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 launch two new teas: sun-dried black tea and ripe tea. We 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. Fresh Leaf Transportation

Use plastic baskets to transport fresh leaves, each basket about three kilograms. A 3-ton truck carrying about one ton of fresh leaves is no problem. This plastic basket transportation mainly ensures breathability, so the fresh leaves won't heat up and get damaged during transport.

1. Fresh Leaf Withering

Use a withering trough to wither fresh leaves, which is to let the leaves lose water. During withering, the leaves need to be turned and shaken according to the water loss condition. The stems lose water slower; the purpose of shaking and turning is to let the moisture in the stems transfer to the leaves, so the water loss is even. Managing the withering water loss is key to making a good black tea. If the fresh leaves are withered well, there will be no loss during rolling, the tea strips will be relatively complete, and the breakdown of the black tea will be more thorough. As for what breakdown is, I'll discuss it in another article another day.

1. Rolling

Our sun-dried black tea is rolled twice. The first time is about 40 minutes, then the tea is loosened and scattered (as shown below), left to rest for ten minutes, and then rolled a second time for about ten minutes.

Loosening after rolling

1. 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; each bundle is about ten kilograms of dry tea.

1. Sun Drying

Sun-dried black tea depends on the weather; only with sufficient sunlight can top-quality sun-dried black tea be made. Fortunately, the weather during this spring tea season has been relatively good, mostly sunny days.

1. Tasting

Gongfu brewing tasting

Cupping method tasting

A good sun-dried black tea is mainly characterized by a refreshing and sweet taste, without sourness, and the green taste should not be strong. This time we made sun-dried black tea from four major mountains. Several primary processing factories produced simultaneously. Each batch of raw tea needs to be tasted one by one. If it doesn't meet our requirements, it will be disposed of. We firmly do not blend or mix it into our products.

1. Finished Product

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

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

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