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 Tie Kwan Yin from DavidsTea. We’re not sure what Oolong we used from DavidsTea when we ran out of Tung Ting. We’re kinda thinking it was the Oolong Supreme but we’ll try this for awhile. 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 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 11/5. Babs thought it tasted great so hopefully we’ve found the tea we used before that we liked more than the Tung Ting. Now our two batches are Golden Monkey and Tie Kwan Yin. Anyway, since we had an extra 1/4 cup of sugar in this first fermentation (we are going back to 1 cup starting this week) and it tasted sweet we added 1 tsp of sugar.