HANDCRAFTING TEA AT HOME - Oak Ash Fermented Dark Tea

September 18, 2024

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Written by Pedro Villalon

HANDCRAFTING TEA AT HOME - Oak Ash Fermented Dark Tea - O-FIVE RARE TEA BAR

September 18, 2024

·

Written by Pedro Villalon

Location: Southwest Richmond, BC Canada

This is the second 'how to make' article featuring leaves from our micro-tea-garden The five tea bushes are aged 5 - 6 years. They are fertilized every autumn by a giant Western Maple that drops leaves all over our little garden; we also add some manure to the ground every spring, just to give the trees some extra nutrients.

We used mid summer leaves this year to produce a Mimasaka inspired bancha (see recipe here) and a Bhutan inspired dark tea. You may find the Bhutanese recipe here.

1) Harvest leaves and twigs with clippers. We used clippers to trim mostly green twigs, allowing the brown (woody) branches to remain on the plant. The twigs were then cut into smaller pieces, optimizing space in our (relatively small) kettle.

Harvesting fresh tea leaves at home for fermented dark tea

2) Create some ash by burning hardwood charcoal. We used little bits of oak. We also know that some people in Bhutan use barley husks instead, but we have not tried this yet.

Burning charcoal to make ash for dark tea

3) Fill the bottom part of a kettle with filtered water (about 5cm), add the oak ash and bring the mixture to a boil. Add the leaves and cook them (about 10 minutes) until they are soft and acquire an olive-green colour. The process can be described more like 'steaming' than 'boiling'. We stirred the leaves periodically.

4) Allow the kettle to cool down. Ferment the leaves in the kettle (covered with a piece of cloth or paper towel) at room temperature 5-8 days. This batch was fermented 6 days; the decision to proceed to the next step was based on the aroma of the leaves (i.e. they had a fruity, very appealing scent).

5) Steam those leaves again at very low heat until most of the water has evaporated. We used a rice cooker for this process, which took over 8 hours. The leaves become much darker and seem to have a shiny gloss on them. The video at the end of this post gives a better idea of what this looked like.