TEA TIPS

The Lapsang Souchong is the first black tea in the world history. Originated from the Tongmu Pass in Wuyi Mountains, it has 400 years of history. Lapsang Souchong was called Bohea in Europe in early times. “Bohea” is the pronunciation in Minan dialect for Wuyi Mountains，which according to the Family Pedigree of jiang, was born in around 1568 AD (Middle and Late Ming Dynasty). Keemun Black Tea，Assam Black Tea，Darjeeling Black Tea，Ceylon Highland Black Tea and other black teas in the world are originated from the Lapsang Souchong.

In 1662，King Charles ll of England married the Portuguese princess Catherine who brought with her, as part of her dowry, a small chest of tea to the British Royal Family. As the new queen，Catherine began to substituted wine with tea and introduced black tea to the upper class. Since then, from top to down，Afternoon Tea swept the country till now.

On August 18, Enshi Daily reported the story of Wang Shijie, a poor household in Badong County, who got out of poverty due to tea. The following is the oral content, and the full text is reproduced as follows: 

Original newspaper digital view link: http://szb.enshi.cn/esrb/content/202008/18/content_36489.html

At 6 o'clock in the morning on August 11, I drove a tricycle to my hometown 7 kilometers away and weed 0.6 Acres of konjac field.

It takes less than 10 days to weed and fertilize every year. With a bumper harvest in three years, 4 Mu of konjac can earn 30,000 yuan.

My name is Wang Shijie, and I am a poor household with a registered card. In 2018, our family of four moved from the hillside of Xiaoshennongjia Village, Yanduhe Township, Badong County to a resettlement site under the mountain. We lived in a new house of 100 square meters with three bedrooms and two living rooms without paying a cent. The front door is connected by a cement road and it is only 10 minutes away from the village clinic.

Badong County↑

I was born in the 1950s. I had eaten grass roots and leaves, and lived with my parents in thatched sheds. When i was 29, married and started a family. Carried thin stone slabs from the river valley to build a house. I could only carry it once a day, and it took six months to build a wedding house.

My wife Li Changying and I cultivate 1.67 acres of land, feed five or six pigs a year, and raise one child and one daughter. After a year of hardship, there was no savings.

In 2019, a piece of "pie" hit us: wild tea can sell for money! My family has 5 acres of mountain forest, and the forest is full of wild tea trees.

Badong County↑

In March 2019, Fujian Zhengshantang Tea Company came to Badong to develop the "Badong Red" series of black tea. The village party secretary Wang Shi first knew that wild tea from Xiaoshennongjia was a treasure, and that the original wild tea was a high-quality raw material for making black tea.

After Wang Shixian buildinging connection, Zhengshantang Tea Company came to the village to inspect the wild tea forest. Collect fresh leaf samples, after testing, they contain selenium, green and pollution-free.

After getting the wild tea test report, Wang Shixian was as happy as he had won the prize. He led the villagers into the mountains, counted wild tea trees, and found out a total of 200 acres of wild tea forests. At the same time, the villagers were organized to protect and manage the tea trees, and set the rules: no cut down thick trees, no fertilizer, clean the weeds around the tea trees, and shade the branches.

Badong Villagers Picking Tea ↑

In less than two months, the villagers began to pick wild tea. My wife and I collected 200 kilograms of fresh leaves in 10 days and sold them for 12,000 yuan.

The 78 relocation households in the village all went to their own mountain forests to pick wild tea, and the average household income increased by nearly 8,000 yuan. Wang Shixian worked as both a technician and purchaser, and the fresh leaves were transported into the tea workshop of Zhengshantang Tea Company.

This year's spring tea picking season, my wife and I brought dry food and teapots, and went into the mountains in the dark. We picked 270 kg of fresh leaves in half a month, and 17,000 yuan was put in our pockets. With 5 acres of nearly 3,000 wild tea trees, I became a big wild tea farmer in the village, and I can no longer hinder the village’s well-off.

