Opinion: The Tea Market is Better than it's Ever Been Thanks to Machines
One of the best things to happen to the tea market as a whole was the invention of tea making machines. Tea making machines often get a bad wrap because everyone puts emphasis on “traditional making” but tea machines are very likely the reason you can afford delicious and well made tea.The tea market as we know it today is only possible because of modern machines.
People underestimate just how hard and time consuming it is to make tea. There are countless variables to control. The three variables that discern quality are making, terroir and weather. The difference between a good Tie Guan Yin and a bad are the result of those three points. Out of the three, weather is the most unstable and one of the biggest advantages to machines is their ability to negate the negative effects of bad weather.
The importance of machines truly dawned on me a few months ago as I sat in the tea room of a white tea maker.
We sat in the “tea room” of his “tea factory”. I put these words in quotes because while they were technically true, the more honest truth is we sat in one concrete room where he drank tea next to another concrete room where he made his tea. We sat at his table surrounded by metal shelves filled with tea and bare walls with chipped paint covered by maps of the region. It was my first time sitting with this maker so I was asking him questions about his history. He had been making tea for more than 30 years and used trees mainly planted by his uncle 50 years before that. When I asked if things were different from when he started he couldn't help but laugh at the near absurdity of the question. “Of course,” he said. “When I started we had no electricity. We didn't even have lights.” He said pointing up at the single bulb hanging from wires which was the only source of light in the room. “The tea back then wasn't good. It's much better now.” It was when he said this that it clicked in my head. “Because the weather here isn't so good?” He nodded. “Back then we made a lot of tea for jasmine because when you add jasmine you couldn't taste the flaws.”
White tea making relies heavily on the environment the tea is in. If you are trying to make white tea without machines you are at the complete mercy of the weather. A day can start clear and then turn cloudy, thus jeopardizing the quality of your tea. Rain can completely ruin your tea. Even if your tea is inside on a rainy day, the humidity will rise to a point that puts your drying tea at risk. What machines allow makers to do is control variables such as humidity and room temperature and create an environment that leads to the production of great tea.
Air conditioners, air beds and even large fans can help tea makers control humidity and temperature to create favorable conditions for tea drying.
White tea, more than any other tea, is at the mercy of the weather. Made mostly by a slow and controlled dry, the making of this tea relies less on the hands of the maker and more on the environment it's drying in. An unsuitable environment means bad tea. Modern making allows makers to negate bad weather and create favorable conditions. 
The machines that improve tea making are not just to negate weather though, they are also for improving the more hands-on steps such as baking and sha qing.
A few years ago I helped in the production of 100% handmade Hou Kui. My job was to take teas fresh out of the wok, fold them, and place them on the basket for baking. It was here that I first saw the struggle of traditional temperature control.
Natural sources of heat, such as wood fire or charcoal, fluctuate. As they sit they will naturally cool down as the heat source is used up. Once you add more wood or coal they will spike in heat, only to start slowly cooling again. The problem is, without machines you don't exactly know how hot they are. To get good control there needs to be someone whose job it is to tend to the heat. For woodfire Bi Luo Chun making, the tea maker who is working the wok yells commands to someone behind the stove feeding the fire. When I helped make the Hou Kui, there was a charcoal master whose only job was to tend to the charcoal and make sure the temperature was correct. Even with a charcoal master it was a common occurrence to check the teas the next day and find that some of them were not completely dry and had to be rebaked. The beauty of electronic baking and propane or electric woks is that you can select a temperature and the machine will reach that temperature and stay there. When you want to change the temperature you can turn a dial and the machine will accurately change the temperature and once again stay there, no fluctuation. This not only allows very accurate tea making and even the possibility of experimenting with temperatures which may lead to better flavors, but it also drastically cuts down on the man power needed and thus the final cost.
Yield also benefits from machines as it is easier to do multiple tasks at once since you no longer have to keep an eye on as much, you can set a time and temperature and then walk away to do other things. What this results in is a higher yield of tea that can be kept at a certain level of quality for less money. For us tea drinkers this means more tea and a more affordable price as much of price is based on how much of that tea was created. The higher the yield, the lower the price.
Tea is not the only drink to benefit from modernization. It is widely accepted that Sake is the best now than its ever been. As a recent article states
“It was not until recent years that production of a relatively high standard in flavor was realized.”
This new standard of flavor is only possible because new technologies have allowed makers to grind the rice closer to the center without cracking it, a process that is central to sake making and a distinguisher of quality. The making of sake and tea includes fine controls of numerous variables such as temperature of the material and environment. In the past controlling these variables took lots of man power and even then the control was not 100% stable. The result was that fine tea was harder to make and more expensive to make. The stuff that was affordable was much less refined and lower quality. The use of machines has allowed tea makers to ensure a level of quality at a much lower requirement of man power and focus than ever before. The result is a tea market where smooth, fresh and floral tea are more abundant than ever at a price that even a bigger one can enjoy. The tea market and tea culture as we know it today would not have been possible if it weren't for modern making machines.