Brewing 信阳毛尖茶 (Xinyang Maojian Tea)

No math updates, no school updates, but I thought it was time to write a useful post, so here's how I make Xinyang Maojian tea at home. I try to visit the nice people at my favorite store in 北茶城 (North Tea City) every week to practice my Chinese (tea merchants make for great conversation), drink awesome tea and, most importantly, learn step by step the art of making a delicious cup of Maojian. Every time I go I pick up a new tool or technique that improves my home batches just that much.

Maojian is a refreshing, bitter green tea. The best analog I can think of for the flavor is "like drinking the smell of fresh-cut summer grass." It comes from the city of Xinyang in southern Henan. I drink maybe fifteen cups a day, depending how much time I spend at home. At work I

stuff my bottle with various types of Pu'er because all you need to make a decent cup of Pu'er is hot water and hotter water. Maojian's a little more delicate; if the water's too hot it'll burn out all the flavor in the first cup, but if it's too cool you're left with warm, clean tasting water. Not disgusting, but not the desired effect. What you want in the cup is cloudy, pale green goodness with the tea leaves resting comfortably at the bottom of the glass. It should last for five or six pourings, depending on how much tea you use. I drink a lot of the stuff, so I tend to use less; it has a milder flavor I guess, but you can really use as much as you like. Experimentation is important.

So here's my ramshackle tea setup. The cutoff bottle is for excess water or first brews of non-Maojian tea. The big clear pot is for cooling hot water. I use the little brown pot with white varnish for filtering and the pilsner glasses for drinking. The tongs are for

picking up hot glasses and getting floating leaves off the top. Everything else I use for Pu'er, so forget it's there.

To make the Maojian, I first put a few big pinches of tea in the bottom of a pilsner glass while I boiling a big pot of tea on the stove. Once my water's hot, I pour it into the big clear tea pot to cool off. It's cool enough when you can stick your finger in for a few seconds without burning it; it's a dangerous rule of thumb, but I lack a thermometer. The lady at the tea house says the water should be between 70 and 80 degrees celsius.

When it's cool enough, I fill the glass about halfway. Some of the tea leaves will float to the top so pour the tea into the smaller brown tea pot through the funnel filter and then back into the pilsner glass. The tea leaves should settle to the bottom of the glass, but sometimes you might have to filter it once or twice more to get rid of excess floating crap. Finish by filling the pilsner glass up with water from the big clear pot, let it settle for a minute and enjoy. Refill with hot water when the tea is level with the top of the settled tea leaves. It should look something like this: