Long before I began writing here about my struggles with outcomes vs. process, I had a thought in my mind. This is likely sometime in 2017, and it came to me as I was pondering the nature of gong fu tea as a practice.
I call it: “Do, Observe, Correct”. I’ll simply call it “DOC” for brevity’s sake in the rest of this post.
What I love about tea, and why I thought of DOC in the context of making tea as a skill, is it’s a very forgiving type of craft. To illustrate this point, let me start by making a list of some of the things that can go wrong when making tea:
- Poor quality tea
- Poor quality water
- Too much/little tea leaf
- Too much/little water
- Too much/little heat
- Too short/long infusions
- Using the wrong vessel for the tea (eg. trying to make fukamushi sencha in a pot without proper filtration)
Looking at that list, while some items will make for a poor infusion, only a few items are capable of actually ruining a tea session. Let’s separate the list out based on that criteria.
Things that can ruin a tea session:
- Poor quality tea
- Poor quality water
- Using the wrong vessel for the tea
Things that can ruin a tea infusion:
- Too much/little tea leaf
- Too much/little water
- Too much/little heat
- Too short/long infusions
I feel this is an important distinction.
When we arrange the possibilities according to their potential impact on tea, what I see is an opportunity for a little planning to save a lot of pain–buy good tea, use good water, brew with a proper vessel. I love the phrase “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure”, and that’s what’s happening here.
With that out of the way, let’s look at the remaining factors and how DOC plays a role there.
Moving With the Current
The best part about making tea gongfu style is the practice is baked in to the activity. When you’re brewing multiple infusions, sometimes five, six, or more, you get the chance to practice every time.
What this means is: if you don’t like what you just did, change it immediately and see what happens.
Was the last infusion too weak? Ask yourself: am I using enough leaf or hot enough water? Did I brew long enough? Adjust the parameters and see what happens.
This is the essence of DOC. Under this philosophy, there is no right and wrong. If you get an unexpected or undesirable result, make a change and proceed accordingly. Either way, you’re learning something through experience.
Tea Is An Affordable Luxury
In most cases, tea is very affordable. Setting aside the exceptions such as aged, rare, or super-premium quality teas, your average tea session is going to cost you maybe a few bucks tops, depending on how heavy you like to load your leaf. Personally, I tend to brew three to four grams for a solo sessions, and I’d say my average tea clocks in somewhere around $0.30-0.50 per gram (matcha being a large exception).
That’s great news for tea drinkers! Making mistakes costs us very little–even if we skunk a whole session, which is rare. As long as I’ve got my basics covered as mentioned previously, I can feel free to be adventurous with my tea.
Don’t be afraid to try something new with your tea. Pour boiling water on your green tea and flash steep it gong fu style. Take your favorite oolong and see what happens when you cold brew it, or maybe have it grandpa style. See something funky like melting ice over Japanese green tea on Instagram? Give it a go.
If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. That’s the essence of “Do, Observe, Correct”.
Good luck, and happy drinking.
(Featured Photo by Green Chameleon on Unsplash)
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