Process of Making Tea
Black Tea
1. CTC (Crush-Tear-Curl) Process:
The withered leaves are passed through the CTC machine, the machine do all the crushing, tearing and curling operations simultaneously. The robust machine continuously processes steady stream of leaf and produce the granular constituents of CTC tea. The cut achieved in the CTC machine have a deep impact on the make, appearance, grade percentage, fiber content, liquor and brew of the made tea
The withered leaves are passed through the CTC machine, the machine do all the crushing, tearing and curling operations simultaneously. The robust machine continuously processes steady stream of leaf and produce the granular constituents of CTC tea. The cut achieved in the CTC machine have a deep impact on the make, appearance, grade percentage, fiber content, liquor and brew of the made tea
Oxidation starts as soon as the leaf cell walls rupture with the starting of CTC process. Immediately after the completion of CTC operations, the leaves are spread on the the floor or continuous fermenting machine (CFM) without any wastage of time. In tea, oxidation enables the formation of new compounds at a molecular level. This results in the exclusive brown color and astringent flavor of black tea.
Sifter sorts tea into pieces of various roughly equal sized teas. Tea is segregated into four main sizes namely, whole leaf, broken, fanning’s and dust. Tea is further sub-divided into different grades of as per the qualities within each of these sizes. The sorted teas are then packaged for storage and shipment.
2. Orthodox process:
In this process of manufacturing tea the only difference is, instead of CTC machines Rollers are used. Other steps remain the same as mentioned above in CTC process
Green Tea
Manufacturing process:
Harvesting process in tea industry is known as plucking. It is done by picking the tender apical shoots which includes the terminal bud along with 2/3 adjacent leaves.
In order to cool down the leaves which accumulate heat as a result of stacking, the tea leaves are spread evenly on a trough or on the floor. Small amount of water is sprinkled to cool and freshen up the leaves faster.
As soon as the leaves cool down and regain freshness, they are fed into the roasting machine. Green leaves are then processed for around 20 minutes in batches in the roaster.
The hot roasted leaves are then spread evenly over the perforated troughs to cool. As blower supplied cool air passes across the perforated trays trough from below, the leaves release the heat and cools down considerably and becomes ready for the next operation.
The roasted leaves are then fed to the dryer. The drying process serves few vital purposes. First it stops both the enzymic reaction and the oxidation. Secondly drying gives birth to a stable product that can be stored for a certain period without any noticeable degradation in quality. Last but not the least, for green tea drying process is more important because green tea acquires some desirable characteristics like flavor and color during the drying process.
After the drying is over, green tea is ready. Then it is processed for final sorting. The made tea leaves pass through an array of sorting machines that segregates the produce as per their size. The whole unbroken leaves with highest amount of silvery buds and almost no stems mixed are of the topmost quality. The presence of more buds ensures better quality by adding sweetness and giving tea the most health benefits. Medium-grade tea consists of some broken leaves with stems mixed in, and less quantity of white buds. The smaller ones with all broken leaves and no buds are of low quality.
White Tea
Manufacturing process:
White tea is the most delicate of all teas. White tea is made entirely from leaf buds that are covered with whitish hairs. The new buds are plucked before they open in early spring, then withered and dried slowly at low temperatures. Unlike other tea processing methods, the leaf buds are not rolled and only slightly oxidized. The result of this processing is a tea with a mild flavor and natural sweetness, with little of the grassy undertones.