Black tea occupies an important position in Chinese history, which can be traced back to the late Tang Dynasty. According to the Record of Feng News in Zhenyuan period (about 785-804 AD), "A few years ago, Uighurs entered the DPRK and rushed home for tea with the famous horse market". However, the word "black tea" first appeared in the history of China in the third year of Jiajing in the Ming Dynasty (A.D. 1524). "History of Ming Taizu Chen" said that "commercial tea is cheap and fake, and black tea is divided into official and commercial points. Official tea is easy to horse, and commercial tea is bought." (Gansu Tongzhi)
Among the six major teas in China, black tea belongs to post-fermented tea, and the degree of fermentation changes with time, which generally has the characteristic that the older it is, the more fragrant it is. Due to different producing areas and the particularity of processing technology, black tea can be divided into Hunan black tea, Hubei old green tea, Sichuan edge tea and Yunnan-Guangxi black tea. Due to the length, this paper is divided into ten parts. This section mainly talks about the production technology and key points of black tea.
First, black tea technology
The production technology of black tea generally includes four processes: enzyme fixation, rolling, composting fermentation and drying. Black tea pressing mainly uses coarse and old raw materials as processing raw materials.
1, fixed
Deactivating means that fresh leaves are put into a pot or a de-enzyming machine at an appropriate temperature, and the temperature is adjusted to stir-fry or stir-fry according to the tenderness and water content of the fresh leaves, and then they are taken out of the pot (machine) when the de-enzyming is moderate. Its purpose is to inhibit the enzymatic oxidation of tea polyphenols in fresh leaves by destroying and inactivating the oxidase activity in fresh leaves at high temperature, and to evaporate part of water in fresh leaves, so that tea leaves become soft, easy to knead and shape, disperse fresh Julia flavor and promote the formation of good aroma.
Fixing is generally divided into manual fixing and mechanical fixing (roller fixing). Among them, manual wok inactivation can be divided into firewood inactivation and electric control inactivation. Judging from the processing situation of Pu 'er tea, large-scale processing tea factories mostly use drum-type machines to kill enzymes, and a few tea farmers mostly use traditional manual pots to kill enzymes. In addition, terraced tea is mechanically immobilized, while ancient tea and specialty tea are mainly immobilized by hand.
In the primary processing of tea, the process of fixing fresh leaves is more critical. According to experienced tea processing and production masters, we can master the principle of "high temperature first, then low, old leaves are tender and young, throwing and boring are combined, throwing more and boring less".
Step 2 knead
Kneading can be divided into primary kneading and secondary kneading.
First kneading: Usually, the raw materials for making black tea are coarse and old. At the beginning of kneading, we should master the principles of gentle pressure, short time and slow kneading until the tender leaves of dark tea become strips and the old leaves become coarse and wrinkled.
Re-kneading: the re-kneading process is carried out after fermentation, and the medium fermented black tea blank is deblocked and then re-kneaded on the machine. The purpose of re-kneading is to loosen the tea strips after heap fermentation, so it is necessary to re-knead and further modify the tea strips to improve the appearance and tea quality. The intensity of re-kneading is slightly less than that of initial kneading, and the time is shorter than that of initial kneading.
Among them, Pu 'er tea, which is processed from sun-dried green tea, is different from other teas in the process of re-kneading. In the processing of sun-cured green tea, the tender leaves are kneaded for the first time; Old leaves or uneven old leaves should be rubbed twice for the first time. During the processing of Pu 'er cooked tea, it is dried directly without re-kneading after accumulation and fermentation.
Step 3 pile driving
Stacking fermentation is the key process to form the color and aroma of black tea. There should be suitable conditions for the accumulation and fermentation of black tea. After initial kneading, the tea blank should be piled up immediately, and then covered with wet cloth, hemp fiber, etc. Keep warm and moist. In the process of heap fermentation, it is usually necessary to turn over the heap to make the heap fermentation uniform. When water drops appear on the surface of the tea blank, the color of the leaves changes from dark green to yellowish brown, and it has the smell of distiller's grains or hot and sour. When you put your hand into the tea pile, it feels hot, the viscosity of the tea pile becomes smaller, and it will disperse when you touch it, that is, the pile fermentation is moderate. Among them, raw Pu 'er tea is not processed by pile fermentation, and cooked tea needs pile fermentation.
dry
Black tea drying is divided into natural air drying and baking.
Natural air drying: This drying method is more traditional. At present, this traditional craft is still used in black brick, Hunan. After tea leaves are pressed into bags and flattened, put them in a cool and ventilated place to dry.
Manual baking: refers to the drying method in a specific environment (such as temperature) set manually. The tea leaves made by this drying method have obvious characteristics such as deep leaf color and pine smoke fragrance.
As far as tea drying is concerned, most processing tea enterprises often use artificial baking to dry tea. As far as the quality of tea is concerned, it is not recommended to dry tea in this way. Most of the artificially baked and dried tea products do not have the unique quality attributes of black tea.
In the process of making black tea, the process from fresh leaves to coarse tea is called the primary process, and the process from coarse tea to finished tea is called the refining process. The higher the grade coefficient of the primary process, the lower the difficulty coefficient of the refining process. The refining process of many black teas is complicated because most of them are limited by raw materials and primary processing technology, which is congenital deficiency and acquired. However, in recent years, Pu 'er, a famous ancient tree in Shantou, basks in green hairy tea, and the tenderness of fresh leaves is almost comparable to that of famous green tea, which is a special case of black tea.
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