Yogo Magpie

My drink of choice is tea. It is an absolute tragedy that here in the US we have a strong coffee culture and a weak tea culture. I can't tell you the number of times I've ordered tea at a restaurant, only to realize that I paid $4 for a cheap tea bag and a mug of hot water (sometimes they try to elevate the experience by providing a little tea pot of warm water to accompany that mug). Cafes are only slightly better, but most still try to charge you for a tea bag in a cup, so I rarely order anything besides a chai or matcha latte. That being said, I am not above drinking cheap tea and regularly drink grocery store brands like Bigelow or Celestial Seasonings (hey by the way, did you know Celestial Seasonings has a cultish history? I'll have to write about that later). I would even buy a 100 pack of Wegmans English Breakfast or Earl Gray as my cheap caffeine fix in the mornings. I used to get all of my tea from a little shop in Great Falls, Montana called In Cahoots for Tea (I'll also have to write more about that later).

Anyway... today I want to write about

Gongfu Cha

So I fell down a deep, deep rabbit hole when I was researching where to buy tea online. I went to the r/tea subreddit to see if I could find any good shop recommendations there. Instead, I discovered gongfu cha, which is the Chinese method of brewing tea leaves. Also called "kung fu tea," it means to prepare tea with skill. It involves placing a high ratio of tea leaves into a small vessel (e.g., a gaiwan) and straining it multiple times. Each brew time is very short, typically 5-10 seconds. Rather than brewing the tea western style (i.e., throwing a spoonful of tea leaves into an 8oz cup and steeping for 5 minutes, which dilutes and melts all of those flavor notes into one cup), gongfu cha captures how the flavors change as the leaves open up with each steeping.

My Set Up

Gaiwan

Tea Cups

Tea Pet

Cha hai

Cute rabbit plate

Tea Tray

Tea Reviews

:)