Chapter 23 Traditional Tea Making
Half a month after moving into the new house, everything is finally calm. Xi began her planned summer vacation life in the first year of high school.
In the past few days, she took advantage of Xi's parents to go to work and Xi Yidi to go out to meet her classmates, and entered the Xuanbang to the long-idle tea workshop at the foot of the tea mountain, ready to fry tea.
After counting the family's hobby of tea, it was found that Xi's father preferred Longjing, the eldest brother liked Pu'er, the younger brother liked English black tea, his grandfather liked Tieguanyin, and his grandfather favored both Pu'er and Tieguanyin, and Xi's mother and grandmother naturally loved all kinds of flower tea. As for other relatives who are dispensable to her, such as her uncle's family, she ignores their hobbies, even if the gift is a tea variety they don't love, and they don't like to drink it. Xi Yizheng thought evilly. She's just a high school girl, and she doesn't have the time to learn about the hobbies and tastes of other unrelated people.
In the end, she decided to stir-fry three kinds of tea first: Longjing, Tieguanyin, and Pu'er, which are also the clear teas, Ming teas, and fairy teas that she often makes in the Demon Martial Star. Although many years have passed, the craftsmanship has become a lot unfamiliar, but the relevant craftsmanship in my memory has not been forgotten.
So, after determining the type of tea to be fried, she began to wash the special iron pots, copper steamers, tea mats, dustpans for tea sifting, and various tools needed in the tea making process, such as kneading tea stones, mallets, lead cakes, and tea pressing stones. After washing, while waiting for them to dry, I took a few tea baskets to the tea mountain to pick tea.
The temperature in the bracelet is just right for the tea buds to emerge but will not grow indefinitely, and they can be picked and fried at any time. Xi Yizheng circled the tea mountain, spent three days, and collected several baskets of long-aged Longjing tea buds, the fresh leaves of Tieguanyin produced by the thousand-year-old tea king, and the fresh leaves of Pu'er tea produced by the 10,000-year-old wild tea king.
The next step is the tea-making process. Xi Yizheng took advantage of the fact that the fresh leaves of Longjing tea and Tieguanyin needed to be sun-dried and spread them on the mat respectively, and after drying them in a cool place, he began to heat the pot and prepare for the frying of the fresh leaves of Pu'er tea.
For a long time, the heating in the Xuan Bracelet was the unique energy spar of the Demon Martial Star, and the tea workshop was no exception. The heat energy crystal is usually kept by her in the thermal insulation box made of black stygian stone, and it needs to be taken out and exposed to the air for 5 minutes, and the temperature can directly rise to more than 300 degrees. A fist-sized thermal crystal can last for three days. Of course, if you don't need such a high temperature during the heating process, you only need to add some cryolite.
At the beginning, in order to facilitate alchemy and refining, before getting the Shending with its own fire, she had traveled all over the Demon Martial Star to collect a lot of thermal spars and cryolites, but it has been used so far, and there is not much left, but if it is only fried a few times a year or occasionally makes a fire in the Xuanbang to cook a meal, it can completely support a hundred and eighty years.
For Xi Yizheng, the craftsmanship of Longjing in these three types of tea is the simplest. You only need to put it in a high-temperature iron pot after it is soft: stir-fry, pressurize, and flatten; Then after the pot is cooled, screened by the dustpan, the broken leaves are eliminated, and the long flat leaves are left, and then the pot is stir-fried, pressurized, and flattened until the tea leaves are dried up and started.
Of course, it's easy to say, but it's also very cumbersome to stir-fry. Put on the heat-insulating gloves woven by Tiansilk and begin to concentrate on stir-frying Longjing tea. It took three days to completely fry the picked Longjing sprouts into tea. With a long sigh of relief, Xi Yizheng leaned back on the back of the chair, it was too tiring not to do this work for a long time. Alas, if it weren't for the family's liking, and the bracelet was equipped with these tools and natural tea buds, otherwise it would be really too lazy to toss!
The rest of the Pu'er tea and Tieguanyin also cost her almost half a month. Because it took a week for Pu'er tea to be piled up. Although this week she fried Tieguanyin. I'm tired enough, too.
Xi's mother saw that Xi Yizheng went to bed early after dinner every day, and felt very strange, "Zhengzheng, are you uncomfortable?" One day after dinner, Xi Yizheng went upstairs as usual to wash up and sleep, and Xi's mother couldn't help but stop her and ask.
"Nope." Xi Yizheng looked at Xi's mother blankly.
"Then why did you go to bed so early at night during this time? Didn't you have to tinker until late in the past? Xi's mother was worried.
"Huh? Oh. I'm in the studio during the day, and I'm so tired after a day's work. Xi Yizheng then thought about how abnormal she was in the eyes of her family during this time, they couldn't see her during the day, but when they met at night, they just showed their faces at the dining table, and then went back to the room and fell asleep. This makes Xi's parents who love their daughter very much feel at ease!
"Zheng, you can travel during the summer vacation." Xi's father suggested. Seeing that her daughter's face was not as rosy as before, it was really distressing.
"Yes, sign up for a tour group while your little brother is resting, and join a few days of travel or something. Spice up the spirit. Don't let yourself get too tired. "Xi's mother doesn't want her daughter to strain her life so tightly.
"Okay, wait for the little brother to come back and ask him where he wants to play." Xi Yizheng nodded in agreement. Anyway, Longjing and Tieguanyin are made, and only Pu'er is left, and it is estimated that it can be completed in three or five days.
After spreading the piled up of Pu'er Mao tea on the mat to dry, the tea is pressed. There are several varieties of flower colors in the tea pressing process. Xi Yizheng chose several unique colors.
One is pressed into brick tea, the mold of pressing tea is a variety of convex auspicious words, Xi Yizheng selected the four words of "Fu", "Lu", "Shou", "Jubilee", and put the sifted Pu'er loose tea into the copper pot to steam softly, and then put it on the word mold and press it tightly, and then made a traditional Pu'er brick tea printed with various words. The tea bricks with four characters are wrapped in a package, and the bamboo shoot leaves are bandaged externally, and the auspicious tea brick Pu'er is completely made.
Xi Yizheng also chose a very distinctive Pu'er bamboo tube tea. The processing method is unique, unique in style, and has a strong national flavor. During the production, the air-dried Pu'er Mao Tea is put into the bottom layer of the retort filled with glutinous rice and steamed softly, and then put it into the bamboo tube, pressed and compacted while loading, placed on the drying rack and slowly roasted and dried over a simmer, cut the bamboo tube after cooling, and wrapped it externally with wrapping paper.
This traditional Pu'er bamboo tube tea has both tea aroma, bamboo fragrance and glutinous rice aroma, and bamboo fragrance and tea aroma blend. This Pu'er tea was Xi Yizheng's favorite back then, but because of the complicated process and the busy career in his previous life, he didn't insist on frying it every year. Now, after adjusting his mentality, Xi Yizheng will no longer devote all his energy to his future career, but take into account his interest in leisure time and love his family.
In late July, she finally completed the great cause of tea-making that she had been thinking about for a long time this year, and Longjing fried 5 catties; Pu'er made 5 large bags of tea bricks and 22 bamboo tubes; Tieguanyin fried 6 catties. After packing them separately, half of them were kept in the tea cabinet of the tea workshop, and the remaining half were placed in the Xuanyuan locker, ready to find an opportunity to send them to their families when the time came.