Understanding Tea with Don Mei

Hey everyone and welcome back to Hayes Kitchen. Slight twist this week, we did a coffee series about a year ago now and I've recently given up coffee for the new year. Reason being, not because I don't love coffee, I do absolutely love it, but it makes me quite jittery. So the reason I've given it up is when I've done a few little film shoots and things, I started getting jittery hands. I couldn't work out what it was. It was just the caffeine in my three strong espressos a day. So I've got Don here from Maytea, who is literally an expert in every single bit of knowledge you need about tea. So I've brought him along today and he's going to teach me everything we need to know about the basis from growing through to serving. This is going to be your big crash course in tea, right? Yeah, but we're going to try and get this done in about a four to five minute video. Yeah, no challenge. Thanks Ian. So over to you. I want you to take control of this, because I want to learn as much as you guys probably do as well. Okay. Well, the first thing to really point out is that there's a big difference between what we're talking about today and your kind of commodity tea. Of course, it's from the same plant, but it's processed and grown in a completely different way. There's machine picked and machine grown, and then there's the top drawer, really top shelf stuff, right? Right. Okay. Which is what we're dealing with here. This is true tea. This is single estate, true tea, all loose leaf. It's like the way that I'd like you to think about it is just push the reset button. The thing about tea is it's the most consumed drink in the world, after water, yet 99 percent of people in the west know nothing about it. Yeah. I'm that person. So it's better to just start from square one. There is a plant called Camellia Sinensis. All tea comes from Camellia Sinensis, right? But just like the wine plant, which all wine comes from the grape, there are many different varieties. Right. Okay. Thousands of different varieties. I'm with you on this bit. So far we're good. Yes. I mentioned wine, we're good, right? Yeah. So thousands of different varieties, and then obviously the same things that affect wine affect tea. So the terroir, the whole kind of microclimate, where it was grown, which side of the mountain it was grown on, the soil, the surrounding nature, the season it was picked. One of the big differences between wine and tea is that wine is picked once a year. Right. Okay. Tea is picked multiple times a year, so you get different grades throughout the year, and you get high grades and low grades. So there's so much complexity in tea. There's so much to understand and to delve into. So this is going to be your crash course into it. How about this? Right. There are six types, main types of tea, and the type of tea is defined by the processing. Right. Okay? It's not defined by the plant, right? So there are varieties which are better suited to white tea and green tea. Yeah. But theoretically, you could make any tea type out of any tea plant. Right. It's the processing that makes the difference, right? So we're going to go through these. The main difference in the types of tea is the oxidation level, white tea. So what you want to find in white tea is young-picked. It doesn't have to be just buds. Sometimes it's buds and leaves. Yeah. But the processing of it is very, very simple. What they have to do is pick the leaf, and they wither it and dry it under the sun. That means, because it takes a few hours for that to happen, it will oxidize slightly. So that's about 10 percent oxidized. Okay. Something like that, right? Yeah. Then you've got green tea. The idea of green tea is to fix the leaf, to try and keep it as fresh and vibrant as possible. Yeah. So what they do is, immediately after picking, they will heat the leaf up, just like the spinach leaf. Yeah. So they'll heat the leaf up, usually in pans, if they're doing it in China, and in Japan they steam it, which is why Japanese tea tastes different to Chinese tea. Ah! Because you get more of the nuttiness, and more of the warmth, with the pan-baked, versus the very fresh, vibrant steaming. Okay. So the process makes the difference. So green tea is being heated up, and that stops the oxidation process. It's called the stay-green process, for obvious reasons, or the fixing process. That means that they can then manipulate it. You can see that this one here has been rolled up, and it's very, very, very fine. You can see it's really, really, really fine. It almost looks like it's powder, but when you actually zoom in on it you can see it is really fine, individual leaves. Right. Next