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Oxidation makes tea black

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Re: Oxidation makes tea black

#41

Post by hinkley »

almog wrote: post #40
hinkley wrote: post #23

I stumbled into a presentation on tea at a tea festival a number of years ago. I keep meaning to figure out which notebook my notes are in and make copies because it was so good. The presenter was this elderly British gent with a background in operations who got sent out to figure out how to boost tea output. There were a bunch of charts about time and temperature and humidity for various types of tea but the biggest…

That's a very good description of the enzymatic process in tea. Regarding "oldest process" though, I'm not sure which is the earliest processing method for tea but compressed tea / tea bricks as Pu-erh (although compressed tea ≠ Pu-erh) is attributed to Tang dynasty (AD 618-907) and it precedes Matcha which is attributed to the Song dynasty period (960–1279).

The problem with summarizing complex things for people is that you leave out the bits that you don't think will stick, and even what is left over becomes a game of telephone.

At the time, puehr was about to have a little resurgence but was pretty obscure in the west. I'm not sure which of us redacted that from the brief timeline.

I like a little puehr once in a while. It tastes like leaf mould smells, which is probably not far off from reality.

Edit: some imported tea is still delivered in compressed bricks, green, black and oolong. Among those are teas that are treated like scotch. and I have seen but not tasted a 25 year old tea brick (which I think she kept in part for bragging rights. IIRC it was not for sale.) I already have a Scotch habit, I don't need to be buying 18 year old tea on top of it, so as curious as I was I made no attempts to get involved in any private tea tastings.

Re: Oxidation makes tea black

#42

Post by timonoko »

I was sort of suffering from colored tooths (teeth?) problem. Meaning every time I took selfie I suffered about 5 seconds. The bloody dentist suggested monthly visits to the bloody dental hygienists.

Strange thing happened: I was flying my kite for kite aerial photography and a chinese ((or taiwanese) or japanese) tourist noted my blackened teeth an told that green tea does not color. And it worked ok. Even the cheapest Lidl tea works ok. I bit of acquired taste, but you will learn to love it.

Re: Oxidation makes tea black

#43

Post by hbarka »

feanaro wrote: post #37
hbarka wrote: post #27

The other dark tea, the fermented tea they mention in this article aka hei cha or commonly referred to as pu’er, scares me because there are bad quality versions of it containing mold due to their fermentation process. Hard to detect since it’s also a kind of black tea.

It's not a black tea, at least in the western sense. Our black tea is actually called hong cha in Chinese, which means red tea. They're simply different types of tea. There are also two different style pf pu'ers which have little to do with each other. The style you're talking about is shu pu'er , which is deliberately piled and made wet in order to trigger a sped up fermentation process. This is opposed to sheng pu'…

Thank you, that’s informative.

Re: Oxidation makes tea black

#44

Post by almog »

hinkley wrote: post #41
almog wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a very good description of the enzymatic process in tea. Regarding "oldest process" though, I'm not sure which is the earliest processing method for tea but compressed tea / tea bricks as Pu-erh (although compressed tea ≠ Pu-erh) is attributed to Tang dynasty (AD 618-907) and it precedes Matcha which is attributed to the Song dynasty period (960–1279).

The problem with summarizing complex things for people is that you leave out the bits that you don't think will stick, and even what is left over becomes a game of telephone. At the time, puehr was about to have a little resurgence but was pretty obscure in the west. I'm not sure which of us redacted that from the brief timeline. I like a little puehr once in a while. It tastes like leaf mould smells, which is probab…

Agreed. AFAIK it was created as a method to transport tea efficiently all across the Tang empire (and as a mean to keep the peace within it) while not crushing the leaves. I have no idea about what kind of tea made it to the west back then. Even today most western people aren't aware of the variety of teas there are out there or how wildly different the final product is depending on the processing methods, let alone bush cultivar, age, flush stage, altitude etc.

Pu-erh really can be weird, Hei-Cha even weirder I think. It took my quite a while to like pu-erh and if it wasn't for its aesthetics I'm not sure I'd have bothered to try that much. For my palate, Shou pu-erh teas were an easier taste to acquire. It took me a lot of trial and error to get my palate around Shengs but now I like it well enough to get the same kind of craving I get for a good coffee.

Re: Oxidation makes tea black

#45

Post by blacksmith_tb »

This is a pretty thorough intro to (mostly) Chinese tea, which seems fair to me since tea originated in China. Though I can see a few details to quibble over (e.g., some Taiwanese oolongs are barely oxidized, ~5% for Baozhongs sometimes[1]). Personally as much as I like white, green, and black teas, I think oolongs have the most variation, since they can have a mix of the characteristics of the other types. But I drink plenty of them all.

1: https://teadb.org/baozhong/

Re: Oxidation makes tea black

#46

Post by dijondreams »

andjd wrote: post #39
aradox66 wrote: post #3

The website is new, but this business also runs one of my favorite brick and mortar tea shops! It's in the Oakland hills. They pile up the steaming leaves from every cup they brew and the shop fills with the earthy caramel aroma of good tea.

May just be the prices on their website, but they strike me as being quite expensive. They also use anglicized names with very little information about the tea, so it's hard to know what you're buying.

yeah it's definitely expensive but that's mainly because they go to China every year to each farm to find the best teas. they will go into depth on each and every one if you inquire

Re: Oxidation makes tea black

#48

Post by mgkimsal »

timonoko wrote: post #42

I was sort of suffering from colored tooths (teeth?) problem. Meaning every time I took selfie I suffered about 5 seconds. The bloody dentist suggested monthly visits to the bloody dental hygienists. Strange thing happened: I was flying my kite for kite aerial photography and a chinese ((or taiwanese) or japanese) tourist noted my blackened teeth an told that green tea does not color. And it worked ok. Even the cheap…

pfft.... what do the Chinese know about tea? ;)

Re: Oxidation makes tea black

#49

Post by timonoko »

mgkimsal wrote: post #48
timonoko wrote: post #42

I was sort of suffering from colored tooths (teeth?) problem. Meaning every time I took selfie I suffered about 5 seconds. The bloody dentist suggested monthly visits to the bloody dental hygienists. Strange thing happened: I was flying my kite for kite aerial photography and a chinese ((or taiwanese) or japanese) tourist noted my blackened teeth an told that green tea does not color. And it worked ok. Even the cheap…

pfft.... what do the Chinese know about tea? ;)

Shudup son. There is a very special connection between China Tea and Finland: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hlMYrblsZp4

I have tasted genuine Silver Needles but was not impressed.

Re: Oxidation makes tea black

#50

Post by odiroot »

timonoko wrote: post #42

I was sort of suffering from colored tooths (teeth?) problem. Meaning every time I took selfie I suffered about 5 seconds. The bloody dentist suggested monthly visits to the bloody dental hygienists. Strange thing happened: I was flying my kite for kite aerial photography and a chinese ((or taiwanese) or japanese) tourist noted my blackened teeth an told that green tea does not color. And it worked ok. Even the cheap…

> I was flying my kite for kite aerial photography and a chinese ((or taiwanese) or japanese) tourist noted my blackened teeth an told that green tea does not color. And it worked ok.

I think black (red) tea is very much worth it. I just couldn't do without at least a single cup a day. I do brush my teeth afterwards though.

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