>> moisture content
>> crude fibre
>> water extract
>> ash content
>> tannic acid
>> stem content
>> water soluble alkalinity
>> water soluble ash
>> caffeeine content
>> acid insoluble ash
>> any essence or additional colors
>> any foreign matter
>> mettalic matter
>> tea used before
>> reducing polyphenols
>> yeast and mould
>> E.coli
>> coliform
>> any pollution fungi
>> any pollution of mushrooms

Okay, all of the above can be done with fairly simple kitchen-grade
equipment. It's mostly microscopic examination, an ash burn test,
some cultures, and simple titration for the polyphenyls, tannic acid,
pH, and caffine.


>> pesticide residue of
>> diazinon
>> melathion
>> fenamiphos
>> propargite

Now, these are the hard ones. My question is whether you are doing
these by titration, or by HPLC. If you have an HPLC apparatus, you can
do a huge variety of other screens for things like DDT and just about
any other substance if you know to look for it.

The HPLC trace also is very interesting as a qualitative indication that
can help show contamination... when you see a very narrow spike it's time
to find out what it is.

>> heavy metals
>> lead
>> copper
>> arsenic
>> nickel

All of these are also easy to do by titration, although if you have an
HPLC machine you can avoid the labour.

There are also some other lighter metals that can get concentrated
by plants, which are worth looking at. (Again, if you have an HPLC rig
it's easy to do lots of tests on one sample with no additional labour,
so there is motivation to do so).

Many of the larger whiskey distilleries are now using chromatography
systems in order to get a better handle on batch-to-batch variations,
and have done some research into some of the more significant flavour
constitutents of whiskey. It would be very impressive to see some
of the tea blending folks doing that.
--scott


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