It makes me sad when spam infiltrates this web space. My hatred for
spammers is hard to quantify. They contribute absolutely nothing to
this world but misery. I'm sure they feel otherwise, but they're
wrong. No one would be sad if they died.

Anyway, just so I don't have to look at a page full of spam when I log
onto this group, I thought I'd make a new post. So here is a question:
do all black teas involve leaves that are less whole than their oolong
and green counterparts? Does it have to do with the processing? It
seems like all of the black tea I buy is in pieces and won't give up
much in the way of multiple brewings. Can you gongfu black tea or
would it taste awful?

cha bing

On Aug 26, 8:46 pm, cha bing wrote:
It makes me sad when spam infiltrates this web space. My hatred for
spammers is hard to quantify. They contribute absolutely nothing to
this world but misery. I'm sure they feel otherwise, but they're
wrong. No one would be sad if they died.

Anyway, just so I don't have to look at a page full of spam when I log
onto this group, I thought I'd make a new post. So here is a question:
do all black teas involve leaves that are less whole than their oolong
and green counterparts? Does it have to do with the processing? It
seems like all of the black tea I buy is in pieces and won't give up
much in the way of multiple brewings. Can you gongfu black tea or
would it taste awful?

cha bing

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 bing wrote:
It makes me sad when spam infiltrates this web space. My hatred for
spammers is hard to quantify. They contribute absolutely nothing to
this world but misery. I'm sure they feel otherwise, but they're
wrong. No one would be sad if they died.

Anyway, just so I don't have to look at a page full of spam when I log
onto this group, I thought I'd make a new post. So here is a question:
do all black teas involve leaves that are less whole than their oolong
and green counterparts? Does it have to do with the processing? It
seems like all of the black tea I buy is in pieces and won't give up
much in the way of multiple brewings. Can you gongfu black tea or
would it taste awful?

cha bing

cha bing writes:

[...]
do all black teas involve leaves that are less whole than their oolong
and green counterparts?

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

Does it have to do with the processing? It seems like all of the
black tea I buy is in pieces and won't give up much in the way of
multiple brewings. Can you gongfu black tea or would it taste awful?

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
---
Lew Perin /
http://www.panix.com/~perin/babelcarp.html

On Aug 27, 1:30 pm, Space Cowboy wrote:
What you are talking about is Broken OP and the finer grades called fines duh.

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
6078-1982 Black Tea - Vocabulary. There is a whole range of Dusts
depending on manufacture type and country specific nomenclature -
common for CTC teas is Pekoe Dust (PD) and Dust 1 (D1 - best quality
smallest dust and very powerful - usually the highest priced CTC tea
grade). In Orthodox we have BOPD (Broken Orange Pekoe Dust), FD (Fine
Dust), CD (Churamoni Dust - an Assam type), and RD (Red Dust - almost
a fluff). The particles in the latter two grades are sub 200 micron -
1/127th of an inch and are in effect little chips of dried tea juice -
hence they make a powerful brew.

Nigel at Teacraft

On Aug 27, 2:46 am, cha bing wrote:
do all black teas involve leaves that are less whole than their oolong
and green counterparts? Does it have to do with the processing? It
seems like all of the black tea I buy is in pieces and won't give up
much in the way of multiple brewings. Can you gongfu black tea or
would it taste awful?

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 www.nbtea.co.uk
Rolling by hand cannot exert the great pressure required to break the
shoots - thus not the pressure required to give a quick oxidation.
Georgian hand made teas take 8 -10 hours to oxidise instead of 3 hours
after orthodox rolling or 60 minutes after CTC crushing. The result
of such rapid and complete oxidation is that CTC black teas cannot
stand resteeping. Most orthodox black teas can manage one top up, and
Georgian hand made blacks can happily take four steeps.

Nigel at Teacraft

On Sun, 26 Aug 2007 18:46:59 -0700, cha bing
wrote:

It makes me sad when spam infiltrates this web space. My hatred
for spammers is hard to quantify.

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

cha bing wrote:
It makes me sad when spam infiltrates this web space. My hatred for
spammers is hard to quantify. They contribute absolutely nothing to
this world but misery. I'm sure they feel otherwise, but they're
wrong. No one would be sad if they died.

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.

Anyway, just so I don't have to look at a page full of spam when I log
onto this group, I thought I'd make a new post. So here is a question:
do all black teas involve leaves that are less whole than their oolong
and green counterparts? Does it have to do with the processing? It
seems like all of the black tea I buy is in pieces and won't give up
much in the way of multiple brewings. Can you gongfu black tea or
would it taste awful?

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
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

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

"Nigel" wrote in message
ps.com...
On Aug 27, 2:46 am, cha bing wrote:
do all black teas involve leaves that are less whole than their oolong
and green counterparts? Does it have to do with the processing? It
seems like all of the black tea I buy is in pieces and won't give up
much in the way of multiple brewings. Can you gongfu black tea or
would it taste awful?

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 www.nbtea.co.uk
Rolling by hand cannot exert the great pressure required to break the
shoots - thus not the pressure required to give a quick oxidation.
Georgian hand made teas take 8 -10 hours to oxidise instead of 3 hours
after orthodox rolling or 60 minutes after CTC crushing. The result
of such rapid and complete oxidation is that CTC black teas cannot
stand resteeping. Most orthodox black teas can manage one top up, and
Georgian hand made blacks can happily take four steeps.

Nigel at Teacraft


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

On Aug 29, 5:46 am, "Melinda" wrote:

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...

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
10,000 known teas (Chinese estimate here - my estimate is nearer
2,000). From any one bush (and the right equipment - it's exactly
what we designed the Teacraft ECM System miniature tea manufacture
unit for) I would claim to be able to make a recognisable white,
yellow or green, pouchong, oolong or black, or pu'erh tea. And
although it may upset the purists, could make a recognisable
Darjeeling type too - in fact the tea now being produced in Cornwall,
UK is a dead ringer for far away Darjeeling. All this flies in the
face of what I was taught as a young teaman - that every tea type
needs it's own type of bush. But my maverick message is - get the
process right and the tea type follows.

Nigel at Teacraft

"Melinda" writes:

[...]
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

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.

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...

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

/Lew
---
Lew Perin /
http://www.panix.com/~perin/babelcarp.html
recent addition: tian shui

Nigel writes:

[...]
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
10,000 known teas (Chinese estimate here - my estimate is nearer
2,000). From any one bush (and the right equipment - it's exactly
what we designed the Teacraft ECM System miniature tea manufacture
unit for) I would claim to be able to make a recognisable white,
yellow or green, pouchong, oolong or black, or pu'erh tea. And
although it may upset the purists, could make a recognisable
Darjeeling type too - in fact the tea now being produced in Cornwall,
UK is a dead ringer for far away Darjeeling. All this flies in the
face of what I was taught as a young teaman - that every tea type
needs it's own type of bush. But my maverick message is - get the
process right and the tea type follows.

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 Perin /
http://www.panix.com/~perin/babelcarp.html

On Aug 29, 7:23 pm, Lewis Perin wrote:

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, 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

In article . com,
Nigel wrote:

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

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