Competition Brewing
Tanım
Standardized tea evaluation method used by professional tasters and competition judges. Uses a fixed ratio (3g leaf to 150ml water at 100 C for 5 minutes) and white porcelain cupping sets to evaluate tea on a level playing field regardless of type.
Ayrıntılar
Competition brewing (also called professional cupping or ISO 3103 method) strips away all the variables that personal brewing introduces — vessel material, water temperature preference, steep time preference — to create a standardized evaluation environment. The international standard uses 3 grams of tea in a 150ml lidded white porcelain cup, steeped for 5 minutes in freshly boiled water, then strained into a matching bowl. This deliberately harsh extraction reveals the tea's strengths and flaws equally: a tea that tastes pleasant under competition brewing will be excellent under careful personal brewing, while a tea that tastes harsh under competition brewing may be mediocre even with gentle treatment. Professional tasters evaluate five attributes: dry leaf appearance, wet leaf appearance, liquor color, aroma (from the lid and the liquor), and taste (including body, astringency, sweetness, and aftertaste). In Taiwanese oolong competitions, the specific cupping parameters may differ (higher leaf ratio, shorter steep), but the principle of standardization remains. The white porcelain is essential because it provides a neutral, consistent background for evaluating liquor color — from the pale green of a white tea to the deep mahogany of a strong Assam.