First time starting a post with a video. Nothing fancy here, just a 1 minute video of me pouring tea. The purpose of the video is to demonstrate what I am about to talk about in the post - pouring away a little bit of liquor before pouring into the teacup. By the way, I tried to make the video as short as possible so some steps are omitted here, like warming the cup, pouring hot water over the teapot, etc. There are enough video on YouTube to show you all those.
The key point here is I pour away a bit of the liquor before pouring into the cup. Note that I didn't pour into a pitcher first. In traditional gongfu tea, we DON'T use a pitcher. Okay, some people do now. But it's really unnecessary (my personal opinion). In gongfu tea, it is very important to keep the tea hot throughout the process. So pouring too many times will cool down the tea and also let too much aroma "evaporate". Sorry I am getting off topic. I wanted to say this for so long I can't help it.
Let me explain why we don't pour straight into the teacup with the following sketch. Please excuse my handicapped drawing skill and my chicken scratch.
The water in the pouring mouth of the teapot is not in contact with any tea leaves. So the water (I purposely avoided the word liquor here) in the pouring mouth is tasteless. Having this water in the teacup only dilutes the real liquor that follows. So please pour away..................a bit.
Edit: Pleast note all of the above does not apply when using a gaiwan.
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