Let's forget Puerh for a moment. (Just for a moment!) Are you saying that, in typical processing of *black* tea, there isn't enough time (and heat, too, I suppose) for mere oxidation to account for the end result?
/Lew
Well I thought that post came easily from the fingertips. Yeast is a fungus which is the only reason I've ever bought in the Puerh 'mold' theory. You destroyed my college biology world view no enzyme no organism.
Jim
What? Forget pu-erh? And I ginally tried my first tuo-cha. Pretty crude, but whaddaya want for under two bucks. And definitely better than the $2.79 canned loose leaf. I've got to get a sample of the high-end stuff someplace soon; always room for a new obscure addiction.
On the science point, yes. A fact that few people realize (unless they spent a few years working with organometallic compounds or the like) is that oxygen permeated anything not fully sealed in glass or metal. Even the half-inch perspex face of a glove box (non-techies will know them from movies) "leaks" O2 by diffusion at such a rate that for air-free work, a special continuous oxygen/moisture sorption system has to be built in.
Anything in a plastic bottle is saturated with oxygen at ambient conditions, though it may not replenish quickly when consumed by vitamin C or whatever. But anything like a leaf is in full equilibrium with the atmosphere once it's dead. The CTC procedure, AFAIK, is much less about exposing cell contents to air than about letting cellular consituents normally kept separate to mix - as in the garlic example. Try it at home - you can slow-dry an average plant leaf into a nice green souvenir. Crush, tear and curl, and it'll probably go brown first.
If someone has better info, I'd like to hear it.
-DM
Unfortunately the biochemisty of tea is mainly available in online retrieval services$. Occasionally you'll see a webpage 'In the manufacture of black tea, the monomeric flavan-3-ols undergo polyphenol oxidase-dependent oxidative polymerization leading to the formation of bisflavanols, thea-flavins, thearubigins, and other oligomers in a process commonly known as "oxidation."' Over the years I'll noticed similarities between tobacco leaf processing and tea ignoring any chemical additives by the companies. I'm surprised somebody hasn't taken tea leaf and created a version of tobacco chew. I've seen clumpy Pu-erh which looks the same as a wad.
Jim
Space snipped-for-privacy@posting.google.com1/29/04
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and I've tasted clumpy pu-erh that might just as well've been a wad. Not to open up the cooked-uncooked discussion again.
I've had great luck aging good tobacco in sealed containers but have been told that my puerh won't age properly that way.
Any idea why the difference?
--Tom
-oo- ""\o~
------------------------------------ "Homo sum, humani nil a me alienum puto." Terrance
It seems to me the process for making chewing tobacco would be reversed to the point of substituting tea leaves for tobacco. I think the end result would be an American equivalent of Puerh probably not for chewing but certainly a very tasty cup of tea. I'd guess there are DIY tobacco kits similar to Wine and Beer. When I was growing up my grandparents would roll their own from a tobacco tin and only by smell did it look different than the Lipton OP leaf in the tea tin. I hated the goodbye kiss with a cheek full of tobacco spit.
Jim
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