We all know that Pu’er tea has the unique charm of “getting more fragrant with age”, which is why many tea lovers like “Tibetan tea”.
However, there may be many tea lovers who are still unclear. In fact, Aroma after aging and our taste, taste and other experiences during drinking are also closely related to the pressing process of Pu’er tea.
Taking the pressing process of “Puer tea cake” as an example, let me analyze how a “small pressing into cake shape” link affects our final drinking experience.
Autoclave Humidification, Sterilization and Harm Removal.
The raw materials of Pu-erh tea cakes are old teas that have undergone two years of natural aging before being pressed into cakes. Years of baptism have made them old teas, but it is inevitable that they will be contaminated by dust and bacteria after a long time.
Therefore, it needs to be steamed before being pressed into a cake shape. One is to make it softer and easier to press into a cake shape. The other is to use the high temperature and high pressure of the steam to kill harmful bacteria and keep the tea clean.
The soup color of Pu’er tea cake
Generally, the autoclave is at a pressure of about 0.07mpa and in a high temperature environment of about 110°C, and the “steaming” lasts for about 7 to 8 seconds, using controllable steam to instantly eliminate invisible and uncontrollable bacteria.
During this process, if any of the steam pressure and temperature is not in place, it will not only affect the subsequent pressing process, but also lead to insufficient cleanliness of Puer tea, dark and turbid soup color, and even seriously affect our health.
The steaming temperature is not enough, the soup color is cloudy
Pressed into cakes, grasp the details.
After autoclaving and humidifying, it comes to the most critical link of pressing into cakes, and the most important part of this link is the control of “pressure”. In the early stage of Pu’er tea development, stone mills were generally used for manual pressing.
However, there is a disadvantage of stone mill pressing–not standardized enough. Firstly, the weight of the stone mill itself is not standardized enough, and secondly, the pressing master has very strict requirements on the “strength”. The appearance of the “big discus”.
This kind of tea cake with too tight pressure has a small contact range with the air in the later transformation process, so it is not conducive to the later transformation, so that the taste is not strong enough when drinking.
Not only that, but it will also make the process of prying the cake very laborious and not smooth enough; in addition, it is not conducive to the full analysis of the contents of the tea when we brew, which will lengthen the entire brewing cycle.
The “big discus” that is too tight
However, with the development of industrialization, machine pressing has increasingly become the mainstream process of Pu-erh tea in the new era.
We not only use more standard and professional machines for pressing, but also conduct thousands of experiments on different raw materials and repeatedly test the pressure. The Pu’er tea cake alone has been tested hundreds of times before finally confirming the “golden cake forming pressure” of 0.025mPa.
The tea leaves that were “wasted and sacrificed” during the test in the middle can be said to be tears of bitterness. But the sacrifice is also meaningful. The tightness of the tea cake under the “golden cake pressure” is just right for the old tea that has been aged.
Puer tea cake under the pressure of golden cake formation
For tea lovers who like “Tibetan tea”, the tightness of the tea cake ensures that the tea can be breathed in a larger range, and at the same time, it can also ensure that the tea cake is tightly bound as a whole, which is also more conducive to the breathing of the tea. Transformed to make it taste better afterwards.
For tea lovers who like “ready to drink”, not only is it very smooth and easy to pry the cake, but also the two-year-old tea, combined with the raw materials of Daxue Mountain, has a sweet taste and full layers.
Temperature control and drying, removing water smell
The freshly pressed tea leaves still carry the “moisture” of the previous autoclaving and humidification. If this kind of tea is directly packaged, people will have a greater “watery taste” when drinking it.
Therefore, the pressed tea cakes need to be further dried and dehumidified in a specific aging warehouse with a drying temperature of about 39 degrees Celsius, so as to ensure the taste when drinking.
Therefore, it is not easy to press out a cake of delicious Pu-erh tea. It is not only the efforts of countless tea people, but also the spirit of sacrifice and continuous exploration with the help of industrialization and standardization.
