Tea Talk on Paper, Part 4: How Sun-Dried Black Tea Is Made

Recently I stayed in Menghai for nearly a month, with no other business, mainly for a sun-dried black tea. This year's crowdfunding, besides remaking last year's Yiwu and Bulang, will also introduce two new teas: sun-dried black tea and ripe tea. I hope all crowdfunding partners will continue to support us.

Now our sun-dried black tea production is almost coming to an end. I took many photos. Today, let's not talk about empty theories; let's look at the pictures and discuss the sun-dried black tea process.

1. Fresh Leaf Management

1.1 Fresh Leaf Transportation

We use plastic baskets to transport fresh leaves, each basket holding about three kilograms. A 3-ton truck can carry about one ton of fresh leaves without any pressure. The main advantage of these plastic baskets is breathability, so the leaves won't heat up and get damaged during transportation.

1.2 Fresh Leaf Withering

We use a withering trough to wither the fresh leaves, which means allowing the leaves to lose water. During withering, the leaves need to be turned and shaken according to the water loss condition. The stems lose water more slowly; shaking and turning help transfer moisture from the stems to the leaves, ensuring even water loss. Managing the withering process is key to making a good black tea. If the leaves are withered well, there will be no loss during rolling, the tea strands will be relatively complete, and the breakdown of the tea will be more thorough. As for what breakdown means, I will discuss it in another article later.

2. Rolling

Our sun-dried black tea undergoes two rollings. The first rolling lasts about 40 minutes, after which the leaves are loosened and scattered (as shown below). After resting for ten minutes, a second rolling of about ten minutes is performed.

After rolling, the leaves are loosened.

3. Fermentation

We use a temperature- and humidity-controlled room for fermentation. The machine on the far left is the control equipment. On the fermentation racks, the rolled tea wrapped in cloth is piled up, each package containing about ten kilograms of dry tea.

4. Sun Drying

Sun-dried black tea depends on the weather; only with sufficient sunlight can we produce top-quality sun-dried black tea. Fortunately, the weather during this spring tea season has been quite cooperative, with mostly sunny days.

5. Tasting

Gongfu brewing tasting

Cupping method tasting

A good sun-dried black tea is mainly characterized by a refreshing and sweet taste, with no sourness and not too much green flavor. This time, we made sun-dried black tea from four major mountains. Several primary processing facilities produced simultaneously, and each batch of raw tea had to be tasted individually. Any batch that did not meet our requirements was disposed of, and we resolutely avoided blending or mixing it into our products.

6. Finished Product

This sun-dried black tea is a blend, and currently only samples are available as finished products. We sent samples to nearly a hundred tea enthusiasts for tasting, and the feedback was quite positive.

Due to shipping needs, we pressed the samples into 50-gram mini bricks (there are still a few samples available; feel free to add WeChat: 673998 to request them for a fee). Our official products will still mainly be loose tea, with a small quantity of sun-dried black tea cakes. We hope you will like them.

Article and photos are original. Author: Lü Jianfeng, WeChat: ynwuse, working at 51 Pu'er Net, initiator of the Houyue Crowdfunding Tea.