Multiple Infusions: About Re-Steeping Tea
Why re-steep? Why not? Re-steeping tea really brings out the value of a tea, you can get many servings of tea from just one serving of leaves. More bang for your buck, and you get to taste the tea as it develops from steep to steep.
Before you re-steep: If you are going to be re-steeping your tea, you don’t want to oversteep it. Re-steeping your tea means that you are going to be steeping the leaves multiple times which means that each time you steep it, you must remove the leaves from your tea and set them aside until you are ready to re-steep. If you are using a mesh strainer, take it out and sit it on a saucer or something. Using a gaiwan will alleviate this as gaiwans are built for resteeping – when using one, you just pour out all of the tea into a separate drinking vessel after each steep. Simply add water for the next steep.
How many times can you re-steep a tea? If you keep getting an enjoyable flavor out of the leaves, keep re-steeping. Everyone will have their own personal preference as to “how many times you can re-steep an anxi tieguanyin” etc.
How to re-steep? I usually increase the steeping time slightly with each subsequent steep. some people increase the temperature as well.
My experience: I’ve gotten some pu-erhs up to 15-20 steepings, its amazing. re-steeping justifies buying a more expensive full-leaf tea. If you aren’t doing it with a high quality, full-leaf tea, you are throwing money away and not experiencing the tea from steep to steep. I’ll add that there are generally 2 schools of thought for steep times… one school likes to steep longer and not as many times, the other school likes to steep shorter and many times. The first school is usually associated with larger steeping vessels like large teapots, etc. The second school is usually associated with yixing, gaiwans, and smaller vessels. Note: this is a generalization.
Note: this is GENERALLY for whole leaf tea, OR bagged tea only if the leaves inside are whole leaves. it is a matter of surface area – a finely chopped tea is going to have more surface area and the flavors will come out in fewer steeps, sometimes only 1. if the tea is whole leaves, the flavor will come out slowly with each subsequent steep.
This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 12th, 2011 at 12:04 pm and is filed under Tea Education. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Tony Gebely
Tony is co-owner of Chicago Tea Garden and tweets as @WorldofTea. He has been a tea drinker for nearly ten years and has traveled to tea producing regions throughout Asia.
How would my general steeping standards change (both tea quantity and time) when preparing a larger quantity, say in a 40 oz teapot? I usually prepare a ~10 oz cup and, depending on the tea, usually require 1 1/2 tsp for 4-6 minutes but am able to get 2-3 different steeps from this. I will usually increase my steep times by 1 minute with each subsequent steep.
Many thanks for your helpful insight.
John
I’ve been looking for a good re-steeping info. Would you mind if I re-published this on my site (with your link)
absolutely, just send me the link so i can see it! have a great day!
How long can you wait before re-steeping? My stomach can only handle 1 cup of caffeine a day. I don’t know how to store the leaves after the 1st steeping for subsequent days so I end up throwing them out/composting. How can I fix this? Oh, and I don’t really care for the taste of the naturally non-caffeinated teas. So not an option to switch.
it depends, but the tea will become as James Norwood Pratt says “a ghost of itself” the longer you wait. I would do longer steeps so you get a lot of flavor (still be careful not to over-steep it), if you still want to do many shorter steeps, you can drink the steeping that is your favorite right away (for tie guan yin oolong, I like #2 or #3) and put the rest in the refrigerator for iced tea the next day. The last resort would be to store the leaves in an airtight container in the refrigerator to re-steep them the next day – but the result will be less than enjoyable.
As far as I know, after about 30 seconds of steeping, 95% of the caffeine is gone. You can ‘naturally decaffeinate’ your tea by steeping for 30 seconds, pouring it out and re-steeping – the flavor loss is not really noticeable – if any. I have done it before for a few weeks when I was doing the caffeine free thing, but I don’t any longer.
@Ray_Case
oh, yeah, forgot the point of your post. Always re-steep. if the second steep isn’t a strong enough taste for you, let is sit overnight – it will be!
I have to try the massive pu-erh re-steep!
Ray
Hi Ray, this — although published in many books is absolutely untrue. Several scientific studies have arisen since debunking this “tea myth” –here is an article about caffeine in tea: http://chadao.blogspot.com/2008/02/caffeine-and-tea-myth-and-reality.html
Great link Tony, thanks! I wish I had seen these a couple of years ago when I was trying the ‘decaf.’ I am glad there are people actually studying this. Sad that all the research I did had me believing a myth!
Ray