What makes a tea "clean"?

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LeoFox
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Sat Sep 10, 2022 8:30 pm

The term "clean" is often thrown around in the tea community without being clearly defined.

Some have a relatively specific definition of "clean" to mean organic, or even naturally farmed. Others have broader definitions, encompassing processing and storage conditions. And yet to others, it is simply a matter of how it tastes- a "clean" taste - that is supposed to reflect all of the above - natural agricultural practices, traditional processing, etc - though whether it actually does is unclear. Having had some of this kind of tea (natural agriculture, traditional processing, etc) I have to say they do taste pretty special.

Basic point here is that this is a poorly understood term, and yet people brandish it as if it were completely understood. "The tea is clean." The discussion ends.

The dictionary definitions of clean are quite broadly ranging from free of contaminant to perfectly executed.

An example: for me, a tea festering with various insects and fungus at some point during its storage lifetime is extremely unappetizing and unclean no matter how it tastes- or how narcotic its qi feels, yet some would deem this proper and even clean (e.g. 50 year old tea with insects eggs and droppings).

Below, I attempt to summarize tea quality attributes some consider when evaluating Cleanliness
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Personally, I am getting the sense that a clean tea is like a natural sound in the real world with its complex overtones forming a unique timbre.


An interesting historical aside, that @mbanu may appreciate. During late 19th and early 20th century, the tea market shifted mostly to India and Ceylon. Here is a description of the marketing for these teas, which emphasized how machine processed teas are "cleaner" than those processed by hand by non Europeans (from the book tea wars by andrew liu)
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Related thread:
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Last edited by LeoFox on Fri Sep 16, 2022 10:15 am, edited 14 times in total.
Andrew S
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Sat Sep 10, 2022 8:49 pm

It seems to be a highly contextual phrase, as well as being an inherently vague term. There's value in trying to use the expression more precisely, but I also think that it's useful to distinguish between saying that a tea 'is' clean and saying that it 'tastes' or 'feels' clean. The former refers mostly to how it was grown whereas the latter refers mostly to how it presents in terms of flavour, aroma, mouthfeel and 'qi'. And the concept of clean storage seems to be another topic as well.
LeoFox wrote:
Sat Sep 10, 2022 8:30 pm
An example: for me, a tea festering with various insects and fungus at some point during its storage lifetime is extremely unappetizing and unclean no matter how it tastes- or how narcotic its qi feels, yet some would deem this proper and even clean (e.g. 50 year old tea with insects eggs and droppings).
One of my favourite teas is a liu an which was sold to me as being from the 70s (but might actually be from the 50s or thereabout). It tastes and feels very 'clean' to me. However, I did have to brush off ancient spiderwebs and long-dead spiders from the basket... Despite that, I somehow still think that the storage was 'clean', but I can definitely see why I might be in the minority on this point.

Andrew
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LeoFox
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Thu Sep 15, 2022 4:04 pm

Updated first post with more considerations of what people consider when evaluating "clean"
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LeoFox
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Thu Sep 15, 2022 7:14 pm

Added a racy quote from a scholarly book about how tea marketing was like regarding clean teas just a century ago
Andrew S
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Thu Sep 15, 2022 7:35 pm

Interesting quote... I guess it reflects how popular opinion changes over the years; for example, between thinking that machine-made foods created using 'science' and technology are 'clean', to thinking that organic foods created without 'chemicals' are 'clean' (and, no doubt, going back again in another few years) .

I guess we want neither pesticides nor bugs in our tea, but that's not very realistic.

Andrew
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TeaGrove
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Thu Sep 15, 2022 7:45 pm

Andrew S wrote:
Sat Sep 10, 2022 8:49 pm
One of my favourite teas is a liu an which was sold to me as being from the 70s (but might actually be from the 50s or thereabout). It tastes and feels very 'clean' to me. However, I did have to brush off ancient spiderwebs and long-dead spiders from the basket... Despite that, I somehow still think that the storage was 'clean', but I can definitely see why I might be in the minority on this point.
That doesn't seem so different to blowing the dust off a bottle of wine... or does it ? :D

Hmm, it's an interesting topic Leofox because people are full of so many contradictions. I keep a mental divide between 'clean' (physically cleanly kept tea leaves) and 'clean tasting'. But while I'd never call an organic tea 'clean' I'll be thinking it. The idea of organic = safe/healthy has been with me since childhood so while not always rational it does feel cleaner to me. I will gravitate more toward teas that can offer me that feeling and pay more for them even if I believe I will not experience a discernible difference.
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LeoFox
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Thu Sep 15, 2022 8:01 pm

Andrew S wrote:
Thu Sep 15, 2022 7:35 pm
Interesting quote... I guess it reflects how popular opinion changes over the years; for example, between thinking that machine-made foods created using 'science' and technology are 'clean', to thinking that organic foods created without 'chemicals' are 'clean' (and, no doubt, going back again in another few years) .

