Is the production process of Wuyi rock tea the most complicated in tea?

The making process of rock tea:

1. Picking: The picked tea leaves should be even, and the picking standards of different varieties will be slightly different. But generally speaking, if the fresh leaves are tender, the produced tea leaves are heavier in moisture and easy to produce bitter water. If it is old, the taste of tea may not be so full. Tea is slightly thin, but it tastes mellow. Tea-picking green not only determines the taste of internal substances, but also determines the appearance. Similarly, the finished tea made of young leaves is small and the old leaves are thick.

2. Sunlight: It is called sunlight withering in textbooks. Using sunlight to make tea lose some moisture and soften, promote the change of polyphenols and the formation of aroma. If there is no sunshine, the machine can only wither in the basket for longer than the sunshine. Therefore, the green tea depends on the weather.

3. Shake green: At present, tea is mostly made by machine shaking green, but artificial shaking green still exists. Shake green is mainly to make tea collide, and the edges of tea are damaged by mutual friction, which makes it ferment to form "green leaves and red edges", and the aroma of tea is gradually emitted during shake green. It's easy to say. In fact, shaking green is a test of the skill of being a green master. The key to a good green is to shake the green. If you use hand-cranked green, you should pay attention to the strength of shaking green, the control of running water and the room temperature.

4. Deactivating: also known as frying, it destroys the activity of enzymes in tea at high temperature, stops fermentation, stabilizes the quality of green, and softens the tea for further kneading. Now it is usually fixed in the machine. Fixation is first turned in the pot by hand. The semi-mechanical bucket is used now, and firewood or liquefied gas needs to be burned at the back.

5. Kneading: Kneading is easy to understand, that is, kneading tea leaves into strips on a kneading machine. If the green tea leaves are over-picked, the tea strips are prone to loose state and tea fragments in the process of kneading, and if the green tea is improperly fried, it will also cause the problem of being squeezed into pieces.

6. Drying: The dryers are basically used, and it takes several fires to dry.

The above is the whole process of making green tea. At present, it is still in the stage of rough tea, which is a semi-finished product and needs refining to make tea. Every link is very important, and any link that is not in place will affect the quality. There is a saying in Wuyishan that "the sky is grey and the ground is grey". In addition to the weather, tea makers should always grasp the changes in the process of making green and respond at any time. These are experienced technologies. Making raw tea well is to lay the foundation for the next refining.

After the tea leaves are finished, they are refined: selecting tea stems and yellow slices (old leaves can't be kneaded into strips, and when they are dried, they become dead leaves, but they can also be drunk, but they are fragrant and tasteless), winnowing them to achieve the purity of tea leaves, then roasting them in water (removing surface moisture), leaving them for a few days, and then finely roasting them, and finally obtaining the finished tea. From green to refining, the whole production cycle is very long and it is a step-by-step process.

After watching the making process of rock tea, I believe you have a general understanding of each step of the process. Now, let's get down to business. Rock tea is semi-fermented oolong tea. It is complicated because it is difficult to ferment. How to ferment "semi-fermented" tea in situ? It will be too green if it is not in place, and it will turn into black tea if it is fermented too much.

The second difficulty is how to keep warm when refining. Both light roasting and heavy roasting have effects on the taste of tea. If it is baked too heavily, I'm afraid the aroma will be lost and the soup will become tasteless and empty. Simply put, whether to make green tea or bake tea in the end depends on the experience of the tea maker. Of course, making tea is not an inscrutable thing, and we don't have to be too mysterious. Everything is based on experience. If you are a rock tea lover and want to know about it, personally, it is best to start with the craft. You understand the influence of each process on the tea party, and it is easy to judge its advantages and disadvantages when drinking tea.