How should I prepare and drink my tea?

However you like!

There’s no ‘authentic’ way or universal Chinese practice. Tea is enjoyed in many formal and informal settings, and is treated with as much or as little dignity as the drinker likes. There are traditional utensils and vessels that make sense with the most common Chinese preferences, but a Western-style teapot, saucers, and teaspoons can reap just as much benefit from high quality Chinese tea. Similarly, whilst adding milk and sugar is not popular in China, we absolutely believe our teas can improve this experience.

However, there are some tips and common practices that may help those starting out. The most obvious difference between our products and the most common UK products is the size and shape of the tea itself. Most of our tea is sold in the form of compressed cakes, often in portions much larger than needed for a single use. It does not come in teabags to be brewed in the drinker’s cup. Rather, tea is brewed separately using a portion of the cake broken loose, is strained, then served in individual cups. Traditional service requires the use of a third vessel to hold the brewed and strained tea before serving into cups, in order to avoid over-brewing or pouring bits of leaves into the cup.

Importantly, the leaves used for brewing are good to be reused several times, and indeed the most discerning tea enthusiasts will even discard the first brewing as too harsh or impure (although this is not necessary for more casual drinkers!). For a lot of Chinese tea-drinkers, putting fresh tea in a flask every morning, then adding hot water periodically throughout the day when they want to brew a cup is a common practice.

We recommend letting your tea brew for only 10-15 seconds. If you are discarding the first ‘rinse’, that can brew for a little less. You may find it necessary to brew for a few seconds longer if the leaves have been brewed several times before. It is definitely preferable to brew the leaves quickly multiple times with sufficient water than to go for a single, slow brew with too much water.