At a mass meeting in the village not long ago, Wang Shi first broke the good news: the wild tea in the village was crowned with the name "Zhengshantang Badong Red Xiao Shennongjia Wild Tea", and won the prize in the 2019 World Black Tea Product Quality Selection Activity Product quality gold medal, only two black teas in the province won the gold medal. This is a gift from nature to Xiao Shennongjia Village, and it is also our confidence to take off the poor hat.

Since ancient times

China has a tradition of drinking tea for health

There are hundreds of kinds of tea

Drinking tea.

According to personal preference

It also depends on individual physique

Conform to the four seasons and seasons

In order to achieve the purpose of health preservation

Traditional Chinese medicine believes that human physique can be divided into dryness and heat, as well as deficiency and coldness, while tea leaves can also be divided into coldness and warmness after different processing techniques.

Generally speaking, green tea, white tea, yellow tea, and lightly fermented oolong tea belong to herbal teas; heavily fermented oolong tea belongs to neutral tea, while black tea and dark tea belong to warm tea. Therefore, the physique is different, the tea nature is different, and tea drinking is also particular.

The herbal tea, represented by green tea, has a certain irritation to the stomach, and is suitable for people with a hot body and a strong stomach. People with weak stomachs should drink less or make tea less tea and more water.

The warm tea represented by black tea is warm and not dry in nature and less irritating to the stomach and intestines. It is suitable for people with cold stomach, cold hands and feet, and weaker physique. It has a wider range of applications.

Due to the difference in tea characteristics and the changes in the four o'clock, many people have formed the habitual thinking of drinking green tea in summer and black tea in winter, thinking that drinking black tea in summer will get inter fever. This is actually a misunderstanding.

Here we need to clarify the fact that black tea is warm rather than hot. Compared with green tea, it is less irritating to the stomach and intestines. Especially black tea has gone through the process of withering and fermentation, and the coldness of the tea leaves itself has disappeared.

Drinking black tea to get inter fever depends on one's physique on the one hand, and on the other hand the craftsmanship of black tea. Generally speaking, Clear drink tea represented by Jin Jun Mei has the characteristics of "fresh, fragrant, sweet and mellow", and its nature is gentle.

Modern people often have bad habits such as smoking, drinking, staying up late, and staying in an air-conditioned room for a long time in summer, often drinking cold drinks, which leads to diverse and changeable physiques, which are often difficult to simply divide by heat and cold.

To judge whether tea is suitable for you, you might as well see whether the body has symptoms of discomfort after trying it. This is mainly manifested in two aspects: one is gastrointestinal intolerance, which is prone to abdominal (stomach) pain after drinking tea; the other is excessive excitement, Insomnia or dizziness, weakness of hands and feet, light mouth, etc.

If you feel beneficial to your body after trying a certain tea, you can continue to drink it, otherwise you should stop.

In China, because of the obvious temperature changing. The summer and the winter were been divided by three level. When the highest level arrived, temperature continues to stay high, drinking tea to quench thirst is a useful way to cool off the heat, and it is healthier and more effective than cold soft drinks.

However, the traditional method of making tea requires preparation of hot water, tea sets, and various standard. After brewing the tea, the tea must be cooled slightly before drinking. This is not friendly for we business staff while working or going out.

But "Cold brewing tea" is a popular way of brewing without hot water in recent years. You only need to put the tea into cold boiled water or mineral water, and after a certain period of waiting, you can get the color, fragrance and taste. Tea soup.

Cold brewing tea does not require boiling water. Instead, the tea leaves are soaked in plain water or mineral water at room temperature for 2-12 hours. It has the advantages of traditional tea drinking and the convenience of modern beverages. It is popular among office workers, students, drivers and mountaineers.

Compared with hot brewing, cold brewing tea has a lighter tea fragrance but a sweeter taste. When hot brewing, the aroma substances (aldehydes, phenols, etc.) in the tea will quickly decompose when exposed to high temperatures. When brewing with cold water, the fragrance and nutrients in the tea are slowly released.

The contents of tea polyphenols, catechins, caffeine, water extracts and total sugars under high temperature brewing conditions are significantly higher than cold brewing tea, but it does not mean that the number of beneficial components extracted to the human body has decreased.

