Baking Tieguanyin

Tagged: baking, charcoal-style-tieguanyin, oolong, tieguanyin

This topic has 7 replies, 3 voices, and was last updated 13 years, 9 months ago by Leo.

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- 2012.02.17 at 9:48 am #8444
  
  Manila Tran
  Participant
  
  I was trying to rebake some green style tieguanyin from last year and things seems okay the first three weeks after the bake. Some strange smell comes from the batch today. I cannot describe it, but it seems like grass or something. It is not good. Is there any tips in remedying this? I have almost 8 kilos of that now 🙁
- 2012.02.18 at 4:00 am #9285
  
  Leo
  Participant
  
  I have written about rebaking tieguanyin in the charcoal style tieguanyin tea selection review article:
  
  https://www.teaguardian.com/Tea_Varieties/oolong_anxi_charcoal_tieguanyin.html
  
  To understad your situation better, I’ll need to know the technical details of how you have rebaked the tea.
- 2012.02.18 at 4:01 am #9286
  
  Leo
  Participant
  
  I hope the tea was not a too expensive one
- 2012.02.19 at 8:12 am #9287
  
  Manila Tran
  Participant
  
  I followed your spec in that page. The oven was a large one at a tea trader friend, about 1 m wide and slightly less in depth. The tea was a autumn special grade, quite expensive and very aromatic when fresh.
- 2012.02.20 at 2:56 am #9288
  Leo
  Participant
  It seems to me there are two problems here:
  8 kg of tieguanyin covers only quite a thin layer in an oven that size. That means the tea is either over baked or baked with a too short duration.
  
  Recent autumn harvests of tieguanyin are typically very short fermentation and short of initial drying to maintain their floral aroma. These teas are NOT suitable for both storage for maturing and for rebaking: they are too much like green tea. To turn around that the process is too complex for me to explain here.
  The mentioned article has briefly discussed that too. I am sorry abt your situation. However, it is possible that if the tea is not over-baked, you can try resting it for 6 more months and give it another round of slow fire. It will not be a magnificent tea, but the grassy smell maybe killed and the taste a lot more acceptable.
- 2012.02.20 at 12:00 pm #9289
  
  Manila Tran
  Participant
  
  You are right, it was quite thin and I shortened the first round of baking to less than 30 minutes to avoid burning. It was actually even less than 8 kilos. I heard from another tea master that it is okay to rebake autumn tieguanyin before deciding to rebake mine.
- 2012.02.23 at 6:19 am #9292
  
  Hokusai
  Participant
  
  I tried baking in my home oven and failed too, but only less than one kg and many years before I read that essay by Mr Leo. It was a big waste. I am glad that traditional baked style tieguanyin is available in the market again now, but cannot find a god one yet.
- 2012.02.24 at 3:09 pm #9302
  
  Leo
  Participant
  
  I’ll have some very good selections of that in my shop to be launched hopefully soon. Have patience, my friends.
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