longjing

Tie guan yin Tea, world famous for its "four wonders" - emerald green color, aromatic flavor, sweet taste and beautiful appearance. Growing environment and harvesting pattern alone can’t make Longjing tea this great. The other part of the story is processing. Whether the processing is conducted well would affect the quality and price of the tea greatly.
The first step of processing is to extend the leaves in a bamboo basket, put it at a shady place for 8-10 hours, let the wind take away about 30% water in the leaves, and get rid of the scent of grass.
The second step is to roast the tea leaves in a specially made electronic steel pan. When its temperature turn to 80-100oC, put about 250g tea leaves into it and then roast for 20 minutes. This roasting is done by hand all the time. Tea masters are proficient in traditional skills of roasting Longjing Tea - grasp, toss, shake, pile, throw, buckle, press, and grind, what they call “8 Hand Movements”, a set of exigent roasting skills. Experienced tea masters know well how and when to use the certain movements according to the temperature, color and moisture content of tea leaves. A novice takes 3 years to master that and they roast not more than 1 kilogram a day.
Roasting reduces the percentage of water in tea leaves to about 10%. The third step of processing is to extent them in a bamboo basket to cool down, or we can call this resurgence, which takes 40-60 minutes.
After cooling, we need to examine the dragon well tea, screen them, get rid of the broken pieces. And roast the good ones again in the pan, of a temperature 60-70oC. The second roasting costs 20-25 minutes, until it reduces the percentage of water in tea leaves to about 5%. Till now, the Longjing tea leaves are ready to make a great cup of Longjing tea.