Trilliant Industry

evaluations

Since oolong tea have its flavors from 3 aspects, ways of evaluating teas should also cover those aspects to tell the quality.

See how producers evaluate teas.

good teas should have dried, fresh , clean and floral aromas.

Judging Criteria:

1. Outlooks & aromas:

Colors and shapes or dried leaves. To see if leaves are fresh, even in shapes, not broken and rolled properly.

2. Liquid color:

To see if liquids provide the proper colors (different kind of Oolong has its color), if liquids look crystally bright, clean and not turbid.

Liquor needs to be transparently clean with aroma.
leaves should be elastic and have slight fragrance.

3. Fragrances:

Smell the liquids and tea leaves to tell the notes and strongness-weakness of fragrances.

4. tastes:

4.1: there are 5 Tastes: Sour, sweet, bitter, salty and umami. sweet and umami are good, why rest 3 are not.

4.2: Mouthfeels: Aftertaste, viscosity, smoothness, fineness and purity.

Commonly Seen Problems of oolong teas;try to avoid those teas.

Dry tea can’t tell you how good a tea is, but it surely can tell you if a tea isn’t good.

1. Non-fresh: Post-oxidation due to (1) improper packing (2) too much moisture remained (3) improper production methods, which are considered as serious shortages.

2. Astringency: Caused by improper sunlight withering, indoor oxidation or flipping methods. Considered as the most serious shortage.

grassy notes is a guarantee of many shortages of a tea; it’s consider a bad performance in our viewpoint.

3. Grassy notes: Caused by either unproper plantation management, unproper oxidation methods or unproper frying process.

4. Burnt smell: Caused by either frying or roasting.

5. Blunt mouthfeel: Caused by too much oxidation thus the tea is less vivid when swallowing.

leaves after brewing can demonstrate many things about this tea in terms of the cultivar & how it was produced.

6. Plain tastes: Caused by too mature leaves or unproper oxidation processes, thus the tea doesn’t have sufficient viscosity and flavors.

7. Stuffy smell: Caused by improper frying or stirring methods, which leads to less umami in teas.

8. Odd smell: Anything that doesn’t belong to the origin teas.

9. Added smell: Any smell added to teas manually.