From Agaricus Blazei Murill tea to any herbal tea you may be sipping on, every tea has a thorough processing routine. Knowing your tea requires you to know how it’s been produced. Here are six tea production steps you should know about.
Step 1: Growing
The most crucial step that paves the way for the rest of the tea production steps is the growing of tea plants. Therefore, making tea requires farmers to first grow and harvest seeds before moving on to other steps for tea production.
While tea growing and harvesting methods often remain the same, they often vary depending on weather conditions. However, the implementation of various tea-growing techniques influences the taste, texture, and flavor of the final tea produced.
If the atmospheric conditions aren’t desirable for optimal tea growth and harvest, farmers also have the freedom to develop growing conditions manually. This often involves planting the tea at different elevations and in rocky soil.
Step 2: Withering
While growing and harvesting tea plants is the most obvious step for tea production, the next step is to wither the harvested plants. This step is critical because most tea leaves grow extremely thick. As a result, their texture is often wax-like, which can’t be further crafted to create the finished tea.
Therefore, the second step is to soften or wither the tea leaves to ensure they’re good enough to be crafted. The withering process requires a fabric or a mat where the tea leaves are spread out.
Once they’re laid out, farmers allow the leaves to wilt until they’re prepared for the crafting procedure. It’s crucial to be mindful of the temperature and humidity levels around the leaves during this process.
Step 3: Bruising
Once the tea farmers have successfully withered and softened all the tea leaves, they move on to various crafting techniques, depending on the kind of tea leaves they’re processing. Most kinds of tea consumed by larger populations, such as green tea, black tea, and oolong tea, are bruised during the crafting process.
Bruising the tea leaves refers to the crushing, twisting, smashing, and rolling of tea leaves to break them down. It allows the leaf’s cell walls to crush, preparing the tea for oxidization.
Step 4: Oxidizing
The bruising of tea leaves leads to either oxidizing them or leaving them to wither. Oxidization of tea leaves is also known as the tea browning process. It involves the leaving out of tea leaves to allow an enzymatic reaction to take place to let the tea leaves darken in color.
It’s one of the most crucial processes, requiring farmers to keep a check on the leaves to ensure that they don’t turn into an unintended product.
Step 5: Fixing
Oxidization of leaves is a natural process. However, it needs to be stopped once you’ve received the desired color. Fixing is the step farmers take once they want this enzymatic reaction to stop the leaves from further turning brown.
Some common fixing methods for various tea types include steaming, roasting, frying, and baking tea leaves.
Step 6: Drying
The last step is to ensure that the tea leaves are stable enough to survive on the shelf. This is done by drying the tea leaves to eliminate any moisture left on the leaves. The drying process can either be performed by baking the leaves or roasting them, depending on how you want it to impact the tea’s flavor.
The six-step tea processing routine shows the amount of effort to produce each granule of tea that we consume today. The better the tea leaves are processed, the more you’re likely to benefit from the brewed version of it. If you’re looking for a tea with health benefits and rejuvenation, try Agaricus Blazei Murrill tea for its antioxidative and anti-inflammatory properties. You can now buy Agaricus mushroom granules with 100% fruiting bodies by browsing through our products at ABM-Tea.
At ABM-Tea, we obtain granules directly from a farm in Taiwan to provide you with organic Agaricus blazei mushroom tea. These tea granules have undergone the optimal tea-processing method. As a result, they comprise 100% of the mushroom’s fruiting bodies, making the tea a natural immune booster. It’s safe to say that ABM tea can be consumed as a traditional medicinal health food, or even as a natural remedy after chemotherapy, for leukemia, and more. Don’t forget to order a pack of Agaricus tea by visiting our store or contact us to learn more today!