Many people, who have just started to learn to brew tea, often heard the first round of tea is “tea rinsing”. Why tea need to be rinsed? How to do it?
In fact, “tea rinsing” itself is a wrong expression. Tea is clean, different than vegetable and fruits; the making process goes through high-temperature baking. It does not need to be washed. Furthermore, even it need to be rinsed, one-time rinsing cannot clean everything up. So the meaning of the first rinsing is not for “wash”. Many new tea farmers hear that a lot of people say there are pesticide residues, let’s find out what experts say after authentication.
The deputy director of Fujian Academy of Agricultural Sciences, plant protection experts Wu Guanyuan told the journalist: “Majority of the pesticide are fat-soluble, which will not dissolve in the water. The testing uses the method of organic chemistry to identify the quantity of pesticide residue. When brew tea with water, the dissolved pesticide residue is only 10% – 20% of the organic chemistry testing. So, theoretically, the tea brewed from qualified tea leaves is safe to drink.”
The average amount of tea drink is less than 10 grams in our country. Since most of the pesticide cannot be dissolved in the water, even if there is a few of pesticide residue. The tea has relatively low level of pesticide. Therefore, the pesticide absorbs through tea is within the safety limits, which will not post the health risk to human.
In fact, the first round of water, more accurately to say the “warm bath”, is mainly used to moist tea, which will wet the dry tea, especially the ones are very tight. The steam will moist the tea ball with the heat, enabling both the inside and outside of the tea to expand. Otherwise, the tea leaves inside will need to soak in the water for two or three times. However, by this time, the outside of the tea leaves has already been too old. Like the regret of “You born before I was, I born when you are old”.
From this rationale, you can deduct two contents: one is why tea need to be rinsed, and another how to rinse.
Normally speaking, the ball-shaped or in bulk tea need to be rinsed, such as Tieguanying, Pu-erh, Zhangping narcissus, and others. Oolong and red tea also need to be rinsed. The tender or fragmented tea don’t need it. Otherwise, it will be wasted. Green tea, yellow tea, and black tea don’t need to be rinsed.
Rinsing can be divided into three steps:
First: shake the flavor. Before rinsing, you need to warm the bottle. Gaiwan or teapot need to be warmed. While pouring out the hot water, you need to put the tea leaves in immediately. Cover the lid, and shake, which is called shake the flavor. After shaking, the lid will have the dry flavor of tea left, worth tasting.
Second: rinsing. After shaking the flavor, pour the first round of water, rinsing the tea. There are four key points. Firstly, don’t pour the boiling water on the tea leaves directly. Secondly, the temperature of the water must be high. Thirdly, the speed of pouring water has to be fast. Fourthly, put the lid back fast. In this way, it will minimize the loss of effective substance of the tea, and keep the most of the high-temperature steam.
The third step: shake the flavor again. After rinsing, you can begin the second time of flavor shaking. However, this step can be neglected. However, the rinsing time for the first round of water needs to increase accordingly.
Through proper rinsing, tea is like going through a bath, feeling expanded. And it is ready for brewing. A good tea starts from here.