Tea liquor color and how to know its artificial?

SN, agree with your observation. Very yellow indeed.

I don't know any way to tell if colour has been added.

I also don't see why they need to add colour. For longjing tea, the best quality tends to be pale yellow. There is no incentive to make it more yellow.

To be honest it looks quite low grade, with tea leaves rather than tea shoots.

I have got some pictures on a longjing tea for you to compare note.

Sorry, not very much help. I hope this is useful.

Julian

Well I can't answer your question, but I have a distantly related one myself. I was brewing some longjing at work and after maybe the fourth or fifth brew I forgot about it in my yixing-style cup and went home for the day. The color while I was drinking it was normal.

Yet when I came in the next morning, the tea was a dark brown color with an oily sheen on the surface. It didn't smell strong or have a particular strong flavor (I hesitantly tried a small sip before throwing it out). I was trying to remember if I had brewed something else that I didn't remember, but I am almost positive it was a fourth or fifth brewing of the longjing I had brewed the day before. I can't imagine that my few-month old yixing style cup was "seasoned" enough to change the color that severely.

Has anyone had brewed tea dramatically change color before?

cha bing

here's a green kuding the right cup is after about 3-4 hours sitting around

That, my friend, is oxidation. (Well, the brownness anyway, not the oil slick.) It's the same process that causes food (especially things like avocados) to turn brown when left exposed to the air. Sencha does this very rapidly-- sometimes in just a few hours it will go from a brilliant green to an entirely unappealing brown.

-Brent

thx,

it could very well be low grade, it was the cheapest LJ from this company

3$/oz, i have the more expensive one too a small amount, but didnt brew it yet

so ill be looking for nice shoots next time :)

In my experience over the years I have found Long Jing (Dragonwell) to be the #1 most altered, artificial, fake, and just about anything else you can imagine. It doesn't even matter about the cost, unless you know and trust the source directly I always say to stay away from it.

Sometimes the oil is due to the roasting process, but more often it is additives, preservatives, colorings, etc. to keep it looking bright green and fresh. It is a big tourist/export tea and there is just a glut of it (99% substandard) to sell to the masses. It's just like when you go to Jamaica for Blue Mountain coffee, every little cart, vendor, shop, and kid amazingly sells "genuine" Blue Mountain.

I've even been taken before when I thought for sure I had bought some decent Dragonwell from Ten Ren. It cost a ton, smelled good, was supposedly from that season, and in the end it was junk. In fact if you search the archives I posted a few times about it asking about the oil slick. It happens.

- Dominic

it,

That looks like a relatively abnormal flavor for "green tea". It should come out a clear green color. How much leaf did you use to brew?

There are often tea shows that come to Shenzhen or Guangzhou that I attend. Some of the stalls have large amounts of various teas for sale in big tins and you can walk over and touch the teas. If you ever get the chance with longjing, put your hand flat down on the leaves and then see if any of the leaves stick to your hand. The most oily tea that I have ever seen has been Longjing.

I came across some pretty terribly adulterated Qie She this spring too. The tea professor's daughter tried to peddle it to me without opening the box...boy was she surprised to see how oily the tea was.

Sorry to hear about your misfortune. Ten Ren sucks.

Just to clarify - oily almost always means adulterated?

Alex (drinking some wonderful and presumably unadulterated Oriental Beauty)

Yes, this is just the result of oxidation.

--scott