Understanding natural sunlight withering and indoor withering means that you are beginning to understand white tea.

Among the six major teas, the production process of white tea is the simplest. There are only two processes: withering and drying, in which withering plays a vital role in the quality of tea.

Many tea lovers have expressed their interest in white tea recently and want to know more about the secrets of white tea, especially in the area of withering technology, with regard to the two process concepts of "natural sunlight withering" and "indoor withering" that often appear in the market. what understanding and difference should be made?

What is withering?

White tea is a kind of slightly fermented tea, which is processed by the method of no kneading and stir-frying after withering and drying process.

White tea processing without stir-frying and kneading, the key procedure is withering. The purpose of withering is to evaporate tea water to meet the requirement of withering dryness. with the evaporation and respiration of tea water, the leaf contents undergo slow hydrolysis and oxidation, forming the endoplasmic characteristics of white tea, volatilizing water and improving the aroma of tea. "

In terms of technology, there are mainly two kinds of withering processes in the production of white tea: natural sunlight withering which depends on the natural weather changes of heaven, and indoor withering which is more efficient and more productive.

In order to further understand the secrets between them, we must first find out the characteristics of the two processes and how they are operated respectively.

Natural sunlight withering

When the natural sun fades, you should always look at "the face of God".

Natural sunlight withering is that after picking fresh leaves, a piece of fresh leaves is evenly spread out on bamboo sticks and placed in the sun for natural withering. The duration is usually about 4 to 7 days.

Natural sunlight withering sounds simple, but in fact, it is not easy to operate. "although the process of making white tea is simple, it has strict requirements on the source of fresh leaves, the intensity of sunlight and drying time, and must be the raw material picked in sunny weather. The white leaves of the buds should be kept intact, spread out should not overlap, at the same time sufficient sunshine, can not be turned.

Natural sunlight withering

Attention should also be paid to the placement of bamboo sticks. We should pay attention to the direction of the wind. If the wind is too strong, we should quickly turn the tea in one direction. If the sun is too strong, we should quickly adjust the tea from the direct position to oblique. If the humidity on the surface is too high, we should leave the ground to dry. If the moisture content is too high, it should be spread a little thinner. When the moisture content is very low, it should be thicker.

Advantages: absorb the energy of nature and sunlight, retain the nutrients in tea to the maximum extent, maintain the natural taste of tea, fragrance appears, and the soup taste is sweet and fresh.

Disadvantages: looking at the sky to make tea, it is greatly affected by the weather; the labor cost is too high; the production efficiency is very low; there are strict requirements on the weather, unable to achieve mass production.

Natural sunlight withering

Indoor drying and withering, simulating conditions other than the sun in natural sunlight withering

Indoor drying withering is a traditional way of indoor withering. The method is similar to the traditional natural sunlight withering. The tea leaves are spread out on bamboo sticks and placed in the room. With the help of natural ventilation and temperature, it slowly loses water.

But the location becomes indoor, and there are certain requirements for the indoor environment. The room requires four sides ventilation, windows and other facilities, no direct sunlight, sanitary and clean place, and a dry and wet thermometer for observing the change of temperature and humidity. Generally, the total duration of indoor withering is about 70 meters for 90 hours.

In this method, people use the indoor environment as much as possible to create conditions to simulate the natural sun withering in addition to the natural sun.

Indoor drying and withering

"if the temperature is too low and the humidity is on the high side, it is necessary to close the windows and introduce heat sources, charcoal fires and electric furnaces indoors to increase the room temperature and reduce the humidity."

In this process, when the tea reaches the standard fermentation degree and moisture content, the tea is dried at low temperature. This is the traditional process of tea enterprises. Like most tea factories in Fuding now, indoor drying and withering are adopted.

Advantages: the method is relatively simple and is often used in normal climatic conditions.

Disadvantages: if you need mass production, you need a larger site; it is also affected by the weather; withering time is longer, production efficiency is relatively low.

Indoor drying and withering

Indoor heating and withering, modern equipment to help

The method of indoor heating and withering is to set up hot air ducts (or cold and hot air conditioners), exhaust fans, blowers and other devices in the withering room, so that the room temperature can reach between 38 degrees and 40 degrees through the control of temperature and humidity, so that the tea leaves lose water quickly.