I guess we want neither pesticides nor bugs in our tea, but that's not very realistic.

Andrew
Not just this but also racism
Andrew S
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Thu Sep 15, 2022 8:12 pm

LeoFox wrote:
Thu Sep 15, 2022 8:01 pm
Not just this but also racism
Oh, yes, I didn't mean to suggest otherwise... I was actually about to say just now that the racist element probably won't feature today in a person's thought process as to whether or not a tea is 'clean'.

However, I think that I'd be quite wrong to say that, because on reflection I think that there remain numerous racist ways of thinking about, say, the alleged cleanliness of Japanese tea versus the alleged potential contamination of Chinese tea. I'm sure that there are other comparisons as well.

So, thanks for pointing that out. It'd good to keep in mind that that kind of racism didn't go extinct a century ago.

Andrew
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There is no self
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Fri Sep 16, 2022 9:15 am

I never gave this much thought, but for me it's mainly about the way a tea smells and tastes, and how it feels in the body. And because of this, it's actually easier for me to tell when a tea isn't clean.
So far I've had two teas I can say for certain weren't "clean". One was a Dan Cong whose scent was way too powerful, developed a weird foam when brewed, and tasted ridiculously sweet in the first infusion and then stale from the second onward. Not to mention in less than 30 minutes I was feeling dizzy, and not because of the qi.
The other was a sheng from 2016. It looked fine at a glance, maybe a bit darker than usual, but nothing out of the ordinary. The scent and taste were pure ash, though. Not smoky, not roast-like, not earthy/cellar/what have you. It was a mix between burnt wood and cigarette ash, and something metallic that I'm probably better off not knowing. No side effects, but only because I barely finished the first cup.

So I guess for me a tea isn't clean if I detect stuff that very clearly shouldn't be there, either because it spoils the taste or because it makes me sick. It's a broad category: flowers and seeds are not as bad as perfume, but they still might alter the taste; some pesticides are undetectable when drunk but can give nasty side effects; on the other hand, spiderwebs and dead spiders are not pleasant to the eye but I doubt they'll influence the taste.

Which of course brings up two questions:
1. Do we make a distinction between something that is clean/unclean because of its taste and something that is clean/unclean because of its effects on your health?
2. How much extra stuff in our teas are we able to detect?
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LeoFox
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Fri Sep 16, 2022 9:42 am

There is no self wrote:
Fri Sep 16, 2022 9:15 am
I never gave this much thought, but for me it's mainly about the way a tea smells and tastes, and how it feels in the body. And because of this, it's actually easier for me to tell when a tea isn't clean.
So far I've had two teas I can say for certain weren't "clean". One was a Dan Cong whose scent was way too powerful, developed a weird foam when brewed, and tasted ridiculously sweet in the first infusion and then stale from the second onward. Not to mention in less than 30 minutes I was feeling dizzy, and not because of the qi.
The other was a sheng from 2016. It looked fine at a glance, maybe a bit darker than usual, but nothing out of the ordinary. The scent and taste were pure ash, though. Not smoky, not roast-like, not earthy/cellar/what have you. It was a mix between burnt wood and cigarette ash, and something metallic that I'm probably better off not knowing. No side effects, but only because I barely finished the first cup.

So I guess for me a tea isn't clean if I detect stuff that very clearly shouldn't be there, either because it spoils the taste or because it makes me sick. It's a broad category: flowers and seeds are not as bad as perfume, but they still might alter the taste; some pesticides are undetectable when drunk but can give nasty side effects; on the other hand, spiderwebs and dead spiders are not pleasant to the eye but I doubt they'll influence the taste.

Which of course brings up two questions:
1. Do we make a distinction between something that is clean/unclean because of its taste and something that is clean/unclean because of its effects on your health?
2. How much extra stuff in our teas are we able to detect?
Some people are a lot more selective - and consider anything that is slightly unbalanced as unclean - attributing it to some agricultural or processing tampering that is disruptive - while others would be willing to exactly buy those teas for a lot of money.

