How was ancient tea made?

Tea farmers said that barefoot stepping on tea leaves is a traditional tea-making process, also called "stepping on green", which is mainly used to make green tea and yellow tea.

The process flow is usually divided into the following steps:

Picking: Picking young leaves at appropriate time and weather conditions.

Deactivating: Put the picked tea leaves into a pot, and quickly kill the enzymes in the tea leaves with high temperature to stop their oxidation.

Kneading: Kneading the tea leaves after enzyme fixation, so that the tea leaves are rope-shaped, the cells are broken, and the cell juice in the tea leaves is evenly distributed.

Step on the green: put the twisted tea leaves on the flat ground, step on them with clean feet and crush the tea leaves into pieces.

Drying: put the green tea into the dryer for drying to remove excess water.

The internal reason of this traditional technology is that green pressing can effectively crush tea leaves, make the cell juice in them flow out fully, promote chemical reaction and enhance the aroma and taste of tea leaves.

In addition, stepping on the green leaves can keep the tea leaves moist, which is beneficial to the fermentation and oxidation of tea leaves.

However, because tea leaves need to be trampled barefoot, there may be health and safety hazards, so most modern tea-making processes adopt mechanical rolling instead of stepping on green.

Actually, you don't have to worry too much. Handmade tea technology is complex, and the labor cost and material cost are relatively high, so the price is not low. If you are not a tea lover with a fever level, you can't drink it, and don't worry, hahaha.