12/22 Tie Kwan Yin #11-15, #21-25 House OG

After trying many teas over the past few years we have finally settled on Tie Kwan Yin Oolong as our house tea. It has an earthy, nutty taste as opposed to being floral. We tried a whole new brewing method that I’m liking a lot. It’s two fifteen minute steeps of 1 oz of tea using 6 cups of water for both steeps.

We harvested this on 12/28 after only 6 days. It’s been cold out and our heater has been on a lot. This tends to make for a warmer brewing environment and calls for a shorter fermentation period. Babs thought it was vinegary enough but it didn’t fizz much when we bottled it. We added 1/2 tbsp of sugar and will check it in 9 days however I suspect it may need to go longer.

Wow, we checked this after 5 days in second fermentation and it was explosive. It’s our heater affecting the second fermentation! We’re down from 9 days to 5. We’ll see how this tastes after it cools.

12/15 – Snow Pear Oolong #91-94 Ginger #1-4 Plain

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This is another Silk Road Teas Oolong called Xue Lie or Snow Pear Oolong. It is also the second batch made with multiple steeps although I’m starting to question this method. It will be nice to get back to the Tie Kwan Yin so that we can compare the brewing methods. These teas we’ve been trying from Silk Road are more floral so it’s hard to compare. We let last weeks batch ferment for 8 days and it turned out to be too long now that our heater is fixed so we’ll let this batch go only seven days in first fermentation.

We harvested this on 12/22. It tastes more floral than we like and tastes a little weak. We flavored one batch (#91-94) with 1 tbsp of ginger and 1/2 tbsp of sugar (didn’t fizz much) and the other batch (#1-4) with just 1/2 tbsp of sugar (it fizzed a little more, probably had the first steep).

I let the ginger go too long, five days. It was incredibly explosive. I can’t let ginger go more than 2 or 3 days!

12/7 Monkey Picked Tieguanyin #81-85 Plain Oolong

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We are trying a whole new way of steeping the tea called the “Asian way”. The tea we used for this batch is Ma Lu Mie (aka Monkey Picked) Tieguanyin Oolong. The details are in the Recipes section but essentially we do multiple 1 minute steeps of 6 cups of water each until we have filled the jars to the lines (about 10 1/2 cups). For two batches we used 3 oz of tea. Before steeping we washed the leaves in a quick bath of 190 degree water. After cooling to room temperature we add 1 1/2 cups of starter buch from the previous batch, transfer the SCOBY and put them on our fermentation shelf for, depending on the weather, about a week.

We harvested this on 12/15 after an eight day fermentation. Surprisingly it was too strong, especially the batch with less than an inch of SCOBY. Now that our heater is fixed we can’t let it go longer than seven days. We threw one batch away and flavored the other with a full tbsp of sugar to try to make it drinkable.

11/28 Tie Kwan Yin Oolong #61-64

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We used 35 grams of Tie Kwan Yin Oolong for this batch. We steeped it for 5 minutes in 6 cups of water, added 5 cups and 1 cup of sugar along with 1 1/2 cups of starter tea.

We harvested this on 12/7 and flavored it with 1/2 tbsp of sugar.

11/28 Darjeeling #71-76 Grape Ape

Grape Ape

This is our third batch using the Darjeeling from Vahdam Teas however this may be our last Darjeeling for awhile. I believe after this we’ll move to pure Oolong. We used the usual recipe of 28 grams of tea with 11 cups of water and a cup of sugar steeped for 4 minutes.

We harvested this on 12/7 for a nine day second fermentation. This is our last batch from our heater issues so we’ll probably be going back to seven days although the winter season may change that. It tasted pretty vinegary. We added 1/2 tbsp of sugar and 1/4 cup of concord grape juice.

11/19 Oolong #51-55 Plain Jane

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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 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 cup 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 11/28 after a nine day first fermentation (our heater has been broken so we needed to let it go longer). It still tasted a little weak so we’ll do a two week 2nd fermentation with 1/2 tbsp of sugar.