We all have different threshold for clean.
faj
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Fri Sep 16, 2022 9:59 am

I think part of the quest to taste or see contaminants is a way to convince ourselves that we can detect what is bad for our health. The reality is, not everything that "feels" off is bad, not everything that is bad feels off, and not everything that is bad can be tasted, seen, or otherwise felt.

The discussion around what is deemed "clean" probably does not have a huge overlap with knowing what is actually detrimental, but may play a part in defining each person's threshold for deciding to take the chance of drinking something or not.
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LeoFox
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Fri Sep 16, 2022 10:05 am

faj wrote:
Fri Sep 16, 2022 9:59 am
I think part of the quest to taste or see contaminants is a way to convince ourselves that we can detect what is bad for our health. The reality is, not everything that "feels" off is bad, not everything that is bad feels off, and not everything that is bad can be tasted, seen, or otherwise felt.

The discussion around what is deemed "clean" probably does not have a huge overlap with knowing what is actually detrimental, but may play a part in defining each person's threshold for deciding to take the chance of drinking something or not.
This is a good angle with health. Many do seem to approach clean from a "safety" perspective. But many others, including my close tea friends, consider "clean" from a more gustatory/ sensory perspective and as a matter of having a better experience overall.


I have a chemistry, manufacturing, controls background - so the concept of quality and control is on my mind a lot
faj
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Fri Sep 16, 2022 10:17 am

LeoFox wrote:
Fri Sep 16, 2022 10:05 am
This is a good angle with health. Many do seem to approach clean from a "safety" perspective. But many others, including my close tea friends, consider "clean" from a more gustatory/ sensory perspective and as a matter of having a better experience overall.
Obviously, it is a word loaded with several meanings, and there is no right on wrong meaning. I was trying to highlight one angle that, I think, is not often "cleanly" stated, although it lurks in the background of many discussions.
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TeaGrove
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Fri Sep 16, 2022 12:39 pm

LeoFox wrote:
Fri Sep 16, 2022 10:05 am
This is a good angle with health. Many do seem to approach clean from a "safety" perspective. But many others, including my close tea friends, consider "clean" from a more gustatory/ sensory perspective and as a matter of having a better experience overall.
I'd be curious how food culture has a role to play in that. Like how some abstain from spices so spoilage can be detected, others insist on choosing and butchering in order to be certain of freshness. Who knows maybe an appreciation for 'clean tastes' could be subconsciously attached to food safety. But I admit that's a bit of a stretch !
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Wed Sep 21, 2022 9:24 am

Interesting topic. I can see how it is a term that also can get kind of caught up in this whole more GTH descriptive path which for better or worse I guess is a sort of holistic approach almost - which when tea has a lot of factors going in to it before it winds up in your hands can be positive, but there is also focus around things personally I don't think matter in all cases. Actual cleanliness of storage (ie not getting pissed on by rats) is one thing, but I feel some people use it to imply also things around the source material that often times may not be genuinely knowable or provable especially for aged teas like if plants are grown from seed, if a garden is actually located in a particular 'cleaner' (there we go again...) area over another... you can start to split hairs really quickly. Is modern factory tea clean and older production methods not? Is a factory liu bao fermented and cooked in steel containers clean and traditional basket packing less clean just because someone finds a pebble in their tea?

I guess for me when I use the term or think about it I'm thinking in terms of storage - although that is also really hard to describe and clean to me means maybe not clean to someone else. Like a humid stored tea can still be clean in that it isn't all nasty moldy, the tea isn't brewing up all murky or cloudy, no noticeably off or unpleasant tastes, doesn't catch or irritate the throat, doesn't irritate the stomach, no haunted qi... but someone else might find the humid character or a tea with a little bit of white frost to be not clean although I'd consider that more a matter of personal taste since properly developed hoarfrost isn't mold if I have understood that process correctly. At the same time something I might be inclined to think wasn't clean in a pesticide sense because of how it made me feel could also be just how my body reacts to teas it doesn't like - un-roasted TGY for example makes me feel awful even ones I have gotten from good trustworthy sources.

I've had older teas that were also clearly stored quite dry for a long time that I'd also classify as not having been 'clean' because even if it wasn't moldy or visibly off in any way while dry the liquor was cloudy and muddy. One particular example was still drinkable without any consequence or without being gross, but I certainly wouldn't call it good or clean. Whether this was the result of some point of the storage, or bad processing, bad initial material, whatever... chances of me finding out or knowing all of that info about a 40 year old tea is slim to none unless it came straight from the original collector/buyer and ultimately it doesn't even matter in such a case- the tea was bad I'm not going to buy it or drink it again.
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