- Origin Place: Lin’an City in Hangzhou, Zhejiang.
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Harvest Time: May 10, 2016
- Appearance: fine powders in light green color.
- Recommended storage condition: refrigeration
- Taste: complex layers of flavor, with an attractive taste that is brisk and slight bitter.
- Brewing: recommended to be mixed with honey, sugar, lemon or chocolate.
When brewing Green Tea Powder, the scale of tea powder to water is 1:80. In order to protect the nutrition in the tea, it’s better to be brewed at the temperature between 60℃ to 80℃. Usually, brewing Green Tea Powder, or Matcha, needs a Chasen (tea whisk, 茶筅 in chinese) to stir the tea liquid to bring out a unique flavor. The rich flavor of Green Tea Powder is given by the abundant amount of chlorophyll and amino acid in the tea.
Early in Tang Dynasty (618–907), Chinese people invented the steamed green tea – known as 碾茶 (niǎn chá: green tea leaves crushed into small pieces). It is the forefather of matcha – the Japanese tea we known today that is milled into powder from Niancha.
See also: the most renowned tea reviewer in Song Dynasty, also a great writer, Cai Xiang (蔡襄), wrote about tea contrast in his work The Record of Tea: press the tuancha cake into small pieces, then grind it; use a sieve to separate out powders, and then brew the tea powders with boiling water. Good tea has fine aroma and taste.
As the custom of drinking tea was changing, in Ming and Qing Dynasty, the way of brewing tea was much similar to the modern ways. Niancha disappeared in tea’s history.
Nowadays, Green Tea Powder is made in this process: steam fixation – rolling – drying – milling. During the steam fixation, the number of some oxide starts to increase, like the flavonol and ester. The component ionone is produced. They form the unique aroma and taste. Thus steam fixation can bring the Green Tea Powder a special flavor and light green color, different from normal green teas.
Tea Tree – Jiukeng Plant
The fresh tea leaves of making Green Tea Powder is from the Jiukeng tea trees. It is also known as Jiukeng large leaf species, seeding family, bush, mainly distributes in Chun’an, Kaihua in Zhejiang Province and Shexian in Anhui Province. In 1985 it was verified as a national specie of number GS13023-1985 by the National Crop Variety Certification Committee. The spring tea has one bud and two leaves, and contains about 3.4% of amino acid, 20.9% of tea polyphenols, 13.3% of catechin and 4.1% of caffeine, which is suitable for making green tea. The dry tea is green bloom, with strong aroma and heavy flavor.