The Basic Taiwanese Oolong Making Process Part III

Part III and the last few steps of the oolong making process are:

-Kill Green: After the tea leaves have been oxidized enough, tea makers have to stop the tea from further oxidizing. They use high heat to stop the components in the leaves from oxidizing. The temperature to do this is around 170 degrees (celcius), but I have also heard that some people use more than 200 degrees. Heat will also get rid of more moisture in the leaves and help with forming the particular fragrance of an oolong. Through this process, tea makers want to get rid of the "greeness" in an oolong and bring out the real "tea fragrance."

-Shaping, Pressing and Rolling: After Killing Green, the tea leaves are put into the pressing machine to break the cells. This process also helps to shape the tea. If it's Baozhong tea, the leaves just need to be dried, then it will become Baozhong Mao Cha. For rolled style oolongs, the tea leaves will be put inside a piece of cloth that is tightened up into a ball and rolled between two plates. For a high mountain oolong, the leaves will be rolled around 8 times to get the shape that a tea maker is looking for.

-Drying: After tea makers get the shape they want for an oolong, they will put the tea leaves into the drying machine. After the drying process has been completed, tea leaves will have a water content around 4 to 5 percent. At this point, tea is called Mao Cha. Nowadays, consumers can go directly to farmers to purchase tea, so a lot of people are buying and drinking Mao Cha.

-Sorting, Roasting, and Matching tea: When Taiwan tea was produced mainly for export, tea farmers would make Mao Cha and tea vendors and merchants would purchase the Mao Cha and sort, roast and match different crops of tea into the final product that they were looking to create. Sorting is done to get rid of excess tea stems, broken leaves and old leaves. The tea is exposed to the air as it is sorted, so some moisture will get back into tea. Tea vendors will roast the tea a bit to get rid of that moisture. A lot of times, tea buyers will ask for certain teas to be roasted, so it will be the vendor's job to roast the tea as requested. For a big wholesaler, they will match different crops of tea to get the signature taste for the company's brand.

The Basic Taiwanese Oolong Making Process Part II

-Indoor Withering: After the oxidation process has started from outdoor withering, farmers and tea makers will move the tea leaves indoors and spread them on bamboo baskets to "rest." While the leaves are resting, water in the leaves will evaporate through stoma (pores) on the back and the edges of the leaves. Due to the loss of some water, the leaf cells have also lost some pressure. Tea leaves will look like they've started to "lose some life" (imagine what it looks like if you leave some spinach on the counter for a couple of hours). Then tea makers will go through each tray and stir the leaves. Stirring is to help the water content in the tea stems and veins travel throughout the leaves evenly. One can't stir the leaves either too lightly or too strongly. Too lightly and the moisture won't travel through the leaves evenly; too strongly and the veins will break, causing the water content to get stuck. Tea will have a higher chance of tasting bitter or astringent if the water gets stuck.


-Big Stirring and Resting: Though the previous process, the tea leaves are supposed to lose the right amount of moisture. The process of Big Stirring is to help the leaves maintain the remaining water so that all of the "components" in the leaves will function properly and will transform with oxygen. This Big Stirring has to be heavy enough to break lots of veins so that the tea leaves will not continue to lose its water. At this point, tea has a huge floral bouquet and the leaves feel soft and a bit slippery. Traditionally, one should be able to see the red edges on the leaves at this point. After Big Stirring, tea makers lay the leaves back on the trays again and let the tea rest and continue to oxidize. This might take about 4 hours.

The Basic Taiwanese Oolong Making Process

Here is Part 1 on the basic processing for Taiwanese Oolongs. I hope this can help you to understand how an Oolong is made and bring you to deepen your appreciation for these amazing teas.

-Tea Picking: For Taiwanese Oolongs, the standard picking is two leaves and a bud. For a traditional style Oolong, producers want the leaves to be mature enough. Leaf maturity is judged by the ratio of the two open leaves. According to the Tea Reform Institute, the perfect set for picking is for the first open leaf to be 70% the size of the second open leaf. Traditionally, the best tea picking time is around 10am because the dew has just evaporated from the tea leaves. Nowadays, not many farmers follow this practice anymore. Tea pickers are now paid by the weight of the leaves they pick (and sometimes they are paid on a per-day basis) so they want to start as early as possible. In a lot of farms, you will see someone with a broom hitting the tea bushes gently before the picking starts to get rid of the remaining dew on the leaves.

-Outdoor Withering: After enough fresh picked leaves are collected, farmers will lay the leaves out on big pieces of canvas outdoors. The duration for this process varies depending on the weather, but is usually around 30 minutes. I heard from a farmer that the perfect condition for this process is sunshine filtering through clouds. I always thought a bright and sunny day would be more perfect, but he said bright sun can "burn" the leaves. The purpose of this process is to let some of the water evaporate from the leaves (走水, "water walking") so that some of the bad smell (臭青, "stinking green") will evaporate, too. Due to the loss of some water, the cell membrane weakens and oxidation kicks in. One can smell some sort of light floral fragrance during this process. I asked some farmers how they know when this process is done and they all said it's done when a light floral note shows up, and they also know it by the look of the leaves. The first open leaf loses its shininess on the surface and the leaves feel soft.

In my next post, we'll talk about the next two steps of the process. Look for it soon!