In the tea-making room, Nonglu was explaining refined tea to Nong Tianyi.

Nonglu said that after withering, fermentation, finishing, rolling, drying and other manufacturing processes (non-fermented tea omits the first two items, and post-fermented tea is added to the pile after rolling) to make tea, which is called "primary tea". The quality of such tea is not stable, and it cannot be pushed to the market, otherwise it is easy to deteriorate after a period of time, which does not mean that it will hurt the stomach when drunk, but its appreciation value will be reduced. Therefore, the initial tea must go through the process of refining before the tea can be considered fully made.

Nonglu sipped tea and said: There are three situations:

Refining of high-grade tea: high-grade tea refers to manual picking, after such tea is made, in addition to sieving off the fine powder and picking up the coarse pieces, as well as the separation of the branches and leaves of the leaf tea, the most important thing is to dry it after a few days, that is, the fire covered as mentioned earlier, the bud tea is dried at low temperature, and the leaf tea can be dried at high temperature, but it is also up to 90 °C.

Refining of popular tea: After the initial preparation of this type of tea is completed, it must go through the process of sieving (sieving into coarse, medium and fine different shapes), shearing (cutting the leaves that are too thick into the required specifications), pulling out the stems (picking off the tea branches), shaping (making the appearance more standardized), winnowing (blowing off the fine and coarse pieces), and covering the fire (drying again).

Refining of post-fermented tea: Post-fermented tea is divided into scattered and pressed block teas after being dried in Wudui, and the refining of these teas refers to aging. If these teas are only crudely made, their appreciation value is not high, and they must be aged for a long time, generally for five years, eight years, twenty or thirty years, before the tea quality is upgraded to another level.

Nong Tianyi continued: The aging should be in a dry, cool and odorless place, which is naturally stored in the air, and needs to be packaged, dust-proof, moisture-proof, but breathable. Increasing the temperature and humidity can increase the aging effect, but the quality of the finished product is inferior.

Nonglu nodded yes.

Nong Lu continued: After the tea is refined, it is already a product and can be packaged and marketed, but in order to make the tea more diversified, it can be used for some processing. The processing can be divided into four ways: smoking, roasting, blending, and aging.

Smoked flowers. Tea has a characteristic that it is very good at absorbing other smells, such as in the place of paint, the tea will soon have a paint smell. Then the tea people use this characteristic of it to let it absorb the floral fragrance we like, such as mixing jasmine with it, it will absorb the fragrance of jasmine to become jasmine tea, and mixing osmanthus with it, it will absorb the fragrance of osmanthus to become osmanthus tea......

Flowers should be fresh, because dried flowers are not fragrant. But mixed with fresh flowers, won't the tea get damp? So after the flowers have been smoked, it has to be dried again. Should the dried flowers be sifted off? Depending on whether the dried flowers are still effective, if the dried jasmine flowers no longer have the effect on taste, they can be sifted out and some are left in the tea just to decorate.

Osmanthus is different, the dried osmanthus still has the effect of taste, so the osmanthus tea is not to sift off the dried osmanthus, and the dried osmanthus should be mixed with some evenly when brewing. How long to smoke? About eight hours, that is, the smoke is only to mix the flowers and tea together according to a certain proportion (such as 20%), and it is not heated, but the flowers and tea will heat up after mixing together, and when it is too hot, it will be stirred to dissipate heat (called Tonghua).

Nong Tianyi understood: some people write smoked flowers as kiln flowers, and some people call flower tea fragrant pieces.

Smoking can be done many times, because if you smoke it only once, the aroma does not enter it, and there is no floral fragrance after brewing once or twice. The way to improve can be smoked again, that is, after re-drying, remix another batch of fresh flowers, and repeat it again, so that the tea made is called double smoked flower tea, if it is not enough, you can also repeat the smoke again, that is the three smoked flower tea.

Nong Lu said in an accentuated tone: You have to remember that when we drink tea, we only use flowers to set off the taste of tea, so the tea master will remind: "Seven points of tea, three points of flowers."

Nong Tian nodded.

