There are a number of parameters you can adjust to get the most out of a tea. The timing of the infusions. Water temperature. Amount of tea. Teas have various qualities like intensity or duration of experience. Also, the quality of the tea varies over multiple infusions. The second infusion is sometimes the sweetest, or brews instantly. Some third infusions flower over a long sustained brewing. Others become undrinkable. Or give up completely. How you brew the first infusion affects the quality of the subsequent infusions.
And as grow older, you become aware of the scarcity or abundance of good tea. Some years are better than others. Often you can tell by the sweetness of the Spring harvest.
Just finished a slog through a 200g bag of old bulk sencha. Let me put it this way, I've never found a sencha in a 200g bag that wasn't like taking one for the team. Decent tea is still cheaper than coffee, but these are thrifty times. [brief daydream about a tea for music payment system]
Anyway, it was with trembling fingers I opened a shincha fukamushi this morning. I stuck my nose in the bag, inhaled deeply and nearly passed out. Tears welled in my eyes. I resisted an urge to burst out the front door, shove the newly unsealed bag into the face of the first person I met on the street and scream, "MY GOD, SMELL THIS!" It has been at least two or three years since I've had a tea like this in my hands. It wasn't expensive, it was just good. When I find an exceptional tea, I usually quickly buy some more because the good ones tend to disappear.
Knowing I've acquired the brewing rhythm for a geriatric sencha on life support, I gave great care to the first infusion, but struggled to remember how fukamushis behave. Fukamushis are temperamental teas to brew. They can go form nothing to overpowering within a small gradient of brewing parameters. Imagine two very different kinds of tea on one bag, With a fukamushi, you have broad and particulate leaf that brew at different rates. Because of the particulate, Fukamushis brew to an cloudy emerald green and are best admired in a white cup. Anyhow, I was very keen not to screw up any of the infusions.
First attempts sometimes fail. Tea, music, art, isn't for the easily discouraged. You have to know what you can salvage and when it is time to try again. An awareness of your mistakes is only useful when accompanied by persistence.
Despite screwing up my first attempt, I can taste the potential. The benefit of experience provides this insight. I look forward to tomorrow.
