Kenyan Tea Master

01/06/2026

🍃🇰🇪🇨🇳 Cottage Tea Factory Experience: Kenya vs China 🇨🇳🇰🇪🍃

Tea connects cultures, and the journey from leaf to cup tells a unique story in both Kenya and China.

🌿 Kenya Cottage Tea Factories Kenyan cottage factories focus on small-batch specialty teas sourced from smallholder farmers. While Kenya is globally known for its strong black CTC tea, many cottage processors now produce:
✅ Purple Tea
✅ Green Tea
✅ Yellow Tea
✅ White Tea
✅ Orthodox Black Tea
These specialty teas are gaining international recognition for their rich antioxidants, unique flavors, and premium quality.

🍵 China Cottage Tea Factories China's tea culture spans thousands of years, with many family-owned and artisan factories producing handcrafted teas. Their specialty products include:
✅ Green Tea (Longjing, Bi Luo Chun)
✅ White Tea
✅ Yellow Tea
✅ Oolong Tea
✅ Black Tea
✅ Pu-erh Tea (Dark Tea)

Chinese cottage factories emphasize traditional hand-processing, regional identity, and diverse tea styles developed over centuries.

🌍 The Shared Experience Both Kenya and China rely on skilled tea farmers, careful leaf selection, and specialized processing methods to create premium teas. China leads in tea diversity and long-standing traditions, while Kenya is rapidly expanding its specialty tea sector with innovative products such as purple tea and orthodox handcrafted teas.

☕ From the misty highlands of Kenya to the ancient tea mountains of China, every cup tells a story of craftsmanship, culture, and passion.


Kenyan Tea Master Kirimi

11/03/2023

06/05/2022

🌱🌱In terms of tea, we may mention fully fermented, semi-fermented, and lightly fermented. But are they the same as the fermentation of other food (e.g. yogurt, vine, vinegar)?🧐

Let’s learn more about that!

🔍What is the fermentation?
The so-called fermentation usually refers to a certain decomposition process of organic elements.
Such phenomenon has been known for a long time, but nearly 200 years it has been understood its nature.🙂

🔍Tea fermentation
For tea, the same green leaf is processed into green tea, black tea, oolong tea, etc. by controlling biological oxidation, which is more like enzymatic reactions, perhaps better known as biological oxidation.

The bio-oxidation of tea is a series of oxidation processes of catechins that are promoted by oxidase after the cell wall is damaged.

In the cells of tea, catechins are present in the cell fluid, while the oxidases are mainly found in the cell wall, not in microorganisms.😮

So the cell wall needs to be broken. This also naturally explains why fermented tea needs to be kneaded. In black tea, the degree of oxidation of polyphenols is very high, which is called full fermentation; the degree of oxidation of polyphenols in oolong tea is about half, which is called semi-fermentation.

For example, in black tea processing, the purpose of fermentation is to oxidize the catechins contained in the leaves. The leaf color changes from green to copper red, resulting in the unique color of black tea.

After the cell membrane of the tea liquid is damaged, the polyphenols, amino acids and other substances in the vacuole are gradually oxidized. At the same time, due to the oxidation of catechins, some substances in the leaves undergo chemical action, resulting in the unique aroma and taste of black tea.

However, in the production of some other kinds of tea, there are also microorganisms involved in (especially Pu’er tea).

It is necessary to distinguish between fermentation in which microorganisms are involved and fermentation in the sense of biooxidation. Otherwise, the conceptual ambiguity will easily lead to misunderstanding of the formation mechanism of tea.😉😉

26/02/2022

The journey of preparing this three kinds of tea.
1. Kenyan Hong Cha (Red tea)
2. Kenyan Purple Tea
3. enyan Wu Long fea

25/02/2022