A Dan Cong at six temperatures
30 August 2026 · 2 min read
Dan Cong oolongs have a reputation for punishing careless brewing, and this one, a honey-orchid fragrance type from a 50 gram bag, had been alternating between glorious and acrid for a month. So I did the dull thing: six identical sessions on six evenings, 5 g of leaf in the 120 ml gaiwan, a 5 second rinse, then a single 20 second steep, changing only the water temperature in 4 degree steps from 80 °C to boiling.
At 80 °C the liquor was pale gold and the cup smelled of orchid and ripe peach, but the taste was thin, almost like scented water, with no body and no finish. At 84 °C the body arrived: the honey came through in the mouth and there was a sweetness at the back of the throat that lasted a minute. At 88 °C it was better again, fuller, with a mineral edge under the fruit, and this is where I would have stopped if I had been drinking for pleasure.
At 92 °C the first bitterness appeared, a dry grip on the sides of the tongue that arrived about ten seconds after swallowing. The aroma was still strong but had shifted from fruit to something more roasted. At 96 °C the bitterness was obvious and the orchid was mostly gone, replaced by a toasted, almost charcoal note. At boiling the cup was brown rather than gold, astringent enough to make my teeth feel dry, and the fragrance had collapsed to a generic roasted-tea smell. Twenty seconds was clearly far too long at this temperature; the leaf might do well at boiling with a 5 second steep, but that is a different experiment.
So the window for this leaf, at this ratio and this time, is roughly 84 to 90 °C. My kettle setting of 90 had been fine; the acrid sessions must have come from letting the gaiwan sit while I did something else, which at 90 °C costs you the cup in about fifteen extra seconds.
Later steeps, for the record, at 88 °C: second steep 25 seconds, more honey and less orchid; third at 35 seconds, the mineral note dominant, still sweet; fourth at 50 seconds, fading but clean; fifth at 90 seconds, the last worth drinking. Five good steeps from 5 g, which is what a tea at this level should give.