13/07/2024
Pu'Erh Tea: What Actually Is It? (Part II/V)
------------------------------------------
☛ Raw and Ripe Pu-Erh Tea: the Production Methods
---------------------------------------------------
2️main production phases can be identified in Pu-Erh tea processing, with the first processing steps being common to all Pu-Erh teas, while later steps will determine a Pu-Erh tea to be a raw or a ripe Pu-Erh.
🔗
1️⃣ “Rough Processing”: the process of making “maocha” or unfinished tea. At this stage all Pu-Erh teas are just Pu-Erh tea, no distinction between raw or ripe, it is simply “maocha” or unfinished Pu-Erh tea, that underwent the exact production processes.
🔗
2️ “Fine Processing”: the processing that turns “maocha” into ripe or raw Pu-Erh tea.
🔗
🌿 Raw Pu-Erh Tea: What is It and How Is It Made?
-------------------------------------------------------
🔗
🟢 Firstly, raw Pu-Erh tea is an especial type of green tea; meaning, Pu-Erh itself is not one of the six main types of tea (green, white, yellow, oolong, black and dark), and the raw variation of Pu-Erh tea is indeed a green tea, with unique features - like being ideal to be aged for example - but still a green tea.
🔗
🍃 Raw Pu-Erh tea uses sun-dried (“shaiqing”) Yunnan Large Leaf as its raw material (“maocha”), and it is naturally aged without undergoing any man-induced fermentation process or wet-piling (“wodui”), it undergoes shaping-appearance processes. These are the production processing methods that raw Pu-Erh tea undergoes.
🔗
---------------------------------------------------------------------
♻️ Picking → Withering → Kill the Green or Fixation → Rolling → Sun-drying → Steam-pressing → Drying → Wrapping → Storing
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
🔗
🍯 Now, a favourite tea friends’ topic is on the fermentation and aging process. Raw Pu-Erh, as shown above does not undergo any fermentation process or any other technique to accelerate its fermentation/oxidation and aging speed.
🔗
🦠 Instead, Raw Pu-Erh tea is ideal to be aged naturally over time, during which slow bacterial and enzymatic changes will occur; a process and changes that take years to gradually transform flavours and characteristics.
🔗
Because of the previous, raw Pu-Erh is able to retain the very fresh, punchy notes and with a sweet aftertaste.
