How to Buy Tieguanyin Oolong Tea

First, you need to observe the appearance of the tea by looking at the freshness of color of tea leaf under the light source. If the tea looks dry dark grey should be inferior tea. The winter tea should look jade green while the spring tea is blackish green. The better one should coat with green white frost. Moreover, you should watch for whether the red edge existed, which is indicating the moderation of its fermentation. On the other hand, the small glossy appearance is telling that they are those buds lack of fermentation.

Second, it is the aroma of the tea. This is probably the easiest way for everyone. Hold the tea closely and try to smell it for three times. The good tea will continuously get stronger and stronger aroma every time you smell it, contrarily the lower qualities are used to be lack of this.

Third is the touch, which is the hand feel of tea leaf shaking on your hand. The round shape of tea cannot be felt too soft, since I could be no enough dried. As well as the weight of tea should be modest. If its weight is felt too light on your hand it could be lack of taste while the overweight could be much bitter. The higher quality tea leaves usually have the characteristic of tight and solid feel, and also you can hear crisp sound when you gently shake a few pieces of dry tea in a glass instead of dumb sound from inferior.

Finally is the brewing, the most important way to tell the difference of the quality. You only need a 5 gram of tea leaf steeped with 150 ml of boiled water for 5 minutes. Then, push aside the tea leaves with a tea spoon. The difference of the tea soup will tell the different quality of the tea leaves. The cloudy soup tells that the tea leaf is not fried enough. And the weak clear soup tells that it is rather tender and not properly fermented while the broken yellowish leaves is over fried. The color of the tea soup from the higher quality of tea leaves must be bright and thick. Due to the difference of the varieties of the tea leaves and the producing methods, the color of soups may be varied from yellow to golden yellow. Moreover, it should not have grassy smell, even if the tea is getting cold, the aroma is still around.

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