea and that there are no absolute rights and wrong.
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