As many of you are surely familiar with gong fu cha ceremony and its way of maximizing both health and taste of tea. However, there is no RIGHT way of choosing the right amounts and times without a bit of experimentation.
For example: tea guardian show very useful chart (but for my taste and my lower grades of tea it is unusable, teas become too bitter).
Another good ruleset is the one offered by Daniel Lui. This is the style I prefer. Much more decent teas, but for some a bit too tame and without the "noble bitterness."
So what is my take on it? I devised this method.
A) Take any tea you like (seriously, don't worship the idea that only pu-erhs and oolongs are suitable for gong fu, even the low grade greens can be interesting experiment).
B) Practice gong fu cha. Make a note of times and amounts in gram. Experiment, be wild and random.
C) When the taste of tea is too bland, make a note after how many total seconds it happened. For example let's say you made this pattern: 10 s - 20 s - 20 s - 30 s - 40 s. That is total of 120 seconds or 2 minutes. That means that this is the borderline amount of time you can "invest" in tea.
D) So now you know that (if you used for example 5 grams of tea) for one gram of the selected tea, there is 24 seconds of potential, you can "invest" in tea (120 seconds / 5 grams).
E) This potential divide by amount of preparations (for example 5 preparations) can be then again divided. 120 s / 5 servings = 24 seconds each per 5 grams.
