The production process of Pu’er tea is mainly tea pressing, which is divided into machine pressing tea and manual pressing tea. Machine pressing tea is to use tea cake pressing machine, which is fast and the product size is regular. Hand-pressed tea generally refers to manual stone mill pressing, which is a traditional craft. This article will reveal the tea pressing process of Pu’er tea in detail.

The process of Pu-erh tea from loose tea (wool material) to tea cake (pressed tea) is called pressed tea.

So why is Pu-erh tea pressed into cakes?

1. Pressed into cakes for easy storage and does not take up space. It is also convenient to bring one cake and two cakes when visiting relatives and friends.

2. If Pu-erh loose tea is stored for a long time, the original dry tea aroma will be easily lost, but cake tea can last for a long time, and the older it gets, the more fragrant it becomes.

3. From the later stage of transformation, loose tea has a large contact surface with air and is easier to transform, but as time goes by, the transformation of cake tea is more stable, lasting, mellow and sweet.

Why machine press tea?

Fully automatic small tea cake machine, which integrates automatic steam, automatic weighing, and automatic cake pressing; adopts new automatic control, and can only adjust the weight, humidity, pressure and holding time of tea cakes according to the degree of dryness of tea to achieve the best Ideal tea cake effect, and improved the traditional cake pressing method to save labor, mainly used in pressing small tea cakes for various types of tea (Puer tea, black tea, dark tea, green tea, yellow tea), health tea, etc.

Why press tea by hand?

Because Pu’er tea pressed by manual stone grinding has better aroma and flavor, it is more conducive to later transformation. From loose tea to tea cake, what happened in the process?

1. Weigh tea. Put the loose tea into the iron bucket

2. Steam tea. Steam for about half a minute, as long as the tea softens

3. Bagging. Pour the steamed tea in the iron bucket into the cloth bag. Choose a suitable cloth bag according to your needs. If you want to press a cake of 357 grams, put a cloth bag of 357 grams. Of course, you can also choose to press 200 grams of small cakes, or 500 grams of flat cakes.

4. Knead the cake. Knead it into a round shape

5. Stereotypes. Press the kneaded cake under the stone mill to fix the cake shape. Generally, after pressing the iron, wait for about 3-5 minutes to take out the cake (generally there are more than 10 stone mills for pressing cakes, so under normal circumstances it is this After all the round cakes are fixed and shaped, we will put in new kneaded cakes)

6. Cool down. After the cake is cold, unpack the cloth bag and a piece of 200g or 357g cake will be out of the oven.

7. Let dry. Generally, it takes 2-3 days for the cake to dry

8. Wrap cakes. Usually packed with regular white cotton paper.

9. Bamboo shoot leaves. 7 pieces are packed in one lift, and the work is done.

In short, whether it is at Tea Cake Molding Machine or a hand-made stone-milled tea press, it is all for the purpose of pressing into cakes for storage, retaining the aroma of Pu-erh tea, and the taste of later tea is more stable and lasting, mellow and sweet.