Tea history
From raw brewed to dried to the collection
For the use of tea, it began with the chewing of the fresh leaves of the tea tree and developed into a boiled drink. Raw cook,
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Similar to modern cooking soup. For example, Yunnan Jino people still have the custom of eating “cold teaâ€. Fresh leaves are kneaded and put in bowls. Add a little yellow fruit leaves, garlic, pepper and salt as ingredients. Then add spring water and mix well; The book "Jinshu" remembers "Wu people pick tea and cook porridge". Even in the Tang Dynasty, there was still a habit of eating porridge. At the time of the Three Kingdoms, Wei Chao had already undergone simple processing of tea. The collected leaves were first made into cakes, dried or dried, which was the germ of the tea making process.
From Steaming Greens to Dragon Group Phoenix Cake
The initially processed cake tea still has a strong grassy taste. After repeated practice, it has invented steamed green tea. The fresh leaves of the tea will be steamed and broken into pieces, and the tea will be perforated, dried and passed through to the green atmosphere. However, it is still bitter and astringent, so it is also washed through fresh leaves, steamed green pressed, and made into cakes to make the tea bitter and astringent. Since the Tang and Song Dynasties, tribute tea rose and the tribute tea house was set up. The tea factory was established and officials were organized to study the techniques of making tea, thus contributing to the continuous reform of tea production. In the Tang Dynasty steamed green cake has gradually improved, Lu Yu, "tea. "Make" describes: "Sunny, mining it. Steamed, baked, shot, baked, worn, sealed, tea dried." , solution, tea, mold, pressure, mold, tea drying, perforation, baking, wear, tea. In the Song Dynasty, tea-making techniques developed rapidly. New products continue to emerge. During the Northern Song Dynasty, tea made of flaky dragon and phoenix tea became popular. Song Dynasty "Xuanhe Beiyuan tribute tea record" described "Song Taiping rejuvenated the beginning of the country, special home Longfeng model, sending the Beiyuan build mission tea, do not drink, Longfeng tea cover began." The manufacturing process of the Longfeng Mission Tea is described in the Song Dynasty Zhao Yuli's “Bei Yu Dou Lu†and there are six procedures: steaming tea, pressing tea, researching tea, making tea, over-brewing, and baking tea. After the tea buds are harvested, soak in the water first, select the uniform buds to be steamed, rinse with cold water after steaming, and then squeeze the water to a small size, squeeze the tea juice to a large size, transfer the juice to the water in the basin, and re-enter the dragon mold. Cakes, drying. In the process of Longfeng tea, cold water quickly flushes to keep green and improve the quality of tea, while the practice of water immersion and juicing robs tea of ​​great loss due to its authentic taste, and the entire production process takes time and labor. These have prompted the emergence of steamed green loose tea.
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From group cake tea to loose leaf tea
In the production of steamed green tea, in order to improve the shortcomings of bitterness and inconvenience, we will gradually adopt the practice of steaming without kneading and pressing, and directly dry the steamed green tea to steam green tea to keep the tea. At the same time, there was also a method of appreciation and quality requirements for loose tea. This reform appeared in the Song Dynasty. "Song History. "Food and Beverage" includes: "There are two kinds of tea, tea tablets, tea powder," and tea is cake tea. In the Yuan Dynasty, Wang Shuo wrote "Agricultural Books." Volume ten. In the "Hundred Valley Spectrum," a detailed description of the steamed green tea production process at the time was recorded, "Picking, steaming, steaming, cooking, and cooking. Steamed, thinly spread with baskets, wet and knead, roasted, evenly clothed." Fire, dry, do not make coke." From Song Zhiyuan, cake tea, Longfeng tea and loose tea coexisted at the same time. In the Ming Dynasty, due to Ming Dynasty dynasty Zhu Yuanzhang smashing in 1391, the waste dragon group Xingxing tea. Makes steamed green tea very popular
From Steaming to Chaoqing
Compared to the cake tea and the group tea, the aroma of the tea is better preserved in steamed green tea, however,
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With the steaming method, there is still a disadvantage that the flavor is not sufficiently strong. Therefore, there has emerged a technique of using dry heat to display the good aroma of tea. Fried green tea has been in existence since the Tang Dynasty. Tang Liuxixi, “If Xishan Lan Tests Tea Songs,†puts it in his words: “After the foothills, there are a few bundles of tea, and Sri Lanka must be fried into a room full of incense†and there is a sentence of “From picking to simmering in Russia,†indicating that the leaves have been fried. The system is full of incense, and frying time is not constant. This is the earliest written record of fry green tea found so far. Through the further development of the Tang, Song, and Yuan dynasties, there were more and more roasted green teas. In the Ming Dynasty, the method of making roasted greens became more and more perfect, and they were recorded in details in Tea Record, Tea Shu, and Tea Solution. Its preparation method is generally: high-temperature fixation, rubbing, re-frying, baking to dry, this process is very similar to the modern fried green tea production method, see the appendix of green tea manufacturing process.