In buying directly from farmers, we were invited to drink tea with them.

Everybody has a different style of gong fu tea brewing, here is a version that is close to what we experienced in the tea mountains.

Below I will describe two distinguishing features of the way that our farmers drink tea gong fu style, which differ from trends in gong fu style that I have seen here in the West. It is a bit different from how I drink gong fu style as well.

Farmers are highly experienced tea drinkers and so use very high quantities of leaf. As people become more experienced, they gradually like tea stronger, and as our farmers have been drinking tea for 20-30 years, their tea is brewed powerfully. Added to this is the consideration that when brewing tea with a lot of leaf, it takes much more skill to make all the leaves open at the same rate, which is one of the objectives in gong fu style tea brewing. This takes a lot of practice to achieve.

Some people like to use scales to measure a certain amount of tea leaves, and timers to measure steeping times so as to get consistent results, or to try to hone down brewing parameters until the tea tastes at its best. Our farmers use approximate measurements of tea leaves and approximate timings. Personally I also prefer to do things approximately because it feels more natural.

What do you think is the ideal way to drink tea? Do you ever drink tea gong fu style?

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