Is there a certain guideline for what tea to go with what flowers? No, but most people will consider the problem of incompatibility, such as jasmine and osmanthus, jasmine is younger and osmanthus is more mature in comparison, so we will smoke jasmine with clear tea or green tea, and smoke osmanthus with Tianxin rock green or hairy tip.

Nonglu said, and then there is roasting. If we want the tea to have a fiery aroma and feel a little warmer, we can use it to roast it with fire. The light and heavy roasting will also cause different flavors, the light roast will feel more raw when drinking, and the heavy one will feel more ripe.

How can you tell the weight of the roasting from the appearance? The light roasting is brighter, and the heavy roasting is darker, including the color of the dried tea and the color of the brewed tea soup.

I talked about it during fermentation: the lighter the fermentation, the greener the color, and the heavier the fermentation, the redder the color. The roasting affects the depth of the color, that is, the level of brightness, the heavier the roasting, the lower the brightness, the lighter the roasting, the higher the brightness.

What is the difference in the taste of the drink? Drinking lightly roasted tea is like eating steamed and stir-fried vegetables, and drinking heavily roasted tea is like eating braised food.

Nong Tianyi asked: Father, what is the difference in the effect on the body?

Nong Lu replied: Drinking tea that is not roasted is colder, drinking tea that is roasted is not cold, tea is a cold food, roasting can make it less cold, but it will not produce a hot effect.

Nonglu continued to say: Generally speaking, the so-called raw tea and cooked tea mainly refer to roasting, but the more mature the tea is picked, the heavier the kneading and the more fermentation, which are also several factors of partial ripeness. The more tender the tea, the lighter the rolling, and the less fermentation, which are several factors that are biased. Therefore, to determine which kind of tea is more ripe, it is necessary to analyze the four factors of roasting, tea greening, rolling and fermentation.

The manufacturing process of Baochong tea can be divided into two parts: crude and refined, when the tea completes the drying step process, it is called the crude tea of tea, and its products are called crude tea or wool tea, and the crude tea can be called refined tea after screening, sorting, roasting and other steps.

Among them, the main purpose of roasting for some fermented teas is twofold: one is to reduce the moisture content of tea leaves, so as to slow down the deterioration of tea quality. It is to improve or adjust the aroma and taste of tea and the color of tea soup to remedy the defects in the crude process, and to adjust the tea to meet the quality of market demand.

Second, for some fermented teas, roasting is an important key to determining the aroma and taste, the correct roasting method can significantly improve the quality and value of tea, but roasting is also the most elusive processing procedure, the effect of roasting is affected by the season, origin, processing technology, aging, cord, baking equipment, heat source, temperature, length of time, etc.

At the end of the farm, he summarized it highly: these points are the basic rules of thumb for roasting tea.

Temperature: temperature is the main factor that determines the quality of tea, when the temperature rises, the water in the tea gradually evaporates, and then the aroma evaporates with the water, most of the aroma components in the aromatic essential oil boiling point are above 150 degrees, so the baking temperature should be below 150 degrees, usually not more than 110 degrees is appropriate. In general, coarser old tea leaves require a higher roasting temperature to mask the coarse flavor of coarse old tea leaves with caramel products. The temperature of delicate tea leaves should not be too high, and the principle of prolonging the time to make the taste of the tea soup become sweet and the fragrance can be properly carried forward.

Then there is the length of baking time: the more tender tea leaves at the same temperature have weak fire resistance, and the roasting time should be shortened, while the coarser and older tea leaves have stronger fire resistance and the roasting time needs to be longer; If the degree of fermentation of crude tea is sufficient, the fire resistance is weak, and the time should be shortened, and vice versa; Tea leaves with a tight shape are highly resistant to fire and require a longer re-roasting time, and vice versa.

Nonglu added that the next step is the difference in the water content of tea:

One of the reasons for the re-roasting of tea is to reduce the water content in the tea, so the roasting temperature and time of the tea with more water content should be increased. At the same time, if the baking environment is humid, it is also necessary to pay attention to increasing the baking temperature or time.

The relationship between the amount of tea: because tea is not a good conductor of heat transfer, it is advisable to spread the tea with high water content and tight strips, and if the stall is too thick, it will cause stuffiness.

As soon as Nong Tian heard this, he was amazed: Father, you are really a god!