Manually controlled temperature and humidity environment has also been widely used in production, the blower reduces the humidity in the room, and the air conditioner increases the temperature of the room. The effect of this is that it would take three or four days to complete the withered tea, but in this way, it can be completed in one day.

Heating and withering of indoor equipment

This is the heating withering of the non-traditional technology of tea enterprises, indoor heating withering. It is withered indoors with the help of modern equipment.

Advantages: not restricted by weather conditions, greatly shorten the processing cycle, high production efficiency, large output of tea.

Disadvantages: in the aspect of endoplasmic transformation, the heating withering time is often too short to meet the requirements, and there will be an imbalance of water loss in leaves and stalks. As a result, the taste is also relatively poor, and the later transformation quality is not as good as the traditional natural withering.

Heating and withering of indoor equipment

Natural sunlight withering depends on the sky to make tea, which can not be mass-produced and can not be controlled.

The production efficiency and production of indoor withered tea are much higher than that of natural sunlight withering.

Therefore, basically all white tea used in the market is produced in large quantities based on indoor withering. In contrast, the natural sunlight of "relying on the sky to make tea" withered, could not be produced in large quantities, was greatly restricted by the natural environment, there were many uncontrollable factors, and the consumption of time and labor was also greater.

For example, a batch of good tea leaves, if there is no sunny day and sunshine, then there is no way to make high-quality raw tea. Once you can't meet Lianqing for three or four days, then these originally expensive tea leaves will face a sad fate.

Natural sunlight withering

It looks simple, but there are risks in doing it.

Thus it can be seen that for tea people who insist on doing natural sun withering, this is quite a bit of a bet on luck, depending on whether God has the honor or not, no matter the time or artificial consumption is very large, it is not easy to make a batch of standard natural sunlight withering tea leaves.

Moreover, even if you use the process of natural sunlight withering to make tea, there is no guarantee that the quality of every kind of tea is very good.

Natural sunlight withering is simple, but it tests the technology and the experience of tea makers. Once a certain link is not done well, it is easy to damage the quality of tea. Therefore, even the seemingly simple natural sunlight withering, there are certain risks to do.

Sunshine endows tea with good aroma conditions

When we drink, we will find that the white tea made by natural sunlight withering has a very good smell, which, in literary and artistic terms, is "the taste of sunshine".

Professor Liu Qinjin, a famous tea scientist in China, mentioned the drying technology of tea in a speech, in which a paragraph said: "there are 72 kinds of light waves in the sun, and these 72 kinds of light waves have a certain relationship with the formation of tea aroma." Especially its relatively short wavelength of purple light, it is highly positively related to the formation of aromatic substances in tea. Sun exposure, photooxidation, resulting in good aroma conditions. "

This is an explanation from a scientific point of view. It's the same thing to put it on white tea. After enough sun exposure, sunlight makes the interior of the tea transform more slowly and naturally into a taste similar to that of the sun.

Whether it is natural sunlight withering or indoor withering, no matter which one is used when making tea, the process itself is partly good or bad, and what is more important is the control of every link and detail.

At present, the white tea withering process used by most tea enterprises in the market is indoor heating withering. In order to speed up the speed of production, so that the tea from picking to production can be completed in about a day or two.

When the indoor heating withering process first appeared, it was mainly for export, and the production efficiency and finished product rate were very important. The same batch of tea should be made in five days or in one day, and the difference is not a little bit. Now the process is actually talking about indoor withering process. It just warms up or not.

But this does not mean that the tea produced by indoor withering is not necessarily delicious.

In terms of raw materials, if the quality of fresh leaves is very good, coupled with the standard process, then the whole production process will be more controllable and taste more standard.

We have also mentioned before that indoor heating withered tea is prone to water loss imbalance and inadequate internal conversion, so in addition to good raw materials, an experienced and skilled tea maker is also very important.

Therefore, the indoor heating withered tea, compared with the natural sunlight withering of watching the sky to make tea, can not only greatly improve the production efficiency and large production, but also stabilize the quality of tea.