Ethan Kurland wrote: ↑Fri Dec 10, 2021 12:47 am
helotea wrote: ↑Thu Dec 09, 2021 7:15 pm
Red oolong tea....
Tea experts use Oolong tea leafs to make them into black tea taste ,so it looks red color as you can see.
Some tastes bitter inside the mouth. Some don't) .
This one ,it tastes smooth inside the mouth and it has strong after taste after drinking it which is the feature of Taiwan Tea.
Sweetness keeps lingering inside the mouth for a while.
Thank you for a post about red oolong, tea which does not get much attention. I am puzzled by your post a bit. I think it is simpler to say that red oolong is tea leaves that are oxidized more than green oolong & less than black tea. Tea producers allow leaves that could be green tea or green oolong (lightly oxidized) to oxidize for more time before the "Kill Green" step of the production process (application of heat) which stops oxidation. (Black tea is fully oxidized.) In Taiwan I often heard the word "fermentation" instead of oxidation; however, fermentation means something is added to leaves (such as bacteria). Pu-erh is a fermented tea.
It is difficult to find red oolong that is only oxidized. Most of the time what I found was also roasted which may have added desired flavor & character but buried red oolong's uniqueness. In Taiwan I did find one red oolong that is not roasted much which allows some of the original flavors (not from roasting) to remain.
cheers
I also prefer to use "oxidation" with black ( red ) tea production , but do you know how that part is done in red oolongs?
I'm asking because when I was at our Fengqing tea farmer years ago and he was making his Yesheng Hong ( wild black ) , the fresh tea leaves were in big plastic crate covered by thick , but breathable , canvas. When he opened it , the disgusting sour ( almost like somebody had puked ) odor came out. ( the similar notes of sourness you can experience in fresh made Shai Hong - sun dried blacks , as they are not high heat processed after so these notes are imprinted in taste , yet they will diminish by some time and turn to sweet jam like taste )
He said : the leaves are 发酵 "fa jiao" - means fermenting.
Of course it's not as long as the shu puerh is made , but I'm not entirely sure that NON bacteria are involved there. You know what I mean?
The farmer is ex tea factory worker so I believe the terms he uses is what he learned there and generally on tea market you also can hear vendors using term fermentation for black teas.
The term 氧化 "yang hua" - oxidation , we generally use for already made dry tea leaf ( sheng puer mao cha usually ) when it's in loose form.
I think it's because fresh tea leaf has a lots of water so even if spread on cooled bed , some bacterial activity is inevitable ...just my assumption.
We say is , that leaving leaf too long yang hua in Kunming is not good coz loosing it's moisture and therefore aroma / taste. ( in humid places like GZ absorbing too much moisture and defect is the same, just notes imprinted in taste are different )
Although it's transforming it self into the sweet part , but not preserving much of original notes. That's why we keep sheng mao cha in big zip lock bags , to slow it all down ( not Chinese vendors / producers of course , because they have big boxes in storage , we keep only few kg of some interesting ones )
In this case is also related the pressing of sheng puerh.
When you press too soft, it's oxidizing faster than aging ( in that bacterial level which is happening inside of the cake where air access is limited ) . Therefore some of my friends who do high end puerh ,they chose harder press ( not as hard as tie bing from XG of course ) , to preserve the most of the original flavor.
Sorry to swing away from the original topic , just thought it would be beneficial info related to fermentation / oxidation.