You may not realize it, but green tea is controlling your life.
The commonly accepted fact about green tea is that it shouldn't be brewed above 175 degrees Fahrenheit (roughly 80C) to avoid “burning” the tea. I spent the first couple years of my time as a tea enthusiast believing this exact same thing.
Then I got an order of green tea from white2tea’s tea club that changed everything. It was that year’s spring tea box full of small leaf varieties from Sichuan. In the accompanying letter about the teas, I was instructed to pour boiling water on them using a gong fu technique called “flash brewing” or “flash steeping”. This method of brewing is also sometimes referred to as “water in; water out”. That is, fill your tea vessel and then pour it out without delay.
You would not believe the resistance I had to this idea. It almost felt like I was asked to pour boiling water on myself. But I did it anyway and lived to tell the tale.
Not only did I escape the divine wrath of the ancient Tea Sage, Lu Yü, it was delicious! Herbal, spicy, and fragrant, the boiling water pulled out a brand new side of green tea I had never experienced before. I now habitually pour boiling water on some teas–Tai Ping Hou Kui, for example–and will often try any fresh greens with some boiling water if I think they can take it. Some Japanese teas handle water close to boiling (kamairicha being one) quite well–I’ve even had matcha made with water near boiling without shriveling into a prune from bitterness.
I get why the common advice is against this. The average beginner generally lacks the knowledge to pull it off and have an enjoyable experience. There’s also an element of the beginner’s palate, which may not yet be prepared for the complexity of flavor and simply write it off as “bitter”. However, some tea drinkers may go their whole lives without ever questioning the brewing instructions on the package and I think that’s sad.
Brewing instructions represent an idea of how the vendor thinks you’ll have the best experience. These are, as Captain Barbossa says, more like guidelines. It’s easy to fall into the trap of treating them like rules instead. Once ensconced, ideas like these become difficult to dislodge.
What boiling water on green tea represents is a way to “break the frame” of one’s reality. Like taking the opposite position of your own belief in an argument, going beyond what’s written on the package is a way to test whether the things we believe are as true as we’d like to believe they are.
Don’t let green tea control your life. Don’t let your ideas about what green tea is or isn’t, or how it should or shouldn’t be brewed, define the world for you. Pour boiling water on your most cherished beliefs and taste the resulting brew.
This is why the Flash Brew now exists. Last week, I took to Twitter and tried to break my personal frame of what it means to publish more frequent but less “developed” writing. This column is the result of the excellent conversations that resulted.
With all that said, welcome to the Flash Brew. Here, I’ll be doing my best to pour as much boiling water on things as possible. I make no promises about the outcome. We’re gonna try a bunch of things and, though we may not like the way it tastes, we’ll be better off for having tried it.