“Green Tea/绿茶” is the oldest tea type that has produced among 6 categories of Chinese tea and have the largest production range in China. There are many kind of Green tea which can be found in many areas in China such as Xihu LongJing (西湖龙井) in Hangzhou (Zhejiang Province), DongTing BiLuoChun (洞庭碧螺春) in Suzhou (Jiangsu Province), TaiPing HouKui (太平猴魁) in Anhui, etc. Green tea has known best for its freshness since its leaves have not been oxidized (不发酵) or very little of oxidized in the process that this help to retain the original freshness of tea leaves.
The characteristic of green tea is elegant and fresh, the color of tea soup is clear in very light green color. The taste of green tea is light and thin in the early state of brewing, but it will provide the little bitterness and mellow sweet after taste. The fragrance is turning inside your mouth make you have a pleasant feel in spring.
In this article, I would like to bring your attention on 3 main aspects about green tea in China: 1st I would like to demonstrate on the processing, 2nd part I will discuss on the types of green tea in China and last part is about suggestion on some brewing methods for Loose leaf green tea in China.
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I. The processing of Green Tea
The processing of Green Tea in China can be basically divided into 3 main part:
- 杀青 Mean “Kill Green” (Heating Process)
- 揉捻 Mean “Rolling Process”
- 干燥 Mean “Drying process”
Kill Green/ 杀青 
Kneading／揉捻 
Drying/ 干燥
(Figure 1)៖ credit to this figure – ZhongGuo ChaYe Tea Book (中国茶叶) by Wang GuangZhi, Published in 2013.
First of all, the leaves which get from harvesting will start with the 1st part of process which is called “杀青 or Kill Green”. This is the key part of processing green tea to make them into the signature form of clear tea soup, green leaves, and mellow sweet after taste. The quality of green tea is also determine according on how well was the Kill Green done. Therefore, the main purpose of “杀青 or Kill Green” is to prevent or block the oxidation which will naturally happen after they take/ harvest from the tree and this technique will help to keep the leaves as fresh and green as possible, also to promote the aroma and mellow sweet inside the leaves. what’s more, this technique is taking to reduce the moisture that contain inside the fresh leaves and make it to be soft and toughness, which this will be convenient for the next steps. Kill Green/ 杀青 have 3 types: Kill Green by Pan fry (锅式杀青), kill green by rotary drum/cylinder (滚筒杀青) and kill green by steaming.
After Kill Green is done, the leaves are moving to the second part is “揉捻/ Rolling”. In this stage, the green tea leaves are focused on the shaping, which this stage is done on 2 main purpose. The first purpose is to break the cell structure of tea which resulted that contained component in tea leaves to be fully leached and this also promote the concentration of tea soup. The second purpose is to make tea leaves more compact, supporting dry natural leaves, decrease the broken pieces and the preserving the facilitating. This step can be done by 2 method: by hand and by machine.
Last by not least, the third step “干燥 / Drying” is the last process which is closely related to the green tea quality selection of the leaves. The purpose of Drying is evaporate the excess moisture in the tea leaves and the quality of leaves selection in the buckets.
These are the processes that most green tea which produce in China would have gone through in each step. However, according to traditional differences in some of parts/ areas in China, there are also some uncommon techniques and styles that also has applied in each which differentiate the green tea types that we will going to be continued in the next part: “II. Green Tea Types”.
II. Green Tea types
Even though all green tea have to through these 3 main basic processing technique that I has mentioned in the 1st section, they may require different strategies in making which separate them into another 4 types of Green Tea. These 4 Types are “炒青绿茶 or stir-fry or pan-fry Green tea“, “烘青绿茶 or toast/ bake Green Tea”, “晒青绿茶 or Dry by Sun Green Tea” and “ 蒸青绿茶 or steam／evaporate Green Tea”.
The first one is 炒青绿茶 mean “Green Tea by Pan-Fried“: refer to the green tea which kill green by the heat from “Pan-Fry or 锅炒杀青”. There are 3 main processing to make this kind: Kill Green by heating using Pan-Fry — Rolling–Drying. This type of green tea got the characteristic of Dry and beautiful in appearance, high fragrance and strong flavor. LongJing/ 龙井, BiLuoChun/ 碧螺春, etc are belonged to this group of green tea.
