What Is Green Tea, And How It Be Processed?

1. What Is Green Tea

Green tea is a kind of popular drink, but do you know any things about green tea?
When we talk about green tea, we usually mean a popular drink from China, which taste like the plant, some people love it so much, and some do not.
Green tea leaves are non-fermented, so they are called non-fermented tea.
After tea leaves collection will be heated immediately, avoid oxidative fermentation of tea leaves. This operation retains a lot of chlorophyll after we steep it, it still looks green, so we called it green tea.

Farmer picking green tea leaves from tea tree

2. The Processing of Green Tea

Green tea is the earliest kind of tea in history. The human being has drink tea about 3,000 years. Ancient people collected the leaves of wild tea trees, dry it, and steep to drink, it can be regarded as the beginning of green tea processing in a broad sense.
Modern green tea processing, mainly divided into the following three steps:

Fixation

In the real sense, green tea processing began with the invention of “Green Tea Steaming Technology” in the 8th century BC, then promoted with “Green Tea Stir Fixation Technology” in the 12th century BC. This process is called “Fixation.”
The primary purpose of “Fixation” is to destroy and deactivate the oxidase activity in fresh leaves by high temperature, Inhibiting the enzymatic oxidation of tea polyphenols in fresh leaves, evaporate water from fresh leaves, keep the tea leaves naturally green while reducing moisture in the leaves, make the tea leaves soft and easy to form by rolling. Also can blocking the plant stink smell at the same time, promote the formation of pleasant aroma.

Traditional Green Tea Fixation

Rolling

Rolling is the first step of green tea shaping, to form a compact, curved shape by rolling, it also affected endoplasmic improvement. Rolling can be rolled tight tea strip, reduce the volume, fry dry into a good foundation, proper destruction of leaf tissue, let tea material transformation. For different types of tea, rolling techniques are also different.

Rolling Green Tea After Fixation

Drying

The green tea drying process, generally through the first baking, and then firing. Because after the tea leaves rolling, water content is still very high, if directly firing, tea will soon form in the pot lump, easy to bond the wall of the pot. So, the tea is baked first to reduce the moisture content to an ideal level.

Drying Green Tea To Remove Moisture

Traditional green tea processing technology has been relatively mature, has been used up to now, and in the continuous improvement.
There’s a noticed thing, in Japan, almost all tea leaves are non-fermented, so almost all Japanese tea belongs to green tea.

3. Main Ingredients Of Green Tea

A Cup Of Green Tea Is Good For Health

Because the green tea is non-fermented during the production process, the natural substances in the fresh leaves are retained more. It mainly includes tea polyphenols, catechins, chlorophyll, caffeine, amino acids, vitamins, and so on. Due to the less loss of nutrients, green tea has a specific effect on human health. Most people regard tea as a way of keeping healthy. Also, it has a tremendous refreshing impact by reason of contains particular caffeine (the specific content depends on the type of tea and the way of steeping).
According to legend, tea also has a detoxifying effect. In Chinese mythology, after the Chinese ancestors (Shen Nong) were poisoned, he ate tea and saw tea wandering in the stomach and taking away toxins to heal. So quite a few people believe that drinking tea can have a particular curative effect of disease; of course, there is no clear scientific evidence. On the contrary, patients should not drink tea when taking medicine, because the components in tea are easy to react with drugs, affect drug absorption, and even produce adverse side effects.