Book Review: Learning by Brewing

Learning by Brewing is an apt title for this book, for that is what Jens Dennig wants us to do. He wants us to try teas and decide for ourselves what we like. Of course, he has pages of suggestions. This book is a veritable encyclopedia of tea, although, as Dennig warns us, it reflects only his own experiences with tea. Much is left out. In the Preface, he says, “In retrospect, the most regrettable thing for me is the fact I drank inferior tea for too long and sometimes skimped in the wrong place. In other words, parsimony is not the best thing when it comes to tea, but thriftiness combined with knowledge can’t hurt.”

Dennig focuses on tea from Asia, particularly China. He describes approximately 100 teas from China in approximately 170 pages. Japan gets 27 pages, and the rest of Asia (including the Indian subcontinent) gets 23 pages. The rest of the world, including Africa, Australia, New Zealand, and Columbia, get about nine pages. He fully acknowledges his prejudice towards tea from China.

This may not be a book you want to read cover to cover, but rather you may want to dip into sections of interest. But I encourage you to read as much as you can. Dennig has a wry sense of humour and his personal comments about various aspects of the tea industry caused many a chuckle to this reader. He has extensive end marks (what I would call end notes), although I read most of them after reading the book. Flipping back and forth from the text to the end marks was too tedious. When I read through the end marks, however, I found myself looking back to the text itself to see the context for the end mark. For example, end mark 26 says, “I am, and always will stay a vegetarian, but I have a dark past.” But most of the end marks add interesting bits of information about the teas.

There is a detailed Table of Contents. However, this is a book you will want to return to, over and over again, and I would have liked an index as well, so that I could look topics up alphabetically.

An interesting aspect of this book is Dennig’s use of Asian characters so that if you were fluent in the language, you could look for the tea by that name. He provides English versions as well, of course.

Overall, this book is for those who desire to become “teaheads,” explore tea with passion and diligence and become knowledgeable amateurs in the world of tea.