The fact is tea has been...
around way longer than coffee. A quick online search will tell you tea goes back some five thousand years, as compared to coffee's paltry five hundred. I'm not here to tell you one is better than the other, I actually appreciate both immensely. What can I say, I'm a beverage head. But in that extended timeframe there have been generations of tea masters who have developed some very interesting and effective brewing techniques. Yet, in this post I'll be focusing on one particular technique called "top and tail" brewing.
I heard of this technique from a fan on a recent Instagram post discussing blooms, and needless to say, I was pretty intrigued. I did some research, and dug into this a bit to see how it was done in tea, and how I could maybe transfer top and tail brewing into my coffee routine. The reality is, it was super easy to implement into brewing pour overs, and even my Clever dripper, and it actually makes a ton of sense in theory. The major hurdle to get over though, is it does require suspending some of those beliefs we in specialty coffee have been holding tightly for quite some time.
So if you're curious about top and tail brewing, how to do it, and how it may change your morning brew hit play on the video above.
September 17, 2021
[…] six months ago when I posted my coffee focused take on a traditional tea brewing technique called top and tail. There were many people in the comment section asking about my take on this no bloom method, and so […]