Pinhead gunpowder

Where it grows

The districts recorded against this tea, all of them in China. Elevation is given as the band the district is recorded at, not a measurement of the garden this leaf came from.

• Pingshui — 50–700 metres

  How firm this is: Inferred from general knowledge of the district rather than measured or taken from a source that states it.

How it is made, in order

Read top to bottom: the list is the production sequence, and the sequence is what makes this tea its category rather than a neighbouring one. The same leaf from the same bush becomes a green tea or a black tea depending on where the heat falls relative to the bruising, so reordering these steps would not vary the tea — it would produce a different one.

1. 1. Kill-green (fixation) — Denatures polyphenol oxidase and related enzymes, arresting enzymatic oxidation.
2. 2. Rolling and shaping — Ruptures cell walls to expose leaf juices, and forms the leaf into the shape it will hold through drying and storage.
3. 3. Pearl forming (chao gan cheng yuan) — Compresses each piece of leaf into a sphere by continuous agitation against a heated pan wall while driving off moisture, so that shaping and drying happen together and the finished pellet is hard rather than pliable.
4. 4. Drying — Reduces residual moisture to a level at which enzymatic, microbial and oxidative change effectively stops, stabilising the leaf for storage.

The route it is made by

The steps above are what happens; this is the named production route they belong to, with the other teas made the same way.

• Pearl-formed green tea (zhu cha) — A Chinese pan-fired green in which the shaping and the drying are one operation: the leaf is worked against a heated pan until each piece closes into a hard pellet.

  Where it is practised: Zhejiang above all, with Pingshui near Shaoxing as the historic centre — the trade name 平水珠茶 comes from it. Produced elsewhere in China for the same export markets, and consumed overwhelmingly in North Africa rather than in China.

What its chemistry turns on

Every true tea contains caffeine, catechins and amino acids, so listing them would say nothing about this one. What differs is what the processing above does to them — and that is the same list of steps, read for its chemistry instead of its craft.

• Kill-green (fixation)
  • locks 2-Phenylethanol
  • locks Anthocyanins
  • locks Catechins
  • locks cis-3-Hexenol
  • locks Green-leaf volatiles
  • locks L-theanine
  • locks Leaf lipids
  • locks Methylated catechins
  • locks Theogallin
• Rolling and shaping
  • converts Leaf lipids
  • creates Theaflavins
  • raises Pectins
• Pearl forming (chao gan cheng yuan)
  • converts Chlorophyll
  • creates Pyrazines
  • lowers Soluble sugars
• Drying
  • creates Strecker aldehydes
  • raises Beta-damascenone
  • raises Thearubigins

These are statements about the leaf and the cup. What any of these compounds does in a body is a different kind of question and is not answered here or on the pages linked from it.

History

The tightest gunpowder grade, and the one that dominated the nineteenth-century clipper trade because it packed densely and resisted moisture. Its role in Moroccan mint tea descends directly from that export route rather than from Moroccan production.

TeaHQ synthesis — TeaHQ's own reading of well-attested general knowledge, with no single source behind it.

Brewing

• Western brewing (teapot or mug)

  1.5–2.5 g/100 ml · 80–90 °C · 1 authored infusion

  Needs: Western teapot

  Open in the brew assistant

• Moroccan mint tea preparation

  1.5–2.5 g/100 ml · 95–100 °C · 1 authored infusion

  Open in the brew assistant

• Gongfu brewing (gaiwan)

  3–4 g/100 ml · 75–85 °C · 4 authored infusions

  Needs: Gaiwan

  Open in the brew assistant

Vessels this tea suits

Recorded against the tea rather than against a brewing style, because the vessel does not always follow from the method — a whisk needs lateral room whatever the schedule says, and compressed leaf needs a pick before any method applies at all.

• Berrad (Maghrebi teapot) — The finer rolled grade used in the same preparation and the same vessel.

Common mistakes

• Using boiling water and a long steep — gunpowder becomes genuinely harsh faster than most greens.

When the cup goes wrong

Written against green tea as a category rather than against this tea in particular, and worked back from the symptom to the likely causes in order. 37 apply to the category; the first 6 are shown.

• I bought a big bag to save money and it was stale before I finished it — A large quantity bought at a good unit price faded well before it was drunk, so the saving turned into waste.
• I bought a water filter for my tea and it changed nothing — A filter jug or tap filter was bought specifically to improve the tea, and the cup tastes the same as it did before — with the same dullness, the same film and the same scale in the kettle.
• I have too many teas open and most of them are going stale — A dozen or more packets are open at once, three or four get drunk regularly, and the rest fade quietly on the shelf until they are thrown away.
• Leaves stick to the cup, the pot and my teeth — Fine leaf clings to the inside of the vessel, comes through into the cup, and ends up in the last mouthful.
• My bamboo whisk is losing tines — Fine bamboo tines snap off during whisking and turn up in the bowl, and the whisk feels stiff and splayed.
• My cold brew tastes like faintly flavoured water — After a night in the fridge the jug is pale and tastes of very little, with none of the sweetness cold brewing is supposed to give.

Every diagnosed brewing problem

If you like this

Grouped by why they were suggested, strongest reason first. Nothing here is a blended score — a suggestion appears under the best reason that exists for it, and never under a weaker one as well.

Compare this tea with another

Where this tea is drunk

Documented practices that name this tea. Each page describes what is done and by whom, and separates what is recorded from what is repeated.

• Attaya in Senegal and the Gambia — The Saharan three-glass service adapted into a West African street institution: young men making tea for hours at a bench outside, with named rounds, a competitive standard of foam, and a whole vocabulary of waiting around.
• Saharan three-glass tea — Two small pots, a charcoal brazier, a great deal of sugar and two hours: the Mauritanian and Touareg service in which three glasses are made in sequence, each one different, with the foam built by pouring the tea back and forth between glasses.