June 2/2018
This is the compression of pu-erh tea cake in a Yunnan tea factory.
The loose leaf pu-erh tea will be weighted to fixed quantity eg. 357g and 200g in the first step. And they will be packed in a cloth bag. Then the cloth bag will undergo hot steam to soften the dry loose leaf. After the leaves are softened, they will be squeezed into a round cake shape. Then the round cake will be further compressed by a machine to make it more tightly compressed. And the cake need also to be compressed by a stone mode to fix the shape for some time.
In the final stage, the cake will be sent into drying house for drying. The moisture of the tea cake is controlled below 6%.
In Yunnan, some factory will also use sunlight to dry the tea cake. But now it is generally believed that sunlight drying of compressed tea cake is not a good way, which will make the tea cake smell stale. Because the moisture inside the cake can not be lowered fast by sunlight natural drying.
Changsha Wufeng Tea Co.,Ltd
