Oolong is a traditional Chinese tea produced through a unique process including withering the plant under the strong sun and oxidation before curling and twisting. We used Tung Ting from Teavana. We may go back to the Oolong at DavidsTea as it tastes a little more “oolongy”. For this batch we brought 6 cups of water to 185 degrees, added 35 grams of tea and steeped for 5 minutes covered, stirring midway through. We then added 1 1/4 cups of sugar (this is a new experiment to try to avoid any additional sugar for second fermentation) to a gallon jar and strained the tea into it, dissolving the sugar. We added 5 cups of water and let cool to room temperature. Next we added 1 1/2 cups of starter tea and transferred the SCOBY.
We harvested this on 10/8 and put it straight into bottles! That’s right, nothing added. This is our first attempt at using extra sugar (1 1/4 cup) in the first fermentation in hopes of adding no additional sugar when bottling. We’ll see how this tastes in nine days.
Taste good, sweetness perfect (Greg thinks a little on sweet side) but not as much fizz at 9 days. Will leave another day.
after 10 days of second fermentation it turned out great. Fizzy and just sweet enough. Good first batch of using an extra 1/4 cup of sugar in the first fermentation and none in the second
tried Nov 5 and didn’t pop as much. A little dry but still fairly sweet