In recent years, Matcha tea is highly popular and favored among 80s, 90s, 00s consumers with the rapidly development of new style food and drink.

Matcha tea processing include two procedure: Primary process(grind tea) and Refine process. The more procedures, the higher equipment need. However, the whole process of matcha processing is mechanized and continuous, with high degree of automation and low artificial utilization rate, which is an effective production method to alleviate the employment problem of tea leaves.

Matcha tea primary processing is called tea grinding processing. Tea grinding processing has a high degree of automation, generally reaching the whole process of continuous production. The processing is: store leaves → leaf cutting →fixation → cooling → primary baking → separation of stem leaves → secondary baking (leaf)→ tea grinding. After the first separation of stem leaves, the stem part also contains a small number of leaves, which are then re-baked in another dryer, followed by the second separation of stem leaves. After the second re-baking, the separated leaves are also used for tea grinding.

1、Store tea leaves

The fresh tea leaves can be processed as soon as arrive factory. Some of them will be stored as can not be processed in time. It need to be stored in a clean, cool, odorless, ventilated and no direct sunshine. The thickness does not exceed 90cm when storing, should be kept the freshness and prevent the leaves from turning red from heat.

2、Tea leaf cutting

To make the raw materials even, fresh leaves need to be cut. The fresh leaves of the storage tank enter the blade cutter at a constant speed through the conveyor belt for transverse and longitudinal cutting. The length of fresh leaves at the outlet is uniform, with a production of 100 ~ 500 kg/h.

3、Fixation

Use steam or steam hot wind to fixation, save chlorophyll as much as possible, make dry tea color green. With saturated steam or high temperature superheated steam, steam temperature 90 ~ 100℃, steam flow 100 ~ 160 kg/hour, green leaf flow 90 ~ 120 kg/hour, drum speed 30 ~ 50 RPM, stirring shaft speed 300 ~ 600 RPM, fixation time 8 ~ 10 seconds.

4、Cooling

The leaves are blown into the air by a blower, and rise and fall several times in a cooling net of 8 ~ 10 meters to quickly cool and dehumidify. Cool down for 5 to 10 minutes. Cool to redistribute the water in the stalks and leaves, and hold the tea leaves soft in your hand.

• Primary baking

Digging well brick tea mill is commonly used to form the unique flavor of tea mill "stove fragrance", but there are also box tea mill or far infrared dryer for the initial baking. There is a multi-layer 1.8-2.0-meter-wide stainless steel conveyor belt in the tea mill. The blades move forward in the multi-layer conveyor belt by means of air feeding and layer changing. After 4 sections of different temperature conveyor belt, the initial baking lasts for 20 to 25 minutes.

• Separation of stem leaves

The structure of the leaf separator is a semi-cylindrical metal mesh. The built-in spiral knife strips the leaf from the stalk during rotation, and the stripped tea leaves pass through the conveyor belt into a high-precision air separator to separate the leaf and stem and remove impurities at the same time.

• Secondary baking

Use the dryer. Set the temperature of the dryer at 70 ~ 90℃ for 15 ~ 25 minutes, and control the moisture content of the drying leaves below 5%.

• Tea grinding

The primary processing product of matcha after re-baking is called matcha, which has bright green color, uniform size, cleanliness and significant nori aroma.