丨This article was originally written by Xiao Chen Chashi
丨First published in the headlines: Xiao Chen Tea Affair
丨Author: Village Gu Chen
《1》
In the blink of an eye, it's already June 2024.
Most of this year's new tea has safely reached the hands of tea lovers, and everyone has drunk it.
There has also been more feedback and discussion about this year's new white tea.
In particular, some tea lovers who like to go around the Internet to buy new white tea have come across a variety of products when they taste new tea everywhere.
I also saved a lot of puzzling tea drinking problems.
This afternoon, a tea friend came over to chat, saying that he drank a 2024 Mingqian Baihao Silver Needle, and took it to boil a pot later.
But he didn't understand, the silver needle was soaked in a bowl 3 times and then boiled, 1.2 liters of water was boiled for 3-5 minutes, and the soup was red, is this normal?
That's a long story.
《2》
Qingming Festival, which floats between April 4th and 6th every year.
Tea picked earlier than before the Qingming Dynasty is called pre-Ming tea in a broad sense.
However, Baihao Silver Needle does not explain the concept of tea before and after tea.
Because the tea picking time of Baihao Silver Needle is far earlier than the traditional sense of "before the Ming Dynasty".
On March 24, 2017, a small area of silver needles was mined in the mountains.
2018, mined on March 10.
In 2019, mining was carried out in mid-March, and mining only began on the 15th and 16th.
2020, starting on March 15th.
In 2021, it was mined earlier, on March 8.
2022, March 14 and 15 mining.
2023, around March 16.
In 2024, due to the heavy snowfall at the beginning of the year, and the cold spring, we will not start to collect silver needles until the spring equinox (March 20).
This is the past seven years, we have observed the first-hand tea picking information of Baihao Silver Needle in Taimu Mountain, from which it is not difficult to see that the picking time of Baihao Silver Needle is still very far away from the Qingming Festival.
As we all know, the days of picking white silver needles, an inch of spring and an inch of gold, after the basic mining, it will end in about ten days or so, and enter the season of picking white peonies.
After calculation, even if the silver needle is mined again on March 20, it will all end early before the Qingming Festival, and it has nothing to do with the Qingming Festival.
If you want to distinguish between Baihao silver needles, the prefix can be "charcoal baking", "high mountain", "deserted", "wilderness", "organic", "head picking", "sun withering", "gold medal", "award-winning" and so on.
The only thing that doesn't need to be added to the snake is to mention the "silver needle before the Ming Dynasty" - who still picks the silver needle after the Ming Dynasty? At that time, it was almost time to pick Shou Mei, okay.
Of course, when a tea shopkeeper showed the inexplicable statement of "silver needle before Ming", the real situation was that he no longer had hole cards.
The white silver needle in the hand is really lackluster, and there is no bright spot to get it in, so it is necessary to use the concept of "before the Ming Dynasty" to attract attention.
《3》
The second problem of this tea lover is that a silver needle is boiled after only three bubbles, which is simply a tyrannical thing.
As we all know, Baihao Silver Needle is the honor of white tea and the "immortal strain" in the white tea world.
Its body is mainly composed of buds, which are the essence of the essence of plants.
Every year after the beginning of spring, the first wave of fat tea buds germinated by white tea trees are picked to make silver needles.
In the chubby buds, the energy that the tea tree has accumulated for a whole winter is condensed, full of theanine, full of energy, and full of vitality.
When it comes to the nutrients in the body, Baihao Silver Needle has more than other white teas.
Such as theanine, polysaccharides, catechins, polysaccharides and so on.
When brewing, this series of flavor substances embraces the boiling water, and in an instant, it is quickly released. Dissolve into the tea soup for us to taste, enjoy and absorb.
Limited by the preciousness of the white silver needle, it needs to be very serious when soaking.
The best way to brew alpine silver needles with incomparably rich inner quality is to brew in a gaiwan, find a small gaiwan suitable for Baihao silver needles, and brew it with boiling water in turn.
Brew each one, taste it carefully, sip the soup slowly, and enjoy the pure and smooth feeling in the soup.
