Tea Knowledge

How to brew, choose and store Chinese tea - and what actually goes into ours. Practical guides from our tea house in Phuket, plus short articles on tea types, ingredients and regions.

Guides

Chinese Tea Types Chinese tea comes in six categories: green, white, yellow, oolong, red (the tea the West calls black) and dark, the family that includes pu-erh. All six are made from one plant, Camellia sinensis. What separates them is... Choosing a Tea Set For most people the right Chinese tea set is one porcelain gaiwan: it brews every tea well - green, oolong, pu-erh and costs less than any full set. A clay teapot earns its place when you drink one style daily; a full go... Cold Brew Tea Cold brew tea is leaf steeped in cold water - 5–6 g per litre, 8–12 hours in the refrigerator, strain and pour. Cold water pulls out sweetness and aroma but leaves most of the tannin behind, so the cup comes out smooth,... How to Brew Oolong Oolong brews at 85–95 °C, about 3 g of leaf per 100 ml; the style decides where in that range you land. Light, floral oolongs want 85 °C and quick pours; roasted and GABA styles take a full 95 °C. Rolled pearls need one... How to Brew Pu-erh Gongfu brewing (gongfu cha, 功夫茶, "tea with skill") means plenty of leaf in a small vessel and steeps counted in seconds. For pu-erh: 5 g per 100 ml in a gaiwan, one five-second rinse, then 10–15-second infusions. Full bo... How to Store Pu-erh Pu-erh is the one tea people lay down for years, and storage decides what those years give back. The Chinese call it cang cha (藏茶) - putting tea away. A cake is alive: microbes and enzymes keep working inside the presse... Milk Oolong Milk oolong (nai xiang wulong, 奶香乌龙 - "milk-fragrance oolong") is a lightly oxidised oolong made from the Jin Xuan cultivar, and no milk touches the leaf at any stage. It is not the bubble-tea drink: oolong milk tea is t... Sheng vs Shou Sheng (raw, 生) pu-erh is sun-dried leaf pressed into cakes and left to mature untouched for decades. Shou (ripe, 熟) goes through several weeks of wet-pile fermentation and pours dark, smooth and earthy from the first yea... Ceremony or Tasting? What's the difference between a tea ceremony and a tea tasting? A tea ceremony is a slow gongfu cha (功夫茶, "tea with skill") session built around three or four fine teas, brewed infusion after infusion in a small vess... Tea Souvenirs Tea may be the smartest souvenir Thailand sells. It weighs nothing, keeps a year or more, and clears customs without paperwork. Past the orange milk-tea powder, Thailand grows real high-mountain oolong. Written from be... Cha Yen Orange Thai tea is called cha yen, "cold tea". It is not a variety: the glass holds strong black tea, sugar, condensed milk with spices, and food colouring - the orange comes from the dye. You can make it at home without... Thai Tea The words "Thai tea" cover three different drinks: orange cha yen with condensed milk, a blue infusion of anchan flowers, and herbal cups like matum. Thailand also grows real tea leaf the guidebooks rarely mention:... Incense Ceremony Xiangdao (香道, "the way of incense") is the Chinese art of preparing and appreciating fine incense: a sliver of aloeswood or sandalwood warmed over charcoal buried in ash - heated, never burned. It is not jingxiang (敬香),... Types of Oolong What Makes a Tea an Oolong? Oolong is partially oxidised tea: the leaf is bruised and left to darken part-way, then fixed with heat somewhere between green tea and red. Where the maker stops - anywhere from roughly 10... Gongfu Cha Gongfu cha (功夫茶, “tea with skill”) is the Chinese way of brewing tea: plenty of leaf in a small vessel, poured off in many short infusions instead of one long steep. The gongfu is the same word as in kung fu - mastery ea... Where to Buy Tea You can buy real Chinese tea in Thailand at specialist tea houses in Phuket, Bangkok and Chiang Mai, online with nationwide delivery, or at Chinese-goods markets. The first two are safe. The third is a lottery. This gu...

Tea types

Black Tea The tea we call black is known in China as red tea (hong cha, 红茶) - after the colour of the liquor: amber-ruby, warm as a setting sun. It is a fully oxidised tea, and it was China that gave it to the world, from Wuyi’s Z... Green Tea Green tea (lü cha, 绿茶) is the oldest and most spring-like of Chinese teas. Freshly picked leaves are quickly heated in a dry wok to stop oxidation (sha qing, 杀青 - “killing the green”), so the tea keeps the colour, freshn... GABA Oolong GABA oolong (jiā yè lóng chá, 佳叶龙茶) is an oolong fermented in an oxygen-free environment. Sealed away from air - usually under nitrogen, the leaf converts its natural glutamic acid into GABA, gamma-aminobutyric acid, at... Oolong Oolong (wulong cha, 乌龙茶 - “black dragon tea”) is the family of partially oxidised teas between green and red. It is the most virtuoso chapter of Chinese tea craft: some oolongs are fresh and floral like a spring garden,... Pu-erh Pu-erh (pu’er cha, 普洱茶) is the famous post-fermented tea of Yunnan, named after the town of Pu’er through which tea caravans passed for centuries. It is the one tea that people lay down: time does not spoil it - it matur... Sheng Pu-erh Sheng pu-erh (sheng cha, 生普洱 - “raw pu-erh”) is the liveliest tea of Yunnan. Leaves from broad-leaf, often ancient trees are withered, pan-heated, sun-dried and pressed into cakes, and from then on the tea lives and chan... Shou Pu-erh Shou pu-erh (shu cha, 熟普洱 - “ripe pu-erh”) is the dark, velvety tea of Yunnan. The wet-piling technique (wo dui, 渥堆), perfected in Kunming in the 1970s, gives the leaf in a few weeks the depth that sheng reaches over dec...

