The tea fight continued, and the movements of the two sides seemed to be incomparable at this time.

When the small piece of tea was knocked out of the tea cake, it was turned over and the tea piece was taken down and put into the delicate copper mortar.

The copper mortar is the size of an adult's fist, and the tea cube the size of an egg yolk is placed in it, which just occupies the bottom of the copper mortar.

Although the movements of the two are not fast, they seem to try their best to make their every movement look simple and beautiful in the eyes of onlookers.

Almost at the same time, they picked up the copper pestle, and in a muffled "dong dong" sound, one hand kept turning the copper mortar, crushing the tea pestle into powder.

I have to mention that there are generally two kinds of tea in this era, one is the formal thing called tea, all of which are made after being made, and as soon as they are shipped from the tea roasting, they have been made into the style of tea cakes or tea bricks.

Therefore, when people want to drink tea, they buy this tea cake or tea brick whole, and first carry out the preliminary division and mashing processing process before putting it in a teapot or boiling or brewing it with boiling water.

Such tea cakes and tea bricks, in fact, are relatively expensive in price, and the rich and noble families naturally do not spare this tea money, but in the homes of ordinary people, if there are not distinguished guests, the tea is not usually drinkable.

In addition to this, there is another type of tea.

To be precise, when making orthodox tea cakes, tea roasting is picked out with a small number of young leaves and delicate tea leaves.

The remaining large number of coarse tea leaves and tea stems, and even some other inexplicable plant branches and leaves mixed with tea leaves in the process of picking, drying and roasting, are mixed to make a kind of rough loose tea.

Although loose tea is coarse, it actually has most of the effects of orthodox tea, but the taste is slightly astringent.

If the middle and lower classes of people want to drink tea, they are reluctant to buy tea cakes, so tea roasting provides this kind of rough loose tea for them to enjoy, and it has become the "coarse tea" often mentioned in the mouths of the people.

The teahouse here is located above the West Market, and it is naturally open to all classes, whether it is a literati and a rich family, or a peddler and a pawn of the market, you can buy tea here.

The kind of tea that you can drink casually for a penny on the first floor should be this kind of coarse tea, and the poor people are just going out to quench their thirst and quench their fatigue, and they are not so particular, and they do not care whether the tea is famous or noble.

Old Sun Tou and Old Zhu Tou smashed the tea pieces almost at the same time, and then gently poured the tea leaves from the copper mortar on top of a white porcelain tea tray as white as jade.

The mashed or ground tea leaves are not directly put into the teapot and then cooked at will, but the tea leaves are evenly spread out in the white porcelain tea tray with a flat bottom.

When they achieved this step, Yang Huairen also had to start to sigh, the delicacy of tea art can be said to be somewhat similar compared to his cooking skills, and some details that are not easy to detect often determine the taste of the final tea or dish.

They are carefully selecting, dividing the crushed tea leaves to one side, and the relatively large tea lumps that have not yet been mashed are picked out and piled on the other side.

The two old men are both old men who are close to the age of sixties, and at this time, there is no trace of the turbidity of an elderly person in the eyes of the two people, but they are both serious and bright.

In the whole process of picking and sorting, no one can easily make mistakes, resulting in different sizes of tea in the final brewed tea.

After picking, gently sweep the delicate tea powder into the spatula-shaped tea spoon with a piece of paper.

After finishing the preparation work of the previous series, the spout of the teapot has already emitted white mist, and the water looks like it is just about to boil, but it has not yet boiled.

The two of them looked happy, such boiling water was exactly what they needed.

Open the lid of the teapot, lean the teaspoon on the edge of the spout at a certain angle, and at the same time shake the teaspoon slightly from side to side, so that the evenly sized tea leaves will slowly scatter along the smooth inner wall of the teaspoon to the boiling water in the teapot under the action of gravity.

At this time, Yang Huairen may also understand a little why the old grandson complained about the tea doctor in the teahouse.

Maybe not in front of people, those tea doctors cook a pot of tea, and they are indeed not as careful as they are.

But this is not incomprehensible, after all, the tea doctors do the work that has to be repeated many times every day, if they treat each pot of tea as carefully and meticulously as these two old men when they fight tea, I am afraid that they will not be able to cook so many pots of tea when they are tired to death in a day.

Since it is a business, whether it is cooking tea or cooking a dish, in fact, it is the case, as long as the product is produced quantitatively, it is always necessary to save some steps under the condition of quality and quantity to meet the demand of supply.

Except for certain connoisseurs or special occasions, we usually enjoy the finished tea or dish, and we do not have to be nitpicky to find the slightest discrepancy that is difficult to detect.

Yang Huairen also realized that this tea fight was different from the pastime between those literati.

The literati fight for tea, and they care about nothing more than three points, which are tea fighting products, tea fighting orders and tea fighting operas.

Tea fighting, as the name suggests, is the best tea selected by the competition, as the saying goes, "tea is new and precious, and water is live." ”

That is to say, new tea is more expensive than old tea, and the water used to boil tea, choose living water like stream water, and finally brew the tea, which is considered to be of the highest quality.

In the process of boiling tea, the literati should chant the tea order, or a poem, or sing some songs that are in line with the indifferent and elegant mood of the tea when boiling tea, so as to set off the atmosphere.

The final tea opera, that is, the division of tea, is a way to distinguish how boiled tea is poured into a teacup from a teapot, and it has only become popular since the Northern Song Dynasty.

It is precisely because it is the most popular trend nowadays, so among the various tea fights, this item was also paid the most attention at the beginning.

The elegance of the tea distribution and the beauty of the changing patterns formed by the trajectory of the tea powder wandering through the tea cup when the tea is poured into the tea cup are all important parts of judging the level of this item.

Yang Wanli, a great poet of the Song Dynasty, once said, "How is it better to divide tea than sencha, and sencha is not as good as dividing tea", which is the mystery of this.

Even many literati compare the pattern of this tea with the paintings in the qin, chess, calligraphy and painting, as if when they divide the tea, they are also carefully creating a thick and elegant landscape and clouds, or a lively and agile flower, bird, fish and insects.