What is Tencha？

Tencha is the raw material for matcha. In fact, tencha is a raw steamed green tea, while matcha is a refined tea made from tencha.

Production and Processing of Tencha

Tencha is a type of raw tea used in the initial processing of steamed green tea, specifically matcha. Its processing flow is as follows: Fresh leaf storage → Fresh leaf processing → Steam fixation → Loose tea cooling → Preliminary drying → Leaf and stem separation → Final drying.

1. Fresh Leaf Storage

If freshly picked leaves cannot be processed immediately, they are generally stored in fresh leaf storage equipment for preservation. Fresh leaf storage equipment comes in two types: automatic and mobile. It primarily prevents the tea leaves from heating up and turning red during the stacking process, avoids contact between the tea leaves and the ground, prevents human contamination, and ensures the cleanliness and hygiene of the fresh leaves.

2. Fresh Leaf Processing

To ensure consistent quality, the fresh leaves are first cut using a cutting machine. Simultaneously, to prevent single leaves from sticking on the steaming machine’s mesh and developing a burnt aroma that affects tea quality, a fresh leaf sieving machine is used to specifically remove single leaves.

3. Steam Fixation

Fresh leaves are best steam-fixed on the day of picking. To ensure the quality of steam blanching, fresh leaf flow meter and fresh leaf conveyor are essential equipment, whichcan ensure that fresh leaves are fed into the steam blanching machine at regular intervals and in specific quantities.

4. Loose Tea Cooling

After steam fixation, the leaves are quickly blown 4-5 times with cold air to a height of about 6 meters to spread them out, cool them, and remove surface moisture. Simultaneously, the repeated tossing ensures the leaves are fully unfolded after fixation, preventing folding and blackening.

5. Preliminary Drying

Using an extra-long drying chamber equipped with drying equipment and exhaust pipes, the tea leaves pass through a mesh stainless steel conveyor belt in the drying equipment. After about 20 minutes of drying, the moisture content is evenly reduced from about 20% to 5%-8%.

6. Leaf and Stem Separation

Because tea stems and veins have high moisture content, low chlorophyll content, and a bitter taste, the tea leaves after the preliminary drying process need to be separated from their stems. The spiral blades of the leaf and stem separator peel the leaves from the stems as they rotate, and then the leaves are conveyed to a high-precision air separator to complete the separation.

7. Final Drying

After leaf and stem separation, the leaves and stems need to be dried in different dryers. Generally, the leaves are dried with hot air at 60℃ for about 10 minutes to make coarse tencha. The coarse tencha is then passed through an air separator to remove the yellow leaves, and then cut into 0.3 to 0.5 cm long pieces by a cutter to make tencha.

From this point on, our tencha is complete. As the predecessor of matcha, tencha has many processes. The meticulousness of each step is related to the quality of the finished matcha. Only with fine division of labor and precise control can a good tencha be made from a single tea leaf!