Gongfu Cha (Tea) Basics

Please keep in mind that Gongfu is a very wide-spread practice and will be adapted to the tastes of the person making the tea. Alternatively said, there are many techniques and many methods for preparing tea. Some people may believe there is an even more basic/traditional/easier/etc way to do gongfu, and the Tea Tavern has no way to prove them nor us wrong or right. As a result, the following is writing based on what the Tea Tavern currently believes. If you have an interest in going down that research rabbit hole, email quests (a) tea-tavern.com, where our quest givers may be able to provide extra resources in hopes of you sharing the information that you learn with us, after finding it. (^-^)

Basic Tea Tavern Gongfu Cha

Tooling

Gongfu Cha uses the following materials, which can be seen in the image above. The items in the image come in the Adventurer's Brewing Kit on tea-tavern.com.
General tea preparation tools, such as a kettle for hot water, are still used, but these items are different than what is often seen in other culture's brewing methods.

Gaiwan

One of the most traditional and useful methods of brewing tea is in a gaiwan (porcelain cup and lid, to the left of the glass cup). It has a rimmed bottom, an outward curved lip, and a lid with it's own rimmed handle. This is the container that tea leaves are brewed.

Gong Dao Bei (Justice cup) / Furnace / Serving cup

When one finishes brewing, the tea from the gaiwan is poured into the justice cup (Glass cup with a lip for pouring on the right). This assures "justice" in that everyone will be given the same strength brew of tea, rather than the first person served receiving the weakest brew, and the last person receiving the strongest brew.

Tea cup / Tasting cup

The tea cup (front three cups) is the cup that receives some of the brewed tea from the jusice cup and is used for drinking the tea. The size is usually smaller than the gaiwan and justice cup, as they will each be given equal amounts of tea from the Justice cup. As a result, everyone drinking tea prepared by gongfu will need a cup.

Review the following 3 images of the Tea Tavern's wild picked White, Green, and Oolong teas. How heavy do you think each is?
  

These are dry leaves, that were processed very differently (See other chapters for an explanation of the different possible forms of processing). The cups are the same, yet the leaves each take up a different volume. So visually, we can't accurately know how much mass we are putting in, unless we already know the particular tea.

Now, what if you were to hold it by hand? 5g is pretty light, so do you think you could distinguish mass between 3g, 5g, and 8g?

QUEST: Get research on how object size alters the perception of mass and a study on how much mass people can distinguish between.

The following are the exact same as their corresponding tea above, but measured on a scale (The white tea didn't fit on the tea plate, so was taken out of and put back into the cup)

   

The scale as a variance of approximately +-.2 grams.

They were all the same amount of tea, but due to their vastly different sizes.
As a result of this difference, the Tea Tavern would rather measure how much tea is used when brewing.