Rock tea can be said to be a quite unique existence, and some personalities even appear contradictory and conflicting. The most typical and easily noticeable personality is facing the same rock tea, which is bitter in the mouth for novices and sweet in the fleeting bitterness for experienced drivers.
If Rock Tea also undergoes an MBTI test, then fullness and convergence can be said to be two distinct personality tendencies.
No.1 E-shaped tea grid: The fullness of drinking tea
The feeling of fullness when drinking rock tea is not uncommon, with abundant floral, fruity, creamy, grassy and other aromas filling the entire mouth. Sometimes, they may even inadvertently escape from your teeth into the air, expressing desires that you cannot resist.
It can be seen that when describing fullness, we generally refer to the feeling of oral expansion brought by the aroma of tea leaves. It can be the richness of tea aroma, freely releasing the various colors of flowers and fruits that are stacked and accumulated together.
It can also refer to the texture of a certain aroma characteristic itself, plump and round, like jelly or glutinous rice balls, or it can be the release posture of the aroma, like a rushing airflow wrapped in it finding a vent, with a “bang” sound that really makes people dizzy.
Of course, fullness can also be used to describe the taste and sensation of tea soup. Among the five basic flavors of sour, sweet, bitter, salty, and fresh, “strong flavor” is often regarded as the sixth adjective for the basic flavor of food. It refers to a complex and comprehensive taste that can bring “richness, smoothness, fullness, harmony, expansion, and fullness” to the mouth in multiple dimensions
Related studies have found that the characteristic flavor compounds that can bring a strong and rich taste to tea soup are theanine, glutathione, and γ – Glu Gln.
Interestingly, when these three substances exist alone, they do not possess the characteristic of richness. Theanine brings a clear and refreshing taste, with a weaker richness. Glutathione is an almost colorless and odorless substance, while γ – Glu Gln is a substance mainly characterized by bitterness, as its inherent bitterness actually weakens the perception of richness and sweetness.
But when three substances coexist and interact with each other, they can bring a more lasting and lingering mellow feeling to the tea soup, as well as distinctive flavors such as freshness and floral fragrance, which is somewhat similar to what we call flavor.
This is very similar to an E-type personality, only in a collective atmosphere can one fully express oneself, while when alone, maybe after a high mood, one falls into a low emo.
No.2 Type I Tea Grid: The Convergence of Drinking Tea
The fullness of drinking tea is common but rarely discussed, while the sense of convergence is often brought up for discussion in wine and various types of tea. It’s like a reticent Type I person, whose internalized personality brings about a mysterious temperament that triggers infinite imagination and speculation.
The sense of convergence usually refers to the oral sensation brought by the taste of tea soup with a certain concentration and stimulation. For example, we often experience this sense of convergence in the domineering cinnamon. The tight and enveloping tactile sensation brought by the entrance and passage of tea soup is particularly evident on the tongue coating.
The concentration of a single substance in the tea soup can bring a sense of convergence, such as ester catechins, which have a more bitter taste and stronger oral astringency. The TP content in the tea soup also shows a positive correlation with astringency.
Because tea soup itself is a multiphase system composed of multiple internal substances and their interactions and aggregation, studies have shown that the astringency sensation of tea soup is more caused by particle molecules formed by the aggregation of various substances such as sugars, polyphenols, caffeine, catechins, and free amino acids. When the diameter of the particle molecules is greater than 200nm, there will be a significant astringency sensation.
The strength of this sense of convergence is not only related to the content of the tea’s internal substances themselves, but also to the amount of dissolved substances, the degree of activity, and the speed of aggregation into particles. In this regard, brewing techniques are particularly important.
Under high temperature brewing, the dissolution rate of flavor substances and the speed of “clumping” will be faster, and it is easier to form large particle aggregates that produce a sense of convergence.
We are not easily able to feel a sense of convergence when adding soup when the water comes out quickly. This is because these proteins and caffeine are still in a free state, and the particles formed can be in a weak binding state. Simply put, they are not familiar with each other and have not yet entered a heart and lung digging relationship. In this state, the “clumping” particles formed are easily dispersed by various external forces, so the sense of convergence is not too strong.
As the tea brewing time prolongs and everyone becomes familiar with each other, the viscosity of the gathered flavor substances will become stronger, and the sense of convergence will gradually come with this cohesion. Compared to the desire for expression with a full and abundant feeling, the sense of convergence is not naturally a natural maturity.
Because astringency is often accompanied by bitterness, unlike plumpness which is almost always a positive review, many people believe that astringency is caused by process defects, which is not ruled out but not the only one.
As mentioned before, different brewing techniques can also bring about varying degrees of astringency, and teas with mineral texture and a feeling of wood ash can also create a certain astringency sensation in the mouth.
To sum up, plumpness can describe both aroma and taste. It is one of the manifestations of rich substances in tea soup, while astringency is more used to describe the taste of tea soup. It can be formed by the aggregation of substances or the concentration of a single substance, and the evaluation varies.
Fullness and astringency are not two mutually exclusive feelings. Just like humans, the personality traits of extroversion and introversion are not completely lacking in a person. Fullness and astringency can even coexist in a cup of tea, with a rich aroma accompanied by a certain degree of stimulation and mineral texture in the tea soup, embracing both.
Xiangbi Rock Cinnamon Mountain Field in Danyuan, a hill top mountain field surrounded by mountains in the center of the sky