up is yellow tea. The most rare tea, in terms of production levels. Hardly any yellow tea is produced. It's got a grassy smell to it. Right. Really, really interesting, kind of fresh-cut grass. Fresh-cut. It's like summer lawn. Yeah. It's also got a little bit of raw nuts. It's also got a little bit of kind of pears and apples, but very, very light. So in order to make yellow tea they will produce it in a similar way to green tea, but then after they've heated it up they'll put it in like a humid environment for about two days. Okay. What that does is it's like saying to the leaf, All right. We've stopped the enzyme oxidation. We've killed that off. But now we're going to put you in a humid environment so you can change a bit more. You can change a bit. So it kind of takes away some of the green stringency and becomes smoother, becomes rounder. Next up is Oolong tea, the biggest variety of them all. In essence, the big thing with Oolong tea is that it's semi-oxidized. So that means that you've got your greens, which are kind of 0 to 5 percent oxidation. You've got your whites, which is about 10 percent oxidation, something like that. You've got your blacks, which is kind of like anything above 85 percent. And then you've got this massive window between 10 percent and 85 percent, and that's Oolong tea. So what they do to make this tea is they'll pick the leaf. Usually they use slightly larger leaves, as you've seen with the recipe you did before. They will intentionally oxidize it, and the way that they do that is by shaking the leaf. They'll either do that on a bamboo mat, so they'll hand shake it, or they'll put them in rollers and they kind of shake it, and that just bruises the leaf. It starts to cause a little bit of damage to the leaf, and that releases the essential oils and the plant sap, and that reacts with the oxygen and oxidizes. So they're stimulating the oxidation process, which is why you can see it's quite a lot darker. So I don't know if this is just my nose, but I don't think that smells of hardly anywhere near as strong as the yellow tea. But once you put water on there, I find that a lot stronger. Yeah. See, the key thing with judging quality of tea, unfortunately, is that the dry leaf gives you, apart from the visuals, the smell of the dry leaf gives you very little indication of the quality. Right. It has to be hit with hot water, and once it's hit with hot water then you can judge it. This is a big problem for tea sellers, right? Because you go into a tea shop and everyone wants to smell the tea. That's why scented teas, and artificially scented teas, have dominated the market, right? Yeah. Because everyone's going into these tea shops going, well, I can't smell anything here. I'll buy that one, which is a Pina Colada. The bad hot water. Yeah. Exactly. I get it. So when you hit it with hot water all the artificial fragrance goes, and you're left with usually meh. Meh. Almost meh. The very technical term for bad tea, meh. So which one's the Yorkshire tea? So technically, Yorkshire tea is a black tea, which leads me on to this one here. So a black tea is fully oxidized. They take the leaf and they roll it fully. Now sometimes the most expensive stuff is actually hand rolled. So they'll actually take leaf by leaf and they'll roll. But most of the time it's done in small batches, in kind of manual machines. They just twist it up, and what you don't want to do is break the leaf. So again, you can see it's whole leaf. No, I mean in the production process. See that's got chocolatey tones to it. Yeah? Like a coconut. Absolutely. Dark chocolate notes on that one. Been doing a little research. So that's the big difference between these five, right? Yeah. I should say there's lots more, right? There's roasting. A lot of people don't realize that after a tea is made it's usually sent to roasters, just like coffee, and they have their own parameters. You get light roasted, dark roasted. So there's lots and lots to keep diving into, but that's the basics on those teas. The sixth type of tea is like a world unto itself. Okay. What's the sixth type of tea? Post-fermented tea. Okay? So what they do is they pick the leaf, and they usually pick it from very specific plants that grow in relatively wild environments. You need that kind of varied ecosystem, because what you're looking for is microorganisms that live on the leaf. Right. Okay. You want bacteria. You want good fungi. You want like, you know, really kind of interesting ecosystem. And then they'll heat the leaf up, but not too hot, because they don't want to kill it off. Yeah. And then they'll usually compress it into these cakes. And then what happens is because this tea is technically still alive, feel free to open it. Am I? Is that okay? