Besides pu erh tea, other members of the dark tea family include Hunan Anhua dark tea, Hubei green brick tea, Guangxi Liu Bao tea, Sichuan Tibetan tea (border tea), Anhui dark tea and Shaanxi dark tea.
In this guide, we’ll discuss the different types of Anhua Dark tea. If you’re not familiar with Anhua, tea you may first read our introductory guide to Anhua dark tea.
1. San Jian Tea
The word “jian” from san jian tea means “the tip”, as it is processed from the tender leaves picked during the rainy season.
San jian tea is packed in bamboo baskets in loose form, which the oldest form tea packaging method.
According to the different grades of the raw material, san jian tea is divided into three types: tian jian tea, gong jian tea and sheng jian tea. Tian jian tea is made from the most delicate leaves, whereas gong jian and sheng jian are made from bigger leaves with a slightly inferior taste to tian jian.
2. Qian Liang Tea
Qian liang tea, literally means tea of a thousand liang (an old chinese unit of weight). Converted to modern day’s weight, each piece of qian liang tea is around 36.25 kilograms! It’s tightly compressed into a long cylinder with a length of 166.5 cm and a circumference of 56 cm. The packaging style of qian liang tea is classic: there are indicalamus leaves and reed leaves as the lining of the tea inside, bamboo basket wrapped on the outside and bound with bamboo strips.
Quality qian liang tea has a noticeable pine-like smoky aroma and an enduring sweet aftertaste, and the brewed leaves are ususally thick and big.
3. Brick Tea
There are 3 kinds of dark teas from Anhua, which are compressed in bricks. Bricks are in fact the most popular form in China, as they require less space to store. The Hei Zhuan (Dark Brick) have the original smooth and mellow flavour of Anhua’s dark tea bricks.
Fu Zhuan is another kind of brick tea. The rectangular brick-shaped fuzhuan tea is made of high quality dark maocha. Its clear amber infusion has a mellow taste with a special mixed aroma of mushroom and flower. The interesting aroma comes from the “golden flowers” inside the brick through a process called “flowering” .
At last, there’s Hua Zhuan, characterised by an aroma of pine wood with a pronounced smokiness.
If you’re interested in trying all 3 kinds of dark tea, we recommend to order the tasting set below from Teasenz.com. Click here to visit the product page: Anhua Dark Tea Tasting Box.
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