spam and tea

Yes, all black teas in my experience involve smaller leaves or parts of leaves. I've tried multiple brewings; what you get for the second cup is usually not bad, but weak. I do have some fannings which I brew the first time under a minute, so it isn't too tannic, and then get a decent second mug brewing the same grounds 10 or 15 minutes, or until I'm ready for a second mug. Two early morning cups of tea of decent strength, not very nuanced. Toci

If you look around you can find Indian or Ceylon grades called Orange Pekoe or OP which is as close to whole leaf you can find. What you are talking about is Broken OP and the finer grades called fines duh. The oxidation of blacks is close to 90% or more so there is not much raw leaf remaining limiting multiple infusions. However a long brew will produced a really strong cup approaching coffee in bitterness which is hard to duplicate in oolongs and green. Whole leaf glogs a gongfu or yixing pot but BOP will find its way out causing an aesthetic problem.

Jim

cha b> It makes me sad when spam infiltrates this web space. My hatred for

No, not all of them. Lots (most?) of Chinese black, or as the Chinse would say, red, teas are whole-leaf.

Maybe you're asking two questions, really, one about whole-leaf black/red teas and one about broken-leaf teas.

Lots of black/red whole-leaf teas do well with multiple steeps, in my experience. Just don't expect this to happen if the first steep is five minutes long!

I think whole-leaf teas are more forgiving with respect to overbrewing, but that doesn't mean broken-leaf teas are off the gongfu table. I've had excellent results with Darjeeling broken teas, including first flushes, but I think you have to be careful with temperature and steep times.

/Lew

I agree with Lew. When black/red teas are brewed in what most would consider the "normal" manner (2-3g of leaf per cup, 3-5 min streep), the second infusion tends to be weaker. Though, it can often be enjoyable, at least with the Chinese teas I usually drink. However, I've had good experience with multiple brews of Keemun when brewed in a small gaiwan or pot using more leaf and shorter steeps. I've seen some teas labeled as Gong Fu tea. I've assumed that they are teas that are suitable for this type of brewing, but it could just be a reference to the tea leaves being processed with great skill.

Blues

The term fines is unique to the USA. The tea world uses the term Dust for the finer grades (those in particle size below Fannings) - see ISO

Nigel at Teacraft

Nearly all black teas are broken leaf because to initiate oxidation requires the chloroplasts in the leaf cells to be "popped" by pressure to release enzyme polyphenoloxidase which catalyses oxidation of green catechins to orange theaflavin (which then polymerizes into brown thearubigen) - to make black tea. Popping chloroplasts requires a lot of pressure - provided by rolling table (Orthodox) or by crushing (CTC). Popping is helped by withering, which weakens cell membranes, thus black teas are withered but green teas are not. The rolling pressure not only pops the chloroplasts but also breaks up the shoot into pieces - which may be graded. Pekoe (P) may have some whole leaf but no tips. Orange Pekoe (OP) is primarily twisted stem, and no tips. Flowery Orange Pekoe (FOP) may have curled leaf pieces and some tip. Take a hand rolled black to see the whole 2L&B (two leaves and a bud) - for example Georgian Old Lady hand rolled tea from

Nigel at Teacraft

You would be better off if you use a dedicated program for Usenet, rather than the web based mirrors.

With real Usenet readers you can quite easily create filters that zaps most of the spam before you even see it.

Lars Stockholm

This is not a web space. This is Usenet. It's not the web at all.

Unfortunately you are viewing Usenet through a web service that is full of spam, and which has some severe spam problems. But don't blame Usenet or the newsgroup for that. Blame google.

No, you can get full-leaf black teas. It's hard to make the oxidize completely, though, without crushing them up.

And yes, you can gongfu black tea, but you have to be very careful about steeping times. And of course it wants to be hot.

--scott

Nigel, thanks yet again for the informative post. Thanks to others too. I now have a new thing to appreciate when I inspect the leaves of whatever black tea I may be drinking (come to think of it, I think I do have a Yunnan Gold tea that was bud heavy and not broken up, and which gave me multiple brews).

Nigel's information is actually relevant to a different question I was thinking about today, which has to do with Japanese green tea. Since I first started drinking tea heavily some time ago, I noticed that all of the Japanese green teas that I have found are broken pieces. I used to think this was due to higher labor costs in Japan, which would possibly require mechanized harvesting. Maybe that is the case, I don't really know, but the new question I have is this: if these green teas are broken leaf from the beginning, then why don't they start to oxidize right away? Surely, a mechanized harvesting process would cause enough bruising of the leaves to start oxidation. Doesn't at least one oolong method of oxidizing and bruising the leaves involve mere fanning of leaves with a bamboo basket? Nigel's post suggests that there is actually a significant amount of time required for oxidation unless really heavy bruising is done. Is that time period short enough to get the broken (and unwithered) green tea leaves to "kill green" (which I would guess stops the oxidation process)?