The theanine and arginine content is the highest when brewed at room temperature, which preserves the original taste and freshness of the tea to the utmost extent, and also reduces the bitterness of the tea when brewed in hot water.

Studies have shown that tea brewed in cold water has higher antioxidant activity than hot tea. Cold brewing tea takes a long time to brew tea, which is conducive to the complete expansion and expansion of the tea, and the beneficial substances in the tea are fully migrated into the tea soup without damaging the cell structure of the tea, so that a tea with more polyphenols can be obtained drink

From the perspective of drinking tea, hot brewing and cold brewing have their own advantages and disadvantages. In the former, the taste of tea is easy to release, especially for some good-quality teas. To feel the difference in the taste, you have to use hot water; to appreciate the color and shape of new tea, of course, you need hot water too.

The superiority of cold brewing tea, of course. First reason is to cool down and relieving heat.

Almost all tea can be used to make cold brew tea. Generally, recommend green teas, oolong teas, some black teas, some white teas and herbal teas.

The biggest feature of black tea is that it is sweet, which is most suitable for cold brewing, but not all black teas are suitable for cold brewing. For example, Lapsang Souchong black tea has too much pine smoke fragrance, it is suitable for hot brewing, Jin Junmei, Fei zi xiao and other Junmei black teas are mainly sweet. Suitable for cold brewing.

To drink cold brewed tea at home, you can steep it with tea leaves and cold water at a ratio of 1:50 and put it in the refrigerator for 4 to 8 hours before drinking. If you want to drink cold brewed tea when you are away, you can buy a bottle of ice mineral water, put in an appropriate amount of tea or tea bags, and the water ratio and steeping time are the same as when drinking at home.

The taste and type of tea depend on personal preference. Cold brewing can reduce the caffeine content of the tea soup and slow down the stimulation of the stomach. Therefore, it is also suitable for people with sensitive physique or weak spleen and stomach.

Although a cold diet is not good for the stomach, there is basically no problem as long as you do not booze before meals or after a lot of exercise. It is better to drink several times in small sips for the usual way of drinking. When conditions permit, it is good to drink cold tea after warming it.

Quench your thirst and cool off the heat, 0 sugar and 0 calories, do it yourself and make it easy to make cold. This summer, cold tea to save!

Drinking good tea needs good sets to match.

It’s like seeing beauty in the river when you take a sip of good tea.

And like meeting an old friend when using good tea set.

Gather the beauty of the four seasons in a tea vessel

Adds a touch of freshness to the tea liquid.

Is the best interpretation of a good sip of tea

Tea sets were called "tea utensils" in ancient times, and they were born for drinking tea. In the beginning, due to the extensive tea drinking method, the tea utensils were relatively simple, and they were often mixed with food utensils and wine utensils. With the popularity of tea drinking, tea sets have gradually begun to develop in the direction of professionalism and art. It has become an important part of tea culture.

"Workers must first sharpen their tools if they want to do their jobs well." Water is the mother of tea, and tools are the father of tea. Cooking tea and tasting tea, paying attention to tea sets, has always been the case.

There are many tea utensils in "Dream of Red Mansions". It is written in the book: tea tray, tea cup, tea cup, tea bowl, tea cage, tea nest, teapot, tea stove, tea cup, tea spoon, tea bucket, saucer, saucer, tea hanger , Wind stoves, cover clocks, tea cups, tea grids, tea bowls...various kind.

The ancients were very particular about the utensils for tasting tea.

The tea wares here are rare treasures, which are difficult for modern people to imitate.

In the same way, because of the use of different colored pottery cups or porcelain cups, in addition to the obvious difference in the color of the tea soup, the flavor is also very different. Generally speaking, if you want to accurately grasp the color of tea soup, it is best to use a white porcelain cup. If you want the tea flavor to be fully reflected, the pottery cup is more suitable.

Nowadays, the commonly used white porcelain cups are generally white porcelain cups, which can truly reflect the color of tea soup, have moderate heat transfer and heat preservation, will not chemically react with tea, can obtain better color and fragrance, and are beautiful and exquisite in appearance. Suitable for brewing Jin Jun Mei.

Due to different tea drinking customs and different types of tea, the choice of tea sets is also different. But the general development trend is from complex to simple, from coarse to refined.

