Tea roaster?

[Bubba_tea]

I read the Hou De blog on his tearoaster - but I'm not sure how it works. Does someone here have one? My older obsession is coffee - and I have a DIY coffee roaster that I'm sure I could hack to roast tea.

It's basically the turbo crazy roaster http://biobug.org/coffee/turbo-crazy/

It consists of a turbo oven / convection top, and stir crazy popcorn popper on the bottom to stir the coffee beans. I don't know if the tea roaster uses radiant heat or a convection heat? I think convection heat would dry the leaves more - maybe too much?

I think the stirring arms breaking leaves though - so might not use the stir crazy part...

[Salsero]

Tenuki has done some roasting using a rice cooker.

[wyardley]

I read the Hou De blog on his tearoaster - but I'm not sure how it works. Does someone here have one? My older obsession is coffee - and I have a DIY coffee roaster that I'm sure I could hack to roast tea.

If you look at the close-up of the inside at Hou De, you can see how it works - there's a metal screen on top of a heating element. There's nothing that tries to move the leaves around - I think that would break too many.

The smell of roasting tea is sooo good.

I've definitely also heard the rice cooker thing (or that you can do it in the oven).

[hop_goblin]

In all honesty, tea roasting is an art that is honed by making teas for many years. I think they are fine if you wish to experiment but I would rather leave my roasting to a Tea Master IMHO.

[Bubba_tea]

Hop - you bet! It sounded useful as a way to refresh stale leaves, rather than setting the initial roast.

[wyardley]

In all honesty, tea roasting is an art that is honed by making teas for many years. I think they are fine if you wish to experiment but I would rather leave my roasting to a Tea Master IMHO.

That's true to a point (especially for the initial roasting), and I'm nervous about it myself, which is one reason I haven't experimented with it.

But you've got to learn somehow; it's not exactly rocket science, and I don't think doing occasional light refresher roasts to get the moisture out of the tea or whatever will screw anything up. Practice first on tea you don't care about too much and see if you can improve it. I know a couple people who have shops who have started doing their own roasting, with very little prior experience, and the results have generally been quite good.

[Salsero]

For virtually all tea, moisture is by far the biggest culprit in making them stale. (Post-fermented teas like puerh are, of course, the exceptions.) Nigel Melican has written compellingly about the role of moisture in the deterioration of tea. Here is a post of his in TeaMail from earlier this year:

• Re: Aging gracefully ... or not (teamail group)
  Posted by: "Nigel at Teacraft" nigel@teacraft.com nmelican
  Thu Feb 7, 2008 5:09 am (PST)
  Janis, this is no mystery. I have worked on and with this phenomenon
  for 27 years on and off, to understand it and to prevent it.
  
  Simply put - if a dry tea (not above 3% moisture) is stored in
  hermetically sealed metal foil packs it will keep well and long. If
  a less dry tea (above 6% moisture) is kept in the same way it will
  lose cup quality within months, and packed above 8% in just weeks.
  Last year I was looking for some old "tired" tea for a manufacturing
  faults class I was teaching to show the typical flat taste and dry
  hay like aroma of old tea. Seeking this in my oldest tea samples I
  opened up a pouch of black tea I had made in Pakistan in 1992. This
  had been processed and dried to around 2% moisture content under
  precise conditions in our miniature tea factory and packed the same
  day in a heat sealed polyfoil pouch. Far from being tired from long
  storage it was as fresh, flavory and strong in 2007 as the day I had
  packed it 15 years before. Moister teas fare less well – I have
  purposely stored tea fired and packed above 10% and it lost quality
  in three weeks
  
  Tea moisture varies with season , the standard of manufacture, and
  the quality of packing. A Nilgiri is not necessarily better or worse
  than a Darjeeling, nor a China from a Ceylon.
  Moisture content of tea is impossible to assess accurately except by
  using the right type of moisture meter (Teacraft sells many of these
  into the industry). Tea also quickly takes up moisture from the
  atmosphere and will for example equilibrate in a steamy kitchen to
  around 10% moisture. I returned from tea making in Malawi last week
  and the conditions there at present (rainy season) are 80 degrees F
  and 90% humidity meaning that tea manufactured today at 2% will by
  tomorrow, when it is packed in hermetically sealed bulk sacks,
  already be at 6% plus. In the dry season it would be packed at below
  4%
  
  I wish I could report that vendors measure tea moisture when they buy
  wholesale and when they sell, but very few do this. In fact, some
  unscrupulous sellers may welcome moisture uptake as it adds to the
  weight of their stock, though decreasing its life. The best advice
  to the end user is probably to drink your bought teas within a couple
  of months rather than try to store them and face disappointment from
  moisture induced quality decline.
  
  Nigel at Teacraft