I have my own Camellia sinensis (aka tea plant). What is the process involved in making green tea.?

What I need to know is when to pick the leaves, how to process them and how exactly to make black tea-how to ferment and how long. Thanks!

I have my own Camellia sinensis (aka tea plant). What is the process involved in making green tea.?
There are so many different types of tea that it may come as a surprise to learn they are all made from pretty much the same plant. Of course, some are flavored with essential oils (Earl Grey, for example, has oil of bergamot, which is made from a type of bitter orange) or fragrant herbal additives (like the jasmine flowers added to jasmine tea), but the basic ingredient, the tea leaf itself, comes from the Camellia sinensis plant. It should perhaps be clarified at this point that we are talking about caffeinated teas, not "herbal" ones. Herbal teas have only come to be called teas because they are steeped the way the real thing is. Officially, an herbal tea -- that is, one made completely from dried mint leaves or chamomile blossoms or rose hips or any combination of herbs and spices that does not include the leaves of the tea plant -- is actually an infusion or a tisane.





The tea plant is an evergreen shrub. As the name Camellia sinensis suggests, it is related to the same camellias that are popular with American gardeners because they produce showy, fragrant white or pink flowers during the winter, when most other plants are dormant. In fact, wherever you can grow garden-variety camellias (basically, in parts of the country where winters are mild), you can probably have a tea bush. And although it won't produce a quality or quantity of leaves that would justify going to the trouble to pluck, prepare, steep, and sip them, you can still enjoy the yellow-centered white flowers and congratulate yourself on possessing such a versatile and historically important plant.





All tea begins with the harvesting of the newest foliage from the bush. Only the unopened leaf bud and the top three or four tenderest leaves on a branch are ever used. Next, the freshly plucked leaves go through a process called "withering." They are put in a warm dry place for most of a day and allowed to wilt until they contain only about 40% of their original moisture. Then the leaves are "rolled" or "curled." This step used to be done by hand, with the workers grabbing bunches of wilted leaves and rolling them between the palms of their hands, pressing to crush the leaf cells.





What happens next, however, makes all the difference in the world, as a look at the meanings of just a few tea terms will show. Keep in mind that this is just the very basics of tea terminology. This beverage inspires reverence and connoisseurship, and those who are interested will find that there are plenty of tea-related phrases to learn and subtleties to discern.





All teas are either black, green, or oolong:





Black Tea


Black teas are by far the most popular teas in the West. They are the teas of fancy tea parties, of the Boston Tea Party, of the British concept of "tea and sympathy." They are sweetened and served over ice in the American South. The crucial step in making black tea is to allow the juices in the rolled fresh leaves to darken from contact with the air. Tea makers call this process "fermentation," although, technically, it is "oxidation." A similar process occurs when the flesh of a cut apple turns brown. The dark substances that form while the tea leaves are exposed to the air are produced by the chemical reactions of the tannins in the tea. They give the tea astringency, robust flavor and aroma, and they leach into hot water to produce the characteristic reddish-amber color (the Chinese, preferring to designate the tea by its color after brewing as opposed to before, call black teas "red teas"). The oxidizing stage of tea processing does not take long, no more than four hours. When the leaves have transformed sufficiently, then they are "fired," dried over heat to stop the oxidation process.





Green Tea


Green teas, on the other hand, are very popular in Asia and are only just beginning to catch on here. Green tea is made by preventing the tea leaves from ever oxidizing at all. Instead, the leaves are steamed right after the withering stage, which destroys the enzymes that would otherwise cause the darkening. The steamed leaves are rolled and immediately fired. Thus, the dried tea leaves remain green, and the brewed tea, a pale green liquid, has a subtle, slightly bitter flavor, with grassy hints of the flavor of the fresh plant. Because the tannins do not go through the oxidizing process, which has a mellowing effect, green tea can be bitterer, more astringent than black, especially if it is steeped for a long time.





Oolong and Pouchong Teas


Oolongs and pouchongs are "semi-fermented" teas. That is, they are processed the same way that black teas are, but they aren't allowed to oxidize fully. For pouchong tea, the oxidizing step is reduced to about one-quarter of the full length. Oolongs (which are more popular), ferment longer, about half as long as a black tea. Predictably, the flavor of a semi-fermented tea is somewhere in between black tea and green tea. Particularly good oolongs are supposed to have a peachy flavor and aroma. One of the best of these, Formosa Oolong, is produced on the island of Taiwan. The word Formosa comes from the name given to Taiwan by 16th-century Portuguese explorers. Ilha Formosa, they called it "Beautiful Island."