hi friends welcome back to our Channel Happy New Year I hope you're 2023 is off to a great start
uh I'd like to thank you all for the support over the years and we look forward to lots more fun in
the year to come if this is your first time tuning in my name is Zhen Phil and I run an online tea
boutique specialized in fine tasting grade Chinese tea in this YouTube channel We do videos about how
to brew uh travels tea process Tea Garden and all the itty-bitty little things about Chinese tea and
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today we are gonna talk about maocha, hairy
tea. okay I was just joking it's not hairy tea the character Mao in mao cha this character has
many meanings and it's most uh usually translated as fur hair or feather but it can also mean angry
or nervous is also a unit of Chinese currency and in this term Mao cha this mao means it's roughly
done but it's not yet finished so maocha means the teas that is mostly done but not ready to go
to the retail market for us to consume yet at the maocha state the shape and the taste of the tea is
quite close to the finished tea and the quality is roughly set every little details in tea processing
contribute to the quality of the tea however there are some say key steps that really set
the tone for the tea for example in green tea it's the kill green and in oolong it is the shaking the
oxidation process mao cha with a few more steps the tea will become cheng pin cha which means a
finished tea like the teas we see in the stores that are ready for us to brew the term maocha is
often used in puerh or oolong talking about pu erh tea maocha means dried loose leaf sheng puerh but
it's not pressed yet then after sifting steaming and pressing it becomes the pressed sheng puerh
sifting steaming pressing these all sound like those trivial steps but these steps can also
be very technical for example steaming how much do you steam the tea to soften it is actually [Music]
quite tricky to nail because if it's not soft enough when you press the tea it will
break then it affects the overall quality of the Tea cake or if you steam that too much make the
leaf overly soft and then it will cause more trouble when it comes to pressing and drying
The Taste between puerh maocha and the finish sheng pu erh is very similar just the mao cha a
little bit to the rough side in recent years you can actually see some mao cha for sale but
in the old times maocha is not for retail Market because it's hard to transport and hard to store
I mentioned that mao cha is dried loose leaf sheng pu'er I just want to point out that dry
leaf and dry Leaf are not the same so the mao cha dry Leaf because it's intended for further
processing say steaming and pressing this dry is not oftentimes it's not really up to the National
Standard of how dry the leaves should be so if you have a mao cha at home and not planning on
finishing it in the near future just be careful of how you're storing it hi uh this is video cutting
Zhen I just realized that I made a big mistake I totally forgot to mention that um in heicha dark
tea there's also a mao cha concept it's very similar to the pu er maocha so hei mao cha is
also loose form not pressed quite close to done form of dark tea somebody asked about hei mao cha
dark cat tea there's no such thing as a dark cat tea I my guess is probably because the Mao and
Mao is the same spelling but the same spelling but different tones so maybe when I use the
Chinese input it come out as the character cat I think it's a mistake maocha is also very common
in oolong wulong mao cha means dried loose leaf oolong tea it's usually green in color
when it's green wulong after sifting and blending oolong mao cha become the finished wulong in this
case oolong maocha and finish tea is very similar in taste I just want to point out that this
bleding is not adding other ingredients to the tea it's a blend among all the different batches
another common type of a oolong is roasted wulong in this case maocha and finished tea is quite
different in taste roasted oolong such as wuyi yan cha feng huang dan cong or traditional style of
tie guan yin after sifting baking and blending the tea would have darker color rather than the maocha
which is green in color this type of mao cha is rarely seen in retail Market because how different
the taste it is from the finished tea it's usually offered to experienced the Tea Merchants like when
we go to the tea regions that's what we would taste before ordering the tea and for us a lot
of times we work with tea producers or Roasters to customize how we want the tea to be roasted
I hope this is helpful please give us a thumbs up if you like this video And
subscribe to our Channel until next time keep steeping [Music]