The previous article talked about the core qualities of cooked tea, namely “smoothness” and “thickness”. Today, I will talk about the core quality of cooked tea, “liveness”. The popular aesthetic expression of tea is to describe the sensory advantages of a tea.
Any kind of tea has various advantages in terms of color, aroma, shape, such as aroma, sweetness, cleanliness, etc., which are common to all good teas.
But if you want to talk about tasting a certain tea, you need to focus on the specificity of the tea. Because specificity really determines the value of a certain type of tea or even a certain culture.
What is the specificity of cooked tea? I summed up three words “live”, “thick” and “slippery”. Today we will focus on talking about “live”.
“live”
What is “live”?
“Live” is a kind of vitality, radiant vitality and life, which makes people feel that tea interacts with people. You can’t experience the “live” of tea soup in an instant, you must leave enough time for the feeling of “live”.
Only on the timeline can changes occur. Changes can be observed. Changes are “live”.
“Live” is of great significance to Pu’er tea, and it is the core of the quality core of Pu’er tea.
In a short period of time, the lingering sweetness and refreshing feeling in the mouth is “alive”; in a long period of time, it is also “alive” that the aging of Pu’er tea will make it more fragrant and mellow.
It is precisely because of “live” that it develops the characteristics of getting more fragrant and mellow with age, which makes Pu’er tea a unique tea.
What is the expression of “living” in the tasting? It is a kind of aftertaste, with continuous aftertaste, saliva, and coolness.
After drinking the tea soup, it will take a while before you can fully feel the aftertaste of the whole paragraph.
The microscopic essence of “living”
The substance that makes “living” is called glycoside, and its structure determines its characteristics.
Most of the glycosides in tea are a lipid-combined structure of a simple sugar and an organic acid.
The simplest glycoside is the condensation of glucose on the left and gallic acid on the right.
Substances with this structure undergo endothermic hydrolysis and are reduced to a sugar and an organic acid.
Glycoside + water + heat = sugar + organic acid↓
If the whole process takes place in the mouth, people will feel a cooling sensation when the reaction absorbs heat, and a sweet aftertaste after producing sugar (note that sweetness and sweetness should be distinguished. It is not sweet at the entrance, and it is sweet after the reaction produces sugar. , which is the narrow sense of Huigan), after the organic acid is produced, it stimulates the production of body fluid.
This is the linkage reaction of sweetness, fluid production and cooling sensation caused by glycoside hydrolysis.
It should be noted that the structure of glycosides, as well as other forms of expression, will sometimes lead to a strong aftertaste of sweetness, and sometimes strong production of body fluids, but the refreshing feeling is inevitable when the glycosides are hydrolyzed.
Looking at “live” for a long period of time, Pu’er tea will become more fragrant and mellow with age. Why is that?
Because Pu’er tea undergoes slow fermentation in storage.
Glycosides continue to slowly decompose a small amount of sugar, nourishing some simple microorganisms, which decompose the fiber chains that are originally insoluble in water, and produce water-soluble polysaccharides and free amino acids. This process is the aging of Pu-erh tea.
The content of glycosides determines the potential of Pu-erh tea to get better and better with age.
Fermentation of cooked tea can be regarded as an accelerated aging process.
A good fermentation technology has two aspects. On the one hand, it must produce a sufficient amount of water-soluble polysaccharides and free amino acids, and on the other hand, the loss of glycosides should be small.
Glycosides will be decomposed into simple sugars and organic acids during the fermentation process. Some microorganisms will use these substances to effectively decompose fibers to produce water-soluble polysaccharides and free amino acids.
Fiber sometimes decomposes to produce new glycosides. If there are many such reactions, the utilization rate of glycosides is very high.
But in reality, not all microorganisms do this, and some microorganisms consume glycosides, but do not produce new glycosides.
So there is a loss of glycosides, and the concept of conversion rate appeared.
How to measure the conversion rate? Look at the purity of effective microorganisms. Effective bacteria will basically not waste glycosides, and miscellaneous bacteria will waste glycosides.
What determines the “job” of cooked tea?
Good technology, more effective bacteria, less miscellaneous bacteria, high utilization rate of glycosides.
When Hourun reaches the level of cooked tea during fermentation, the activity can also be preserved to the maximum.
In terms of raw materials, it is more straightforward. Good raw materials are more “live”, and the content of good raw materials is high in glycosides. Raw materials with more glycosides content will have more glycosides left after fermentation.
What are good raw materials?
Spring tea, traditional cultivated varieties, mature tea trees in sparsely planted tea gardens, the raw materials that meet these basic conditions are generally not too bad.