The 2nd Group is 烘青绿茶 which is mean “Baked Green tea”. There are also 3 main processing to make this kind: Kill Green — Rolling–Drying. However, this type is using the baking technique by either using the charcoal fired or dryer to heat the leaves in order to lock the oxidation in kill green process. The dry leaf’s appearance is relatively loose. HuangShan MaoFeng/ 黄山毛峰，TaiPing HouKui/ 太平猴魁, etc are examples among Baked Green tea/ 烘青绿茶.
The 3rd group is 晒青绿茶 which is mean “Sun-Dried Green Tea”. There are 3 main processing part to get this group of green tea done: Kill Green– rolling (may or may not require)– drying by the sun. The main part of processing this group of green is Sun-Dried, which lots of quantity leaves are directly dried in the Sun after Kill Green or after kill green and rolling parts. This is the oldest method of Sun-dried tea leaves method and the obvious reason for this attribute is to have the strand fragrance of the Sun.
The 4th Group is 蒸青绿茶 mean “Steamed Green tea”. There are about 5 main processing to make this kind: Kill Green by hot steaming technique (蒸青) — Rough Rolling (粗揉)– Middle Rolling (中揉)– Fine Rolling (精柔)– Drying (with fire or hot air ). This types of green tea have 3 green character: Green Leaf, Green Tea Soup and Green leaf after brew (叶底绿).
Overall, green tea is a refreshing kind of tea with elegant and charm leaf, fresh fragrance, beautiful color of tea soup, bitter and mellow sweet aftertaste. There are 3 main producing procedure and divid into 4 other main types. Next part, I would like to move on to some technique and recommendation to how Green tea should be brew.
III. Brewing recommendation
There are many ways for brewing tea. But when we have a look at the way for making loose leaf Green tea, we should practice making them in a very gentle way by set temperature of boiling fresh water in between 75 degree Celsius to 85 degree Celsius, this kind of temperature would keep the tenderness of green tea leaf. Moreover, the selection of the vessel to brew can be widely choose to meet personal preferences. However, My recommendation is you should use any vessels that are not preserving heat too much. Therefore I have 3 suggestion types:
- Tall Glass or TeaPot made from Glass
- Ceramic/ White Porcelain Bowl with Lid (Gaiwan/ 盖碗)
- Ceramic/ Porcelain Tea Bowl
The characteristic of green tea is elegant and fresh, the color of tea soup is clear in very light green color. The taste of green tea is light and thin in the early state of brewing, but it will provide the little bitterness and mellow sweet after taste. The fragrance is turning inside your mouth make you have a pleasant feel in spring. These are reasons why we should be applied a very gentle technique to brew them, especially the high-grade green tea.
No matter what tea vessel you would like to pick, You should have to warm up your tea wares every time before put your tea leaves into your bowl or pot. You have to be careful on the movement for brewing should apply in gently and without hurry, which the green tea leaves should be slowly absorb with hot water. After hot water applied, before drink it you should leave it about 30 to 90 second or 2 minutes to 3 minutes if you use big size wares. The reason behind the slow movement is that green tea leaf/buds (especially the high grade green tea) are fragile which may easily to be caused some damage by the rush acts so that we should be paid enough caution on them to prevent the effect into the flavor (especially with high grade green tea). Moreover, the high grade green tea, we should not need to rinsing or cleaning the first soup and we can consuming the tea soup straight away. Generally, loose leaf green tea can be brew between 2-4 infusions and we may add about 10-20 second to the original time we put in the first infusion.
All in all, that is all on how we would like to bring to tea lovers about this green tea article today. There are absolutely many of knowledge about green tea and other types of tea which we would like to bring your attention into the further articles. we would like to say thank you for your attention on this blog, if there are any mistake that we had made by incident we would like to apologize for the inconvenience. Last but not least, we hope that you enjoy this article and if there any questions, please feel free to comment down below or contact us through email or our social media platform (FB: TeaTimeGuy茶周, IG: @teatimeguy). We hope to see you in the next blog 🙂
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Reference:
We wrote this article based on several tea books and other sources together with our experiences in tea journey. For Sources from Books that we had used, we would like mention down below:
- ZhongGuo ChaYe Tea Book (中国茶叶) by Wang GuangZhi, Published in 2013
2. Experiencing Chinese Tea Culture Book (体验中国茶文化 by China intercontinental Press. Published in 2011.
3. Chinese Tea: A Cultural History and Drinking Guide by Liu Tong, Published in 2010.
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