Green Tea Processing (Page 1 of 2)

I have seen people wipe the bottom of the pan with a rag or cotton glove in between batches of tea. Perhaps its the oil that comes out as pressure is applied to the buds and the moisture content dries off. I don't want to believe they add oil to the pan, but I will certainly ask.

That's a good question too. Do you think I will get an honest answer? I should think about this question more often myself. Hopefully, my tea making friend will be buying leaf from at least one garden which claims to be organic.

chl42's question is my question too. Ask it anyway! :D

Or, you may manage to ask it in a subtle way. I remember reading about it somewhere that many teas have their spring harvests the cleanest (clean of pesticide) because there aren't many bugs yet before spring harvest. I don't know if it's true or not. But maybe you can ask them, is pesticide used less often before spring harvest than other times of the year? Well I know this sounds tricky :P

Another question I have is, I heard the manufacturers usually store new long jing in a container with lime and after a month, the long jing reaches the good state for sale. Do they really do it nowadays? If yes, how many manufacturer do this 1-month storage thing, state-owned factories, private factories or all of them? Or maybe they use more modern method but similar effects?

Then a question not directly related to tea processing, but please ask if you can :D I am interested in learning what the long jing experts think about the relatively new red/black tea long jing (long jing huang pao, 龙井皇袍). I somewhat wonder if some  professionals don't like the idea, or most of them like it.

Thanks and enjoy! Waiting to see video clips and photos! :D
-Gingko

I don't know about green tea, but with hand-roasted oolongs, the wok is wiped between batches because there are natural oil/juice residue from the processing that coats the wok/pan, as well as some bits and dust that are left over. I'd imagine the same for green tea, but I'm sure you'll know for sure in a week or two. 

I'm very interested in how the processors fire & shape the leaves; please take video or provide an account of your experiences!  Even better if you can actually do it and see what it feels like, but take care not to burn your hands.

Watched it. Very lovely! Thanks! :D
Traditionally the tea people (especially those who directly handling the tea leaves) were mostly from An Hui. Almost all the best old tea stores in Beijing were established by people from An Hui too.
So did you put your hands on the wok too? :D

In general the vegetable oil we use for cooking is in liquid state at room temperature, however, I think this has a lot to do with processing. I am not really qualified to comment on vegetable oil processing, so I will leave it at that.

I did think of lard when I saw the white flakes. I don't think it was, though. The texture was not the same. I was watching my friend clean out a tea frying pan when I asked her about the white flakes. As no one else was around, and I don't buy any of her green tea ever, I don't think she would have lied to me.

I would hope that if people used lard for tea, they would find some pure stuff. Maybe I will make a lard batch some time and send you some.

I still haven't tried making tea myself this year. I tried last year, but just for a couple of minutes, not long enough to complete a batch. Hopefully I will this weekend.

I've never had the long jing huang pao, but I guess the description is very accurate. Some people joked that it's making long jing into puerh :D

It's a recent technique (claimed to be redemption of some traditional technique) and the product is exclusively made by a large company (probably the company even patented the production procedure), so some freelance tea  workers (as well as many tea drinkers) may have not heard of it or paid much attention to it.

I think I am going to call that myth. The top grades do have a nutty taste, however is is extremely different from the bad ones. I would not be surprised if they added sunflower or pine-nut oil to some of the bottom grades.

Interesting. My answer was more of a guess than anything. I was wondering if this tea oil is just a by product of the tea making that is saved or if it is produced in bulk as it own product. I know some tea oil is made from some low quality leaves and stems.

Just read it from a Chinese forum that the oil is extracted from seeds of Chinese tallow (乌桕），specifically for pan frying tea. Good it know it's from a natural source :D

Also, it should be mentioned that tea oil (Camellia oil) is not actually from the tea plant, but from another plant in the same family.

This article of Fuchsia Dunlop's is very interesting (you may get locked out after viewing it once):
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/fb18611a-e9c9 … ab49a.html