Basket drying vs pulling the old fire
Both dry leaf in a basket over charcoal and they could hardly be more different in intensity. Basket drying is still, low and patient; la lao huo carries the basket over an intense fire for a second or two at a time, again and again, passed between a relay of workers.
processing method
What is being compared
Point by point
| Aspect | Basket drying (hong gan) | Pulling the old fire (la lao huo) |
|---|---|---|
| Heat | Low and steady. | Very high, in exposures of a second or two. |
| Contact time at temperature | Long. | Extremely short, repeated many times with redistribution between each pass. |
| Labour | One person watching a basket. | A relay of workers, because no one person can sustain it. |
| Final moisture | Low. | Very low — lower than a still basket reaches without scorching. |
| Risk | Under-drying if the fire is too gentle. | Scorching, which is exactly what the brief exposures exist to avoid. |
| Where it is used | Widely in Chinese hand manufacture. | Specific traditional teas where a very low final moisture is the point. |
The short answer
The relay exists because there is no other way to reach that final moisture without holding the leaf at temperature long enough to burn it. It is one of the clearest cases in tea manufacture of a labour-intensive practice that survives because the physics has no shortcut.
Not a ranking. TeaHQ publishes no ratings and does not know your occasion.