Sweet honey, you smile sweetly, as beautiful as a flower. Do you remember Miss Teresa Teng’s sweet face?
Sweetness has always had the power to deceive sentient beings, just like the candy that adults ask for when they drool in their childhood. It is the memory of first love’s sweetness on the tip of their hearts, and the sweet “mom and dad” that children whisper.
Sweetness is a very pleasant taste, just like the rock tea white tea that the teacher is familiar with. It cannot escape the encirclement of sweetness. The subtle fragrance of honey, rock flavor, and coolness are all facilitated by sweetness. Sweetness not only bribes our mouths, but also captivates our hearts, causing our souls to tremble.
Comparison of Tea Soup between Rock Tea and White Tea
In white tea producing areas, sweetness is the lifelong pursuit of tea makers, while in rock tea producing areas, sweetness is a mysterious existence that is both unimportant and important.
At the beginning of the journey, whether the tea we drink is sweet or not determines whether the tea path will stop here or forge ahead. When not all teas are marketed as sweet, should we deliberately pursue “sweetness” in drinking and brewing? Do you want to squeeze out the sweetness and wipe it clean?
First, we need to know how the teacher’s familiar sweetness comes about? Is the way rock tea and white tea express sweetness the same? Knowing these, when we brew tea, we know whether to pursue or restrain sweetness.
01 White Tea&Rock Tea We are different in sweetness!
Although rock tea and white tea both belong to the Fujian production area, their sweet styles are completely different. One produces lotus flowers with clear water, while the other sees a rainbow after wind and rain.
The sweetness of white tea is direct, as long as you gently pick up the tip of your tongue, you can easily get it. The sweetness of rock tea requires waiting, it is the sweetness of “remembering bitterness and longing for sweetness”, and it is the sweetness that can be savored with a satisfying taste.
When we concretize sweetness, it must be sugar, and sugar already exists in fresh tea leaves, including monosaccharides, oligosaccharides, polysaccharides, etc. And as the leaves gradually mature, the sugar content also increases slowly. That is to say, the reason why “rock tea” and “longevity eyebrows” can also be sweet when they listen and look at tea that doesn’t even match sweetness.
The leaves harvested from rock tea stand in stark contrast to the buds harvested from silver needles
In addition to the sugar content in fresh leaves, there is also a need for craftsmanship to further enhance the sweetness. When white tea withers, starch is hydrolyzed into monosaccharides and disaccharides by amylase, while pectin is hydrolyzed into methanol and galactose by pectinase.
And the Maillard reaction produced during the roasting process of rock tea can completely eliminate the bitterness, green taste, burnt taste and other impurities, playing a role in making the tea sweet and gentle. In this way, the eighteen martial arts in the process also endow white rock tea with different “sugar style elegance”.
Baking process of rock tea
Of course, there is also off-site support, such as the large temperature difference between day and night in high-altitude tea areas, which is conducive to the biosynthesis of nitrogen-containing substances and promotes the increase of amino acids such as theanine and the accumulation of sugar substances, resulting in an increase in sweetness. So, is the sweetness reflected in the tailwater of Zhengyan Mountain Farm the credit of Grandpa Land?
Left: Dayangshan, a high mountain production area for white tea; Right: Niulankeng in the Zhengyan production area of rock tea
Sweetness requires the cooperation of various forces, with varying sugar content and concentrations. Therefore, whether brewing white tea or rock tea, we need to consider the pursuit of sweetness in the long run.
02 How to make white tea sweeter?Only sweetness is not pleasant
Not long ago, the White Tea Classroom discovered at the 518 Tibetan Tea Festival White Tea Appreciation Conference that regardless of the grade and category of white tea, sweetness accounts for a very important scoring ratio, with an absolute C-place.
Sweetness is the minimum and highest requirement for white tea. Have you ever tried white tea that is not sweet? So it’s understandable for us to make white tea with more sweetness.
White tea is harvested with great care, divided into two parts: buds, leaves, and stems. This not only determines the value of the tea, but also its sweetness. Faced with these plump and thin white tea lovers, how can we infuse them with their “sweet juice”?
The sweetness of silver needle buds is both fresh and immortal, like the ultimate deliciousness of Chaoshan cuisine. Peony combines buds and leaves, but can feel a plump sweetness. Shoumei, on the other hand, is a sweet and unadorned expression that goes straight to the point, with a hint of fruit in the sweetness, which is the most genuine concern.
If you want to experience the ultimate taste of white tea that doesn’t show off the mountain or dew, don’t insist on the truth that ‘good tea is not afraid of boiling water’! The water temperature of Silver Needle can be set to 85-90 ℃, while Peony can be slightly raised by 5 ℃. This can not only avoid the heat brought by high temperature and the green grass aroma of new tea, but also make the sweetness clearer.
