Looks are deceiving

Mike was looking for a specific tea with a range of oxidation. I suggested Darjeeling and TKY. It triggered another question in my mind. Many of my Chinese green teas have the expected dried and wet green look. Id say just as many have dont look green at all dried but do wet. A black and white BiLuoChun comes to mind. Im looking at Tianmu Yunding and Id say it is a black tea with lots of white tip. The black and white look seems to be the majority of the other off hand green look. I use black here but I could have well have used red like the dried look of Keemun. Over the long haul I learned to judged the difference between green,oolong,black by the color of the spent leaf. I leave out Yellow and White too not complicate the discussion. The traditional black/white Oriental Beauty shows dull red spent leaf meaning oolong verus the bright red of a Hong like Keemun. So basically for Chinese green teas at least you cant tell a tea by the dried color. The only way to be absolutely sure is look it up in a good reference book or my method of looking at the spent leaf. I think Indian green,oolong,black teas are more straight forward where there is a tipping point in the oxidation levels visible in dried leaf color which doesnt seem to apply to Chinese.

Jim

Reply to
netstuff
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You can tell a lot from the color the tea produces when brewed as to how long it was cooked or oxidized. Usually the darker it is, the longer it was fired. The "qing xiang" (lightly cooked) vs. "nong xiang" (heavily cooked) doesn't only refer to flavor; color of the tea as well.

Reply to
Mydnight

The Chinese use infused tea color as one way of determining white,yellow,green,blue,red,black. It is a little more accurate than dried leaf but it isnt foolproof. This book I own shows dried,wet,infusion for every tea listed.

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Every infused blue(qinq) looks green,red. There is no difference between yellow and some green. As I said the tipping point isnt apparent. You look up the classification in a book like this. Ive been able to identify some unknown Chinese teas using the three criteria.

Jim

Reply to
netstuff

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