(and thanks also, Lars, for the suggestion on using a dedicated usenet program; I didn't understand how this worked before, but now I think I get it a bit better)

cha bing

Very useful information Nigel, especially (for me) the specific chemical changes. I didn't know how to visualize this process before, now I do. I wonder offhand if the method of manufacture has a lot to do with what the flavor profile in general of types of red teas looks like...I tend to, for instance, think of Chinese reds which are mostly whole leaf , as being maple-y and Assams etc. as being more "caramel". I know that's a generalization big enough to drive a bus through, but still the differences in red teas between China and pretty much everybody else, is one thing recently of particular interest to me. Darjeeling red tea is in a class by itself I think...

Melinda

Yes, manufacture technique (the way you do it) and process conditions (temperature, oxygen, humidity & time) have a profound and determining effect on flavor and aroma. I gave a seminar at WTE this year "Why is tea made the way it is?" explaining that one can take leaf from any one of the 27 billion tea bushes in the world and make any one of the

Nigel at Teacraft

I agree that maple is often/usually there in Yunnan reds, but I don't recall running into that in Keemuns, whose signature for me is a chocolate flavor. That chocolate note crops up a lot in Fujian reds, too.

One reason why it's so unusual is that it isn't as red (fully oxidized) as others in its nominal class.

/Lew

Nigel: I'm aware that many people overestimate the influence of genotype on the qualities of manufactured teas. (For example, some really good Darjeelings, I hear, are made from Assam clones.) But still, this strikes me as a very bold claim. I wonder if you'd confirm that it's as radical as it appears to me. Are you saying that (your) manufacturing technique trumps even the climate and soil "any" tea bush lived with?

/Lew

Lew, as you say, it is radical, though much of accepted tea knowledge falls into the "emperor's new clothes" category and deserves frequent challenge. First note that I am talking tea character here, not quality. Given the challenge of producing the very best quality Darjeeling First Flush or the very finest Kenya BOP or a superb China Pai Mu Dan I would go to the finest garden in the best district of the appropriate country to gather my leaf - this covers genotype, climatic and edaphic factors, and the application of correct manufacture technique will produce perfection in quality. My claim is that I can, through control over manufacturing technique alone, produce a recognisable (and no doubt commercially acceptable) "Darjeeling" or "Pai Mu Dan" tea character from local leaf in Kenya, or a recognisable "Assam" from local leaf in China . The old 80:20 rule applies, I think. Traditionalists would say that the field determines at least 80% of the character of the tea - I would admit certainly no more than 20%.

Nigel at Teacraft

The old 80:20 rule applies, I think.

I am coming into the thread late so do not know its context but.....

If this were true then, you could mass produce "Darjeeling" at low elevation at Assam all year round at low production cost. Truly alchemy!

I think you may be able to do it on a proof of principle scale i.e with careful, selective leaf picking etc. but really do not think you could really do this on a practical commercial scale. I think the 80:20 rule sounds right. If your 20:80 view were true then it would be trivial to produce "high value" tea from low cost of production areas.

Roland

Roland, when in my admitted arrogance, I claim that I could do this I am talking of processing green tea leaf under the proper range of tightly controlled conditions. Tea manufacture in Assam (or most other tea countries) is a crude agricultural process using machinery with little or no ability to maintain the required conditions and scant regard for their importance. Local character is derived principally from the unique set of local conditions of temperature humidity and technique - my point is that accurately simulating this unique set of conditions in another origin will give the tea character of the original origin. But to simulate requires proper control - which requires the sort of process control one would have in a pharmaceutical factory or perhaps in a margarine factory - certainly not in a typical (even an atypical) tea factory.

Nigel at Teacraft

Nigel: I hope you aren't apologizing, for there are situations where a certain level of arrogance is needed to get anything done.

Having visited a few tea factories, I have an inkling of what you're talking about. Plus, conditions vary, and no two factories are alike. But I wonder if you could answer the following, even with back-of-the-envelope precision:

- By what factor would a factory's total cost of production rise if it instituted, say, margarine-level process control?

- Would the improvement in process control require a dramatic rise in energy use?

- Do you know of tea factories that practice, or even approach, that level (shall we call it one Oleo)?[1]

/Lew

I may have misunderstood your original point

My understanding was that you were saying appropriate processing would trump leaf character as determined by locale. My own view is that say in Assam with heavely rained on washed out leaves you would have a hard time producing a tea with good Assam character let alone Darjeeling character with the best of processing control.

I will fully acknowledge that growing to processing is very rudimentary and can be much improved because most tea is low value, and occurs in historically non technologically cutting edge areas of the world.

As a consumer I am glad you and others are driving innovation to improve quality.

Roland

Lew, I don't know how you will determine if a factory is at one Oleo (Parkay tile floors?), but I know what to say when you see it:

"Nice spread you've got there."

To veer uncharacteristically into relevance, right now I'm drinking a Korean green called sulloc cha, where "sulloc" apparently means sparrow's tongue. That seems to have the same meaning as in Chinese teas in that the tea consists of single buds or very young leaves. The taste is something like a sencha but without the extremity of flavor which I find in most reputable Japanese teas (I use the term "reputable" rather than "good" because I don't usually like that extremity). It resembles what I imagine an unfried long-jin to taste like. Liquor is a pale green.

Rick - writing from Wisconsin, where oleo is taboo.