There are many times in life that will make you feel impetuous and bored, and drinking tea can slowly calm your mood. A set of pleasing tea sets and poetic cups allow you to see the big world from a small picture. It is as if the water waves and distant mountains are right in front of your eyes.

Tea in the hand is the landscape

In the mouth is life

Pour a cup of tea

Holding a book

Enjoy some delightful tea utensils

Green smoke hovering from the incense burner

Wind blowing from the window

The moss in the intervention room

In April in Wuyi, the sun is shining and the mountains are verdant, you can breathe in the fragrance of the soil, with the breath of grass. It is the time of the year when people look forward to a good tea.

The tea is the way people and nature get along. From the sweet, soft and delicate taste of the tea, feel in the mountain streams of clouds and flowers and plants. The birth of a good cup of tea cannot be separated from the unique ecological environment, nor can it be separated from the craftsmanship of the tea makers!

The high demand for raw materials for the Jin Jun Mei and the meticulous and strict production process are the only way to guarantee its consistent high-level quality.

After the fresh buds are picked and selected, they can be under withering, which is the basic process to form the quality characteristics of the Jin Jun Mei.

The purpose of withering is to let the tea buds, firstly, evaporate the water, soften the tea green, so that it can be easily twisted into strips; secondly, promote the change of the internal substances, It is also important for the formation of the unique aroma of Jin Jun Mei.

In addition, the loss of water will cause a series of changes in the contents of the substances, which will lay the foundation for the formation of black tea color, aroma and taste. The basis for change.      

The methods of withering are various, including natural withering, artificial withering and sunlight withering.

Since there is a lot of rain in the spring in the Tongmu county, where the Jin Jun Mei originates, the efficiency and quality of the withering process can be improved to overcome the influence of unfavorable weather. Zheng Shan Tang Jin Jun Mei mainly adopts artificial indoor oxygenation and warming withering, supplemented by daylight withering.

With this method, the content of soluble nitrogen and caffeine is high because the buds are fully withered, thus the tea is high in the content of theaflavin, high in quality, and has a good quality and soup is golden.

The tea rolling means that the tea leaves are shrunk and rolled into strips by the method of kneading and twisting.

Kneading shapes the tea leaves, destroys the tea cells, overflows the tea juice, accelerates the enzymatic oxidation of polyphenolic compounds, and the polyphenolic compounds are the main components of the tea, Oxidation of phenolic compounds results in the formation of "theaflavins".

In addition, twisting plays a very important role in creating the fresh and sweet taste quality of the Jin Jun Mei, as well as in shaping its firm and oily shape. This lay the foundation for improving the quality of the finished tea.

As the buds are fresh, the process of rolling and twisting is more complicated and difficult, which tests the skills of the tea maker. It is also one of the unique characteristics of the Jin Jun Mei process.

"Fermentation" is centered on the enzymatic oxidation of polyphenolic substances, which is the key process to form the color, aroma and flavor characteristics of Jin Jun Mei. polyphenols. Temperature, humidity and oxygen content are important environmental conditions that affect the enzymatic oxidation of tea polyphenols.

Drying is the last step in the processing of the tea steppe. it is also the final level to determine the quality of the Jin Jun Mei. The purpose of drying is to use high temperature to destroy the enzyme activity and stop the enzymatic oxidation; secondly, to evaporate the water and tighten the tea bar, so that the tea bar can be fully dried. Drying can prevent non-enzymatic oxidation and keep maintain quality; thirdly, it gives off green odor to further improve and develop aroma.

With sufficient roasting, the aroma of Jin Jun Mei is not only pure and high quality, but also low water content, generally 3%-4%, which means can be stored for a long time and thus can be used as a foodstuff. No deterioration.

The secret of "clear, fragrant and sweet" is hidden in each spring tea bud, which is the inner condition for the formation of excellent quality. After the craftsmanship of the tea people, the inner potential of the tea buds is uncovered, so that each tea bud can bloom its natural charm.

Good tea cannot be obtained without, authentic craftsmanship and ecological blessings, historical heritage and a tea people's heart.