As for picking thicker and older longevity eyebrows, the water extraction rate is low, and they can withstand scalding and high temperatures.
For some aged longevity eyebrows, why not soak them a few times before cooking and drinking? Under high temperature extraction, rich sweet substances such as pectin, polysaccharides, and jujube fragrance can all satisfy your appetite. You can also DIY and add two red dates, half a piece of tangerine peel, and no matter how much you tinker, the old longevity eyebrows still love you sweetly.
A few days ago, the water silver needle brewing method was popular in the white tea circle. Teachers who surf the internet all year round have already practiced it. The reason why it was not widely spread is that this water floating method produces tea that is sweet but has a light taste!
Perhaps the teacher needs to pursue something else besides sweetness. However, this is also a sweet soaking method, you may want to give it a try.
Although old white tea is a favorite of teachers, chasing fresh tea is a decline. When brewing fresh white tea, especially silver needles, do not immediately use old, poorly sintered, and unglazed coarse pottery vessels. Thin and light porcelain is the best match for white tea, as it dissipates heat quickly and restores the true sweetness of white tea.
If it’s pressed tea, remember to be gentle when prying the tea. If the tea is broken by violence, it won’t be as sweet anymore.
In the upcoming hot summer, let me teach you a trick: cold soak silver needles, sweet and refreshing, completely can say goodbye to happy and fat house water.
03 Should we pursue sweetness when making rock tea? Sweetness is a kind of adjustment
The sweetness of rock tea carries a bit of talent, but also a game of technology.
The sweetness of rock tea has a hint of ‘you chase me, I hide’, especially when it officially appears in the tailwater, and it is a pure Versailles home stadium.
From a drinking perspective, sweetness is not the only pursuit of rock tea. It is a blend of multiple flavors that is extremely interesting, but sweetness is still an indispensable seasoning.
If you have a sweet taste and a longing for it, even with more hearts, you can drink it.
If you want to drink something sweeter, of course, you have to start with choosing tea. We know that the higher the maturity and fermentation of tea, the less likely it is to be bitter. Although rock tea is harvested from mature leaves, there are also reasons such as weather and craftsmanship that make it tender. If you want sweetness, don’t pretend to be tender.
Tender cinnamon
Which type of rock tea is sweeter? Well made, Zuhuo tea is sweet, and the rich orange yellow color of the soup makes you feel sweet and oily just by looking at it; Light roasted rock tea can feel its most primitive freshness and sweetness, but if not brewed well, it can be a bit risky.
The tea soup and leaf base of light fire tea
Once the tea is chosen, the amount added also determines how sweet it will be. Generally speaking, when adding tea, one should exercise restraint and choose less rather than more. Does soaking rock tea at a lower water temperature make it sweeter? In fact, high temperatures do not affect the sweetness of rock tea. We just need to manage our time well.
The first brew of rock tea has the highest sugar content and is the most concrete, so if you love to eat sweet, don’t miss the first brew and don’t let it cool before drinking; The tea soup has arrived in the teacup, don’t be impatient, hold steady, wait for five or six seconds, and be ready to welcome the sweetness! Most of the time, it can be so sweet that you can’t hold back the corners of your mouth.
But you can’t just sit down and drink the first sip because you’re addicted to sugar, otherwise you’ll get the opposite of sweetness.
The sweetness in the middle of rock tea is subtle and comes from pairing. If there are too many scenes of “bitter, spicy, salty, and sour” in the middle and you need sweetness to soothe your injured taste buds, you can open the lid after each course to cool down, or shorten the soup time. This way, the tea will not only be sweeter, but also more durable, but it will be more monotonous and boring.
If you blindly pursue sweetness when drinking rock tea, you may miss out on its extremely rich and colorful life. It may not be a bit of a loss. More often than not, you can drink something good and be patient. When the tailwater comes, the spring breeze and rain like sweetness will be at its peak, even if you have suffered too much before, it will melt away.
When the eyes of the mouth only have sweetness, it’s too dull. Why does the teacher never forget the rock tea and the white tea in the small mountain field? He tirelessly travels to unlock more flavors.
We cannot make perfect tea, nor can we make perfect tea. If it is sweet enough, it is sweet. If it is not sweet enough, we should not force it. If we force it, it will be bitter. We should let tea be ourselves.
Despite the imperfect weather in the rock tea production area this year, the tea makers still did their best to make relatively perfect tea, especially the cinnamon hairy tea extracted from Niulankeng this year, which not only played a beautiful battle, but also had the best overall performance in previous years.