Tibetan tea of butter tea

Butter tea is the most popular and popular tea in Tibet, as long as there are Tibetans, there will be butter tea, butter tea is always indispensable in the daily life of Tibetans. Therefore, what people usually say about Tibetan tea generally refers to butter tea. So, what is the saying about this butter tea that gives the crown of highland drinks? We don't have historical data to date when the earliest butter tea appeared, but we can learn some speculation about the origin of butter tea and its approximate age.

Because people in the ancient Tubo and Bashu periods liked to add some dried fruits and ginger, peanuts, salt, etc. to the tea, Tibetans would also put some rice dumplings and ghee in the tea, if you reason according to the arrangement of these condiments, butter tea should appear for a long time, about 1500 ~ 1800 years ago.

One of the main reasons why butter tea can be popularized and popular in Tibetan areas is because of its special geographical location and climate. The average altitude in Tibet is about 4,000 meters, which belongs to the high altitude area, and the winter is long and the summer is short, and the cold has become the biggest problem here. As a result, the nutritious high-calorie drink of butter tea has naturally become the best choice for people living in alpine areas. Not only that, in order to resist the cold, the clothes worn by Tibetans are generally very thick, they make fur into cold and moisture-proof clothing, and many tents in pastoral areas are black tents woven of yak wool, thickness is the biggest feature, waterproof and warm, and white tents made of cloth are only used in summer. Tibetan houses are earthen wall houses or stone houses, with two floors inside and outside, with small stones in the middle mixed with soil and added to them for the purpose of adding weeks. As far as food is concerned, it is generally cannibalism, such as barley, green trees, buckwheat and meat, which are determined by the environment, which is a characteristic. It is precisely because of this situation that different environments around the world have produced different civilizations. Butter tea is not only a tea to quench thirst, but it can also help highland people digest the food in the abdomen very well, with cold resistance, calorie improvement, anti-hypoxia, refreshing, blindness and many other effects, and its taste is also great. This kind of butter tea mixed with ghee, salt, and tea soup is much more complex than clear tea and milk tea, and its efficacy is also different. Because ghee is extracted from milk, it has always been valued and loved by Tibetans, which is enough to explain the preciousness of butter tea. If you go to Tibet but do not drink butter tea, then even if you have not been to Tibet, so butter tea has gradually become a symbol of Tibetan food culture.

Let's take a look at the production process of butter tea, and we will have a clearer understanding of the connotation of tea culture. To beat ghee tea, you first need to burn the best tea, and then add ghee and other condiments to make a good butter tea. The method of roasting clear tea has been mentioned earlier, and it needs to be additionally explained here:

(1) When boiling tea, if the tea leaves are placed directly in cold water and burned, then the water can be used when it boils for the first time.

(2) If you like tea with a lighter taste, you can put tea when the water is boiling and there is a sound of tumbling water, add a scoop of cold water, stir and let the tea boil again for a few days to beat butter tea. Some particularly particular tea drinkers will pay great attention to these details, so that the tea soup will be boiled, boiled twice, and three times, and some bases will be boiled until four times before they are used to make tea. Such tea boiling is also mentioned in the fifth chapter of Lu Yu's "Tea Classic", that is, boiling water to boil tea and waiting for three boils.

Tibetans call the boiling of this tea "the first tumbling" and the "second tumbling." Generally after adding a scoop of cold water, it will be used to pick up the tea and then recoiled back into the container where the tea is boiled (this action is best to have four times), and it is the most common and the best effect when the second tumbling is used, and the tea taken during the second tumbling has the most full tea flavor and has a special freshness. We know that it is not enough to have only good tea for butter tea, but also ghee and salt, Tibetans in different places will be different in the use of condiments because of different tastes and different types of tea, in addition to the common ghee and salt, they will also add rice dumplings, walnuts, peanuts, sesame seeds, ginger and eggs and so on. Also, the taste of butter tea has a lot to do with the tea barrel (wooden) of butter tea, this kind of tea barrel is very exquisite, the quality of the tea barrel wood is directly related to the taste of tea, the better the wood, the better the butter tea will be, and its color, aroma and taste are superior. Generally speaking, the tea barrel is about one meter high, the inner diameter varies from size to half a foot, and it can contain a large pot of tea soup, and the barrel has a tea stick for stirring. The tea churning stick is composed of "a round wooden board and a wooden stick fixed in the center, and the wooden stick on the top is the handle, and the pull is the action of playing tea, the purpose of which is to fully mix and integrate the tea soup with ghee, salt and other condiments." The barrel body is made of the finest wood, but the particularly exquisite and wealthy people will make the appearance of the tea barrel beautiful, the outer hoop is replaced with brass, and the handle on the stirring rod is also wrapped in brass. The wooden hoop or copper hoop outside the barrel is generally six rings to eight rings, such as the barrel is longer will have 10 rings (6, 8, 10, 13, 18, 54, 80, 108, etc., is the auspicious number of Tibetans).

Some collectors make small wooden barrels for tea, and some are only more than a foot tall, especially in places such as Zhongdian in Yunnan.

The barrel has a cowhide belt of about one meter long as a ring, which is convenient for the owner to pick up, and the belt can also be pulled on the wooden pillar or stepped on the foot as a fixing purpose when playing tea. Larger wooden barrels will only come out of the temple

Now, because there are many monks in the temple, only a large tea barrel can be used to meet the needs. The function of the tea barrel in the collector is limited to playing tea, or an indispensable decoration, for many Tibetan families, it is very important to have a beautiful tea bucket.

In some humid places in Tibetan areas, tea barrels made of bamboo are also used, and butter tea mixed with the fragrance of bamboo is another flavor. Today, with the improvement of the living standards of the masses, convenient and fast modern electric tea machines have entered the homes of tens of millions of Tibetan compatriots, but most people still think that butter tea made in traditional wooden barrels has a better flavor. Because the wooden barrel has the effect of heat preservation and preservation, coupled with the faint wooden taste of the tea barrel, and the intention of making good tea for the guests when playing butter tea, there should still be someone no matter how the times change

Stick to this tradition.

After the host boils the tea, put the prepared ghee and salt in the tea barrel (if there are other condiments are also added at this time), and then add the clear tea and start stirring up and down, the more times it is stirred, the better the tea will be blended with ghee, salt and other condiments, and the better the taste.

The exquisite tea beater will spare no effort to pull the churn stick 108 times, the body exercises, the delicious butter tea also comes out, the tea is well played, and the tea taste is good.

However, it is such a seemingly simple action, but the operation is still difficult, will not play or just began to learn to fight if you should be careful to grasp, otherwise if you are not careful, the tea soup will be pulled out of the tea barrel wine, most of them will leave a piece of oil on their clothes and shoes tea stains, which is a very shameful thing. The quality of tea making technology can be distinguished from the sound. When properly operated, a regular, orderly sound will be emitted from the tea barrel. In fact, playing tea is also a very interesting thing, many people will sing the six-character mantra of the Buddhist scriptures while playing tea, or sing some very good tea songs. After the tea is beaten, the left hand grasps the mouth of the barrel, and the right hand holds the tape and slowly pours the tea into the teapot. Because it takes some time to make tea, the tea will get cold, so it needs to be heated a little to drink.