2013 Taiwan Yilan County Tea Making Competition 3 of 3- Judging Process

Tags

Competition, Drink, Odor, Oolong, Taiwan, Taste, Tea, Uncle Cien

The deadline for tea submission is 7:00 am next day.   All tea masters had gone home to rest after 24 hours of working.  The organizer take 40 tea submissions, and randomly assign a new number for each tea which is different than the number that is assign to each tea masters.  This way the judges would not be able to influence by tea masters.

8:20am Pour first hot water.  100 degree Celsius, 4.5mins.

8:25am Pour first tea out and begin judging process.  The first run is judging Aroma. One main judge and one secondary judge.  The third person is recording the score for each tea.

8:27am Judges smell the aroma second run.  Temperature now is not as high, so tea aroma might change.  This is to confirm that the first aroma stays the same.

8:42am Jude tea flavor- first run.  Swirl couple times, then spit out.

8:50 am.  Second taste run.  Main judge pull out tea counter clockwise around tea cup to decide the tea is to hold or to eliminate.  If second judge agreed, the cup stay the same.  If not, they both taste the tea again.

8:58 am.  Third taste run.

9:00 am. Final taste run.

9:05 am.  Giving out the number rating and eliminating 21 competitors.

9:20 am.  With 19 competitors left, repeat the same procedure.

9:42 am.  Eliminating another 5 out of 19.

9:45 am.  Group different grades to judge.

10:08 am.  Final tea judge begins.  Repeat same procedure with previous steps. Some tea masters start to show up at this point to observe the judging process.  You can tell that most of them are pretty anxious.

10:25 am. Winners are decided after 2 hours tea tasting.

Results:  Uncle Cien won the third place.  We are so proud of him.

Note: Ai didn’t continue her win from previous competition.  Her tea flavor is great, but the aroma is not what judge is looking for.  Judge wants to have tea with milky flavor.

It was fun event for 3 of our family tea masters from 3 different tea shops to enter competition.  In the end, we all sit down and have our own tea tasting of what they made.  They discuss the pros and cons of each one’s tea, and noted what to do next time.  Judge’s taste might not be the same as consumer’s taste, but in the end of the day, only the well balance tea can win the competition.  END.

2013 Taiwan Yilan County Tea Making Competition 2 of 3- Battle On

Tags

Beverages, Brewing, Competition, Drink, Evaporation, Home, Humidity, Oolong, Redox, Shopping, Taiwan, Tea, Tea Competition, Tea Making Competiton, Yilan Luodong

Tea competition is open to general public for viewing.  I stay here to document the whole competition process with my iPad mini.

First, weather condition is important. It will affect the quality of the tea and how long the production times take.

• Temperature: 91 degree
• Humidity: 23%

11:06 am.  Fresh Tea arrives.  Dissipate heat before distributed to tea masters.

11:08 am.  Each tea master get 10 kg of fresh tea leaves.

11:25 am.  Oxidation Process started.  Because the sun is too strong, most of the tea masters chose to spray tea under the shade. (Most people called this process Fermentation Process which is technically incorrect.  We will write a post about fermentation and oxidation process in the future.)What Ai got today is 40% old tea leaves (bad), 40% medium leaves (good), and 20% young leaves (better).

The difference between machine cut tea and hand pick tea.  This competition use machine cut tea leaves.

1:55 pm.  On going oxidation process -2nd leaves turn. ( Wind change direction and pick up speed, Ai moves her out of the open plan.)

4:00 pm.  On going oxidation process -3rd leaves turn.  (At this point, most of the tea masters move their tea inside the building.  However, the location is ordered by the organization, for tea master get the left side of the area has advantage of those on the right because where the wind came from.)

6:44 pm.  On going oxidation process -4th leaves turn. ( You can start to smell the difference between tea masters now.  Should not produce too much aroma at this point, needs to wait till water in the tea leaf slowly dissipate. Try to reach water content to about 50%. )

8:40 pm.  On going oxidation process -5th leaves turn. (Tea leaves should feel soft now)

9:48 pm.  On going oxidation process -6th leaves turn. (Turn more frequently to stop water evaporation.)

11:50 pm.  On going oxidation process -final leaves turn. (The key is to control the speed of water evaporation.  When water evaporate smoothly, tea leaves start to curb)

1:50 am. next day.  Fixation.  280 degree C for 6 mins.   (High heat to stop oxidation process)

1:57 am. next day.  Rolling for 2 mins.  (The tea leaves become extreme hot after fixation process.  Immediately put it in the rolling machine to roll the leaves.  This remind me of when I grow up, I was in charge of this machine.  By the time the rolling process begins, it’s usually way pass midnight.  I would be so tired, but knowing my parents working so hard, I can’t just go to sleep! I let my body hang around the rolling machine and when it moves in circle  it moves my body in circle as well.  It was little fun I had. 🙂 )

2:00 am. next day.  Drying.  (High heat to stop oxidation process) 

4:30 am. next day.  Semi finish product.  ( Now it’s time you can finally get rest, the rest of the production are not time sensitive,  It can be done next day.  But for tea competition, they need to stay and finish the whole process.)

4:45 am. next day.  Hands sort the long stem out of the tea.

6:30 am. next day.  Final submission.  DEAD TIRED!!!

Side note:

Tea making is not only physical challenge, it also needs to have tremendous experience in order to master the tea making techniques.  Salut to all the tea masters that participate this time!