Black Tea Leaf Grades - What Do They Mean?

In America we enjoy our caffeine, and lots of it. Our most popular section within the tea shop centers around our Black tea portion of the wall. Depending on your palate, and level of caffeine that you wish to consume, we have just about anything. Breakfast teas, Assam, Ceylon, Java, and Chinese, and of course, we also have a small selection of decaf.

Once the origin of the tea has been decided, we move to the manufacturing process of the leaf itself. Each category has a completely different taste experience, as well as a different reaction to one’s body. The more surface area of the leaf, the higher amount of caffeine the leaf contains. You also have a different scale of leaf depending on where it was plucked. So, different grades, particulates and leaf location. Quite a lot for a beginner, so I am going to break it down for you.

When tea emerges from drying machines, or tumblers at the end of the manufacturing process, it consists of a mixture of different -sized pieces of leaf. For successful brewing, these pieces must be sorted into different grades or sizes, since different-sized particulates brew at different rates. If the particulates are of mixed sizes, the tea will brew unevenly. So, once the tea has been dried, it is either sorted by hand or passed through sifters with graduated mesh sized to separate particulates. The different sizes are then classified according to size, type and appearance. Systems of classification will vary from country to country.

Grades:

FOP - Flowery Orange Pekoe: FOP tea is made from the end bud and first leaf of each shoot. FOP contains fine, tender young leaves with buds, also referred to as tips (a mark of quality tea). Even though you will see ‘Orange’ use quite a bit whenever peering into a black tea selection, it does not mean that there is any orange in the tea, and also does not pertain to the color of liquor. The word actually comes from the ‘House of Orange’, the royal Holland family that used to have a monopoly on import/export trading throughout the old world.

OP - Orange Pekoe: The basic term for whole leaf grade tea. OP contains long, pointed leaves that are larger than FOP and have been harvested when the end buds open into leaf. OP usually does not contain tips.

GFOP - Golden Flowery Orange Pekoe: FOP with golden tips.

TGFOP - Tippy Golden Flowery Orange Pekoe: FOP with a larger proportion of golden tips than GFOP.

FTGFOP - Finest Tippy Golden Flowery Orange Pekoe: Very high quality FOP.

SFTGFOP - Supreme Finest Tippy Golden Flowery Orange Pekoe: Very high quality FOP with lots of golden tips. The numeral "1" is often added to the end of the description to indicate a top quality tea (e.g. SFTGFOP1).

Broken Leaf Grades: The term Broken Orange Pekoe, or BOP, is used to describe large leaf fragments. The same grading terminology that is used for whole leaf (OP) teas is also applied to BOP teas (e.g. TGBOP = Tippy Golden Broken Orange Pekoe). BOP teas retain much of the quality attributed to whole leaf, or OP tea, and are often used to make tea blends.

Fannings: Fannings or CTC (Cut-Tear-Curl) are leaf fragments smaller than the BOP grade, often used in tea bags.

Dust: Dust is generally the remnants of the grading process (after OP, BOP and Fannings have been removed). It is often used in ready-to-drink (RTD) beverages such as bottled iced tea. Dust particulates have the most surface area compared to other leaf grades. Therefore, this leaf particulate contains the most caffeine.

Note that the smaller the leaf cut the more overall flavor it will retain. But with this flavor overload, comes the diminished subtle nuances of what one would find in a full or orthodox leaf. It all depends on what you are looking for at that moment.

Positioning of the Leaf:

The size, quality, and positioning of the leaf is important when plucking a plant. If we were to start at the very tip, then this is the type of tea that we would want to process:

Tip – Flowery Orange Pekoe

Second Leaf – Orange Pekoe

Third Leaf – Pekoe

Fourth Leaf – Pekoe Souchong

Fifth Leaf – Souchong

Sixth Leaf – Congou

Seventh Leaf – Bohea

This is taken from a Chinese sliding scale. Souchong, Congou, and Bohea are generally Chinese black teas.

Generally, the older and larger leaves have a more distinguished taste. Whereas, your much younger leaves are very delicate and floral. It all depends on what you are trying to achieve.

Well, until next time. I hope you enjoyed it.

-Ryan

http://www.tinroofteas.com

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