Ingredients

Anchan Anchan is the dried flower of the butterfly pea plant, brewed across Thailand into a bright blue infusion. It is not related to the tea bush: zero caffeine, almost no taste. The colour is the whole show, and a squeeze of... Chrysanthemum Chrysanthemum (ju hua, 菊花) is one of the great flowers of Chinese tea. The small white and yellow blossoms have been brewed in China for more than a thousand years, on their own and alongside tea. Taste and aroma in te... Coconut The coconut (yezi, 椰子) is the taste of China's deep south: the palm-lined island of Hainan lives on coconut groves, and an old southern chronicle calls the fruit the “head of the King of Yue” - a legend as dramatic as th... Goji Berries Goji berries (gouqi, 枸杞) are the small, bright orange-red dried fruits of the wolfberry, grown above all in Ningxia in northwest China. They are soft, chewy and mildly sweet, with a faint herbal tang - as at home in a Ch... Grape The grape (putao, 葡萄) came to China along the Silk Road more than two thousand years ago and settled in the north-west: Xinjiang and Turpan are still the country’s grape land, famous for the sweetest raisins. Taste and... Jasmine Jasmine (moli hua, 茉莉花) is probably the most famous flower in Chinese tea. Its fragrance, delicate and sweet with the cool freshness of a summer evening, has been many people’s very first encounter with Chinese tea. Ta... Jujube Jujube (hongzao, 红枣) - the Chinese red date - is a dried fruit of deep, caramel-like sweetness. Wrinkled and mahogany-red, it tastes of dates and dark honey, and it has been a fixture of Chinese kitchens and tonic teas f... Lion’s Mane Lion's mane (houtougu, 猴头菇, "monkey head mushroom") is a snowy, pom-pom-like mushroom whose cascading soft spines really do resemble a lion's mane. Ours is grown by a Thai farm devoted to this one mushroom, and it is wid... Lychee Lychee (lizhi, 荔枝) is the sweet tropical fruit of southern China, fragrant with rose, grape and honey. Legend has it that imperial couriers raced fresh lychees across half the country for Yang Guifei, the famous Tang bea... Matum Matum is bael fruit, sliced, dried and roasted, brewed all over Thailand as a tea. The cup is amber and gently sweet with no caffeine: dried apricot, baked apple, a touch of smoke. Markets in every town sell it. Here is... Mint Mint (bohe, 薄荷) brings a bright, cooling lift to a blend - clean menthol freshness with a sweet green edge. Even a small pinch changes the whole character of a cup: crisper, greener, cool on the finish. Taste and aroma... Orange Peel The orange (cheng, 橙) is a native of China - citrus has been cultivated here for thousands of years, and the word itself sounds like 成, “success”, which is why bowls of oranges and tangerines appear on every table at Chi... Osmanthus Osmanthus (guihua, 桂花) is the tiny golden blossom of an evergreen tree that flowers across southern China in early autumn. Its fragrance is one of the most recognisable in Chinese cooking and perfumery: ripe apricot, pea... Peach In China the peach (tao, 桃) is the emblem of longevity and immortality: the peaches from the goddess Xiwangmu’s garden granted eternal life, and to this day the peach is the classic image on birthday gifts. Taste and a... Rosebuds Rose (meigui, 玫瑰花) in Chinese tea culture means above all the buds and petals of the tea rose: deep pink, with a warm, honeyed floral aroma quite unlike the perfumed “rosiness” of European confectionery. Taste and arom...

Regions

Fujian Tea Fujian (福建) is a coastal province of south-eastern China - mountainous, humid and green. If Yunnan is the birthplace of the tea tree, Fujian is the birthplace of tea craft: more ways of working the leaf were invented her... Mae Salong Mae Salong (Doi Mae Salong, 美斯乐) is the tea mountain of Northern Thailand: a ridge in Chiang Rai province with gardens at roughly 1,200–1,800 metres, a few hours north of Chiang Rai city. It is the first region on this s... Yunnan Yunnan (云南 - “south of the clouds”) is China’s south-western province on the borders of Laos and Myanmar and, by the general verdict of botanists, the birthplace of the tea tree itself. Tea is not so much grown here as i...