bop bop bippity bop bop bop-bop-bop apipa D I was just dancing check one two three do we have audio
check one two on the microphone my name is jo jo jo jo jomalone hi guys welcome back
to our channel it's phil here today talking about the 6 tea categories and this is our to 2.0 version
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if you're just getting into tea and you're wondering what are the six types of tea I suggest you watch this video first where we
explain some basics about the 6 tea categories then come on back to this video it will make a lot more
sense as we're gonna talk a bit about some of the often overlooked elements of tea categorization
when talking about tea types it's well known to many tea lovers that there are 6 different tea categories
green tea white tea yellow tea oolong tea black tea and dark tea this categorization
is based on the different processes of making tea in other words the fundamental differences
between black tea and green tea is basically how it's processed it's not the plant or the
origin this is only one way to categorize tea however from the processing angle we can
also take some different angles to categorize tea from plant-type there are three different types of
tea tree small tree and bush from the leaf size perspective teas can be categorized into small
leaf tea usually like your green and your black teas medium leaf teas which are your oolongs and
large leaf tea typically pureh and white teas you can also differentiate teas from their plucking
standard bud teas leaf teas even harvest season spring tea summer tea or autumn tea though types
seem to be color coded it doesn't mean that green tea looks green or yellow tea looks yellow there
are two elements we can talk about here first the color of the tea what does this mean exactly the
color of the dried leaves the liquor color or the color of the brewed leaves secondly talking about
color I often joke that there are only eight colors in my world although this is a joke it
does reflect the common fact that people's color sensitivity is quite different besides in the wide
range of colors comparison also plays a part take green for example if you put it with colors from
another spectrum this one is very green but if you put it with this set of green colors you might
want to call it more to the yellow so when we talk about green tea and its associated colors rather
than fixing on bright vibrant green like this one here keep in mind that it includes a wide range of
greenish colors long jing dragon well for instance the authentic color of that tea is actually a
yellowish green not jade green other teas ideal colors might be deep green or light green there are
also color nuances between teas for example some yellow teas feature yellow dried leaves but stale
green teas dried leaves are also going to turn yellow so how can I be sure that I'm not paying
niche yellow tea prices for a stale green tea for us tea lovers I think we will have to counter
intuitively detach the color coded naming of tea types from the color of the tea this means we need
to remember that not all green tea has to look green and don't use the greenness as a criteria
for judging green tea each tea has its own appraisal standard which cannot be criss-crossed
with other teas have you ever encountered a tea labeled as an oolong but found that it
tastes almost like a black tea or perhaps a white tea that tastes a little bit oolong-y maybe you
thought or even been told that this unique flavor comes from the terroir or the cultivar of the tea
well like I always say most most most of what you taste comes from the processing processing is a
major player in tea quality and taste the same leaves go through the same general processing
steps and don't necessarily generate identical tastes in the end because how each step is
executed greatly affects the resulting tea let's take white tea as an example it's considered the
least processed tea it's only withered and dried so it must be the easiest to make right well the
Devils in the details how do you wither it how do you dry the leaves these details can produce
totally different tea in both looks and taste do you put the leaves under the noonday Sun to dry
them or do you leave them to dry in the shade are the leaves dried after five hours or does
it take 15 hours these are the questions of mastery so the next time if you see a white
tea that has a reddish brown leaves and almost a black tea like liqueur color you can be sure that
this has nothing to do with its origin harvest or cultivar it's a processing issue of course this
doesn't mean you can't love it though how the tea is processed is the major deciding factor what the tea
type is it's not the only parameter the oxidation level and the leaves in the final taste of the tea
all play important parts in the tea types not to mention there's always type 7 which simply
cannot be fitting which simply doesn't fit into into just means it doesn't fit in one of the six
categories this actually brings us to the biggest misunderstanding of tea categories the 6 tea types
means there's six way of processing tea meaning teas in the same category are processed the same
capital wrong this notion is often facilitated by the tea processing flowcharts which really make us
feel like that there are perhaps three steps to making green tea with clear before and after in
this order this is how we make green tea these steps are actually highly abstracted and that's
not true at all there are many versions of how these steps are actually executed some might argue
that there are only two steps or maybe four steps in making a green tea it doesn't really matter
much though in my opinion because every green tea is processed differently handmade long jing or
bi luo Chun they complete all the steps in one wok firing that makes it look like it's a one step green
tea but a machine made version of those exact same teas will actually deconstruct the process into
several steps kill green and shaping might be two different steps some teas like duyun mao jian or
mengding gan Lu do a kill green then a shaping then they come back to the kill green again and
they repeated a few times even oolong teas the shaping step usually looks more like shake rest
and repeat a few times but how to shake when to stop shaking and how long do we rest the leaves
in between those different shakes these are all different from place to place things are always
evolving and changing there have been many new steps and techniques that are used in tea making
and people are always exploring more tasting elements in tea we will undoubtedly be seeing
new tea types that are made with revolutionary new methods rendering revolutionary new tasting
profiles but before that let's just enjoy a cup of well-made tea my intention of making this video is
to point out some examples and highlight that when we talk about tea we tend to oversimplify and use
a few tags to define or decide however Ming Qian is not the gold standard of green tea banzhang
doesn't equal the best puerh in the world and the 6 tea types have more meaning than simply process
like any other subject the more you know about tea the more questions are revealed in the end
were all students in the journey of tea I hope one day we can revisit the paper by professor
Chen chuan who originated this way of categorizing tea during our Sunday tea book sessions well that
wraps up today's video please give us a thumbs up if you found this helpful and share this video
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