Wed Jul 13, 2022 7:09 am
I guess that this is another area where general guidelines are useful to start with, as are other people's comments, but then we find what works best for us, while hopefully maintaining a willingness to experiment.
My approach for old puer and old liu bao is 10g per 160mL, adjusted for size (and sometimes adjusted for pour speed), and then my breath-based system, which is probably useless to everyone except for myself.
I always measure out my quantities on a scale, but I never time my steeps; instead, I count how many breaths I take for each set of three infusions. Generally, that's three breaths for each of the first three infusions, then often six breaths for the next three (or sometimes six, nine, twelve for the next three, or perhaps something else if needed), where the length of the breaths is not a constant (and is not consistent across all categories of tea...).
My watch tells me that my first three infusions for old tea generally are probably around fifteen, then ten, then twenty seconds, and then it's hard to generalise. For all of these infusions, if the tea feels young and raw, then I often shorten my breaths; if it gives a nice strong feeling each time, then I try to maintain consistency with a gradual increase in times; if it lacks feeling or flavour, then I slow the infusions down. Heavily-compressed tea changes a lot of that, of course (likewise, time between steeps can require changes).
So, for example, I take it nice and slow with the 1985 liu bao from Yee On that I've had (because it tends to focus on flavour rather than feeling and rewards longer infusions to get that flavour), but I am quicker for the 80s VIVE from EoT (because of its smaller leaves and its more powerful feeling).
But I am conscious that that is probably useless to everyone else, except as some vague comparison or point of reference. However, I would be happy to hear about other people's methods and thoughts.
Andrew