Tagged: kill-green
Why one plant makes green, oolong, and black tea
Green, oolong, and black tea are the same leaf from Camellia sinensis. What separates them is processing, above all how much enzymatic oxidation the maker allows before heat arrests it.
Same Leaf, Split Into Green and Black, Kept Almost the Same Caffeine
Catechins collapsed by more than ninety percent between the two halves. Caffeine barely moved. Oxidation, the reaction that defines oolong, is not what decides how much of it ends up in the leaf.
Kill-Green
The heat step that arrests enzymatic oxidation in oolong. What denatures the enzymes and why it cannot be undone, the wok and the drum with their real numbers, how a maker judges it done, the two ways it fails, and the storage defect that only resembles one.
Oolong Oxidation and Roast
The two axes that define an oolong. What enzymatic oxidation is and how it is arrested by kill-green, why oolong sits partly oxidized between green and black, and how roasting is a separate step applied afterward.