Wait, patience.
Until it reaches 12-13 brews, the tea flavor begins to fade.
Then put all the bottom of the leaves into the teapot, add pure water and start boiling.
Add wine to the lamp and reopen the feast, soak it lightly and then cook the bottom of the leaves, which is the best use of tea, and not a single cent of tea flavor is wasted.
Only brewed 3 brews, and I was in a hurry to make tea at the beginning, which was really a waste.
《4》
From the perspective of technology, among the six major tea categories, white tea is the last in the fermentation ranking - other teas are fully fermented and semi-fermented, and only white tea is only slightly fermented.
During withering, only a very slight degree of fermentation occurs. After the withering is over, the next step is to start drying, and when the tea is dried, the fermentation will naturally stop.
This simple workworld strives to retain the natural flavor nutrients, and at the same time make the dryness number extremely low, which will age more excellent endoplasm and unique flavor in the future.
In addition, because white tea is processed, it is not kneaded or fried, and there is no too much intervention in the process, which reduces the damage to the cells of fresh tea leaves, and the oxidative fermentation degree of polyphenols is limited, so that a large number of theaflavins, thearubigins, theabrownins and other substances are produced like fully fermented black tea and black tea.
Therefore, after brewing white tea, the tea soup is beige, tooth-colored, pale yellow, and bright yellow, but it certainly does not produce the orange-yellow color of fully fermented tea (black tea) and the soy sauce color of black tea.
Even if you take the bottom of the leftover white tea leaves to the pot and boil it, it will not make a red soup - if there is no fermentation of thearubigin theabrownin, where does the red soup soy sauce soup come from?
Tea lovers who say that old white tea must be red soup, can you take your "old white tea" to an authoritative institution to test the content of thearubigin and theabrownin? And how fermented is your "old white tea"?
As soon as the report came out, it was naturally slapped in the face.
《5》
The last question is about boiling tea.
There are many people who like to boil old white tea, and many shopkeepers suggest that customers throw 10 grams to make tea, and intimately suggest that this tea can be put more, rest assured, it will not be strong.
can describe the inferior tea with little inner quality so fresh and refined, the village aunt Chen is capitalized.
If you take a really good white tea to boil, you don't have to throw 10 grams at all, 3 grams is more; You don't have to boil for too long, you can turn off the water when you boil, even if you boil the bottom of the leaf that has been lightly soaked.
A good drum doesn't need a hammer, and a good tea doesn't have to be simmered.
If you boil it repeatedly, boil it slowly, and boil white tea with the extreme practice of "frying three bowls of water into one bowl of soup", you will only receive a pot of old white tea like rotten vegetable soup.
During the simmering period, the tea soup has already been in full contact with the air, not to mention the detachment of leaf cells, the substances in the tea are also heavily oxidized, and the polyphenols in the soup produce a color reaction, making the soup red.
Just like boiling mung beans in a casserole in summer, turn off the heat in time when the beans are boiled until they are soft and rotten, and the mung bean soup is green.
If it is boiled repeatedly for a long time, the phenolic substances in the skin of the mung bean will oxidize a lot, and it will no longer be the color of the bean soup when it comes out of the pot.
It's a pot of red soup.
《6》
In addition to the above reasons, there is also a possibility that it is related to water quality.
That is, this tea lover did not use pure water when making tea.
Instead, I turned on the faucet casually and boiled the tea with tap water.
Most urban areas, especially in the north, have hard water quality, and the water body contains a lot of calcium and magnesium ions.
The tea is boiled in hard water, and the soup is dull and astringent.
Hard water and boiling for a long time, under the double blow, the final soup is red and dark, like a pot of soy sauce.
Compared with the usual plain and moist white silver needle soup, it is simply a spring and white snow, and the lower riba people.
The tea farmers on the tea mountain will cry and faint in WC.
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Xiao Chen Tea Village Gu Chen, column writer, the original new media in the tea industry "Xiao Chen Tea Affairs" chief writer, has published a white tea monograph "White Tea Tasting Notes", and has written more than 4,000 original articles from 2016 to 2020.