At the front of the cupboard is an opened packet of hojicha (焙じ茶). Under the clip, a note written some time ago: two teaspoons, water to eight-tenths of the cup, thirty seconds. Keep those three and last week’s cup comes back.
What gets settled first is the strength
The strength. Turn the combination of leaf weight and water volume into your own number and fix it, then move the temperature and the time, one at a time. Do it the other way round and there is no telling where the change landed.
Why strength comes first
The reason to start there is the spread in the table set out earlier in this chapter: the difference between guides falls more heavily on strength than on waiting time. Where in that range to set a baseline is nobody else’s decision, and how the spread in strength bears on flavour has not been measured.
Temperature can be built out of vessels and waiting
Temperature can be built out of vessels and waiting. The ministry PDF quoted earlier says one transfer cools the water by 5–10°C, that boiling water moved into a pot comes to about 90°C, and that moving it on into a teabowl brings it to about 80°C. The guides recommending the 80s are that ladder with time added. Minokamo Chaho writes of pouring into a separate vessel and leaving it about a minute.
At the second infusion, the guides face opposite ways
From the second infusion onwards, the guides face opposite ways. Shortening it: the Shizuoka Prefectural Tea Industry Council at about a third of the first, Nakamura Tokichi Honten pouring without waiting, Fukujuen at two-thirds as a general rule not limited to any one type of tea. Raising it: Minokamo Chaho, against about 80°C for the first infusion, puts the second at around 90°C.
A reason is attached on the shortening side only: the Shizuoka Prefectural Tea Industry Council writes that at the second infusion the leaves have already opened. As for the third, none of the five guides that describe a second one gives a condition.
What has been measured is brewing short and repeating
Look at what has been measured, and the judgement narrows to one. The 1994 report found that brewing short and repeating brings out more in total than one long steep (3 g of leaf in each case; for hojicha and bancha, 100 mL of boiling water, infusions of 0.5 to 4 minutes, three from the same leaf). Brewing a second time beats doubling the wait.
For the same tea, the tea bag is to be steeped longer and hotter. Maruhachi Seichajo’s Kenjō Kaga Bōcha is 25 seconds as loose leaf and 45 as a tea bag; Minokamo Chaho’s is about 80°C as loose leaf and 90°C as a tea bag. No company writes the reason, and no document measuring it could be found. Said, but not measured. What gets measured first is the roasting side (chapter 4). Writing it down is chapter 12’s subject.