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because I know these are not the... No. Yes. Oh, wow. So this tea is technically kind of still changing, and it's reacting to the environment. So the place that you store it is really, really important. So this is a 2016. This is nearly two years old. So this is fermenting now, then? Yeah. Okay. Because it's got a tobacco smell. Right. Exactly. Fresh rolled tobacco. Yeah. You get those kind of more plummy, dried fruit notes to the tea. That is a thing of beauty. So you have tea lovers, and you have post-fermented addicts, right? Okay. There are people that will only search for this kind of tea, right? Yeah. It all depends on the age of the tea tree. So this is 500 year old Gu Shu. When you have older tea trees, what that means is you've got longer, deeper roots, right? It's not competing for the same soil. Gu Shu. Gu Shu means ancient tea tree. Usually anything over about 150, 200 years old can be considered Gu Shu. Yeah. And because it's got longer, deeper roots, it's able to draw from soil that the other plants can't reach. Right. So it's much more mineral rich. Really, really mineral rich. Are we trying that one today? We can try whatever you would like. Really? Yeah, of course. The final thing is, if you want, right? So this is what we call raw post-fermented tea. So that's changing over time, slowly over years, and it will take about 20 years for it to get to this color, right? What they do is they speed up that process. So what they'll do is they'll take the leaf, and they'll put it in a hot, humid environment. It's fermenting super fast. It's like your kombuchas or your kefirs. Yeah, yeah. So that's going to smell a lot more earthy, a lot richer, and a lot darker. Oh God, yeah. You can almost smell the soil. Yeah. That's bonkers. So you're smelling the terroir. You're smelling those wild forests, right? So that's it. So you've got your white, your green, your yellow, your oolong, black, and your post-fermented tea. That's your crash course. Did you get all that? Because I think that was a brilliant way of explaining it. Especially to me. I'm fascinated by this. So there's so many important things about tea. Obviously, you've got the flavors in there. You've got the brewing time. You've got the way it's broken down. One of the essential things is, as a lot of you know, I use this zip tap. I'm part of their brand ambassador for the company, if you like. One of the things it does is it controls temperature, which, with tea, is one of the most important things. Is that right? Absolutely. One of the biggest mistakes that people make is they use boiling hot water on delicate teas. It's not about scalding the tea, or scorching the tea, or burning the tea. A lot of people talk about that. It's all about extraction. When you have really hot water it extracts very quickly, but the problem is then you've got less control. Because there are some notes in the leaf that you want a little bit, but you don't want too much. Just like cooking, right? You don't want to over-flood it with salt, right? So, for example, green tea has very high catechins. We've talked about that. Those are really good for your health, etc. But they can have a bitter astringent note, and some astringency and bitterness is a good thing. You want that. You don't want it to be totally flat, right? But if you use boiling hot water it's all going to come out in one go. So you have no control, right? Whereas if you use 80 degree water you can then control it. You can brew it the right kind of length of time, pour it, and you will not get so much of the catechins. So the way that I look at it, the analogy that I like to make is the temperature is like EQ on a sound system, right? It's your way of balancing it. It's balancing it. That's why the brewing process is so fundamental. You getting into the brewing process is so fundamental to enjoying tea. Do you want to go for something light, or do you want to try going for something a little bit darker? A little bit darker. Yeah. Let's go for a little bit of a punch. Yeah? Yeah. I think you should try the Oolong, because a lot of people when they first get into tea they're trying the greens, but they haven't had really experience with Oolongs. Oolong I love. I've had it just with food. Okay. So it's only with the cooking process that I've used it with. So yeah, I'd like to try that. Let's try this. This is a medium roasted Oolong, which means that it's been roasted. We're going to do it in a Gai Wan here. That's a Gai Wan, right? Yeah. Which is the very basic, but I love the primitive