Tea manufacture
AssigneeUnilever Bestfoods North America, Division of Conopco, Inc.
InventorsTanuja Venugopal Rao, Prakash Dattatraya Virkar, Pratyaya Chakrabarti, Ravi Mohan, Suri Krishna Mohan, Jayati Pal
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Abstract
A process to make tea with higher yields of a desired size comprising the steps of: (a) withering green leaf tea and optionally other materials (b) size reduction (c) fermentation (d) extrusion of the size reduced or fermented tea leaf mass through holes in a perforated body (e) cutting the extrudate (e) drying The desired size of the tea is preferably Broken Orange Pekoe (BOP), Broken Pekoe (BP) or Broken Orange Pekoe Souchung (BOPS).
Claims9
1) A process to make a black leaf tea product with higher yields of a desired larger particle size comprising the steps of:
- a) withering green leaf tea
- b) reducing the size of the withered green leaf tea
- c) fermentation
- d) extrusion of the size reduced or fermented tea leaf mass through holes in a perforated body
- e) cutting the extrudate
- f) drying to give the black tea product
8) A process as claimed in any preceding claim wherein the extrusion step occurs after the fermentation step.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.