nature of just a bowl with a lid. Supposedly. We're going to put some Oolong in here. I'm just going to eyeball it, but that's probably about 5 or 6 grams. No one knows measurements on my channel, because I always just say a handful, or a glug. You're going to see how much this expands, though. It's really, really interesting. So some hot water. It's important, as I said, to make sure that you have the right temperature. With Oolong tea you want about 95 degree water. Okay. So it's a lot hotter. It's hotter than your green teas. As I said, it's larger leaves, right? So they have less catechins, so you don't have to worry so much about the bitterness. You want to extract a nice, strong flavor. What we like to do is rinse the tea. Yeah. Pour it on your teapot, if you've got one of those. What does that do? It's just for fun, and it changes color. They use it for kind of offerings. Sometimes you have kind of religious... The ceremony sort of stuff. It's not a ceremony part. It's a company. Then have a smell, so you can smell. Wow. The strength. So very different, right? You said that the dry tea didn't smell of too much. Now you can really smell it. What am I getting on there? A scent? The difficulty. This is what we always have to try and come up with. What is the smell? There's a real sweetness in there. Mmm. It's almost like... This is going to sound really crazy. You know the pantry smell you get, when you have a pantry with all your herbs and spices and flowers and mixtures. It's almost that sort of smell. There's not one thing. It's complex, isn't it? So this is a Taiwanese Oolong. Right. It's called Amber Gaba. I thought it was. The reason why it's called Amber Gaba is because this has actually been put into a nitrogen chamber. Right. Okay. That's the next level. So that's the next level, exactly. Right. The nitrogen chamber point is that the leaf then freaks out a little bit, and it naturally produces Gaba. Right. Gaba is a neurotransmitter that already exists in your body, and it's like a brake on your nervous system. So it's kind of calming, relaxing. It's got a chilled-out kind of feel to it, this tea. Remember, a lot of people drink tea not just for the flavor, but for those psychoactive effects. So you can get lots of different effects. You've got to be careful with that one. What psychedelic effects? You can get very tea drunk, especially with the older tea tree stuff like that. Yeah. Especially when it's fermenting away. Exactly. So cheers. Cheers. Cheers, everybody. Oh, it's a nice cuppa. So you can see it's got a little bit of that astringent drying. It's got a little bit of sourness, but it's also got sweetness. It's also got some caramel. Caramel in there, isn't there? Yeah. Especially at the end, after you swallow. If you breathe out through your nose afterwards, you get that nice, slightly burnt caramel kind of note to it. It's toffee. Yeah. Exactly. That's lovely. You can see that this has literally just started, right? This is not even close to... So 10 to 15, something like that. Yeah. I mean, 10 is a good one. It's money weight then, isn't it? Surely. Look, tea, for what you're getting, for a hand produced product like this, with the level of artisanship, it's incredibly affordable. Look, this has been fascinating for me. Hopefully you guys at home enjoyed this one as well. Let me know if you want to see more of this style video. Thank you so much for coming on the channel. Absolute pleasure. Check out Don's website and check out his YouTube channel. He's got some fascinating videos that really go in a lot more depth than this. We're talking proper 30 minute long videos. Proper geek. They're so interesting. It's called Mei Tea. Go and check it out. There's a link in the description box down below. It takes you straight through to his website. Go and click subscribe. Give him some love as well. Now, following on from this, we couldn't have all this tea without making a really interesting recipe. So following on, we're going to do a braised belly of pork, Chinese style, with some bok choy and rice. So watch out for that. And then we've got your cocktail, which is a... A Ruby Storm. A riff on the dark and stormy, but with tea. And that's going to be on Don's next week. So next Saturday, check out. I'll be posting to Instagram for that as well. And then finally, I couldn't do a big bulky main without doing a dessert. So I've come up with a matcha tea coconut sorbet, I suppose, with a chocolate crumb and a beautiful black forest glaze. Go and check them out in a week's time. Thanks so much for watching. Comment down below if you enjoyed this video and you want to see more like this. Cheers then. Bye bye. See ya.