Wednesday the 9th of July, Guisachan visit day rolled around again.
This time the pick was more delicate, choosing only a bud and a leaf. A batch of black tea, Ti Orach, had been picked the previous week so there were not an abundance of mature buds.
All the growth was small and delicate which is perfect for a green tea pick, plus we decided to go with a significantly smaller batch.
Working with a less ambitious 1.6kg of fresh leaf this time and more prepared with a larger wok pan (to give it the real name: a paella pan).
This meant we could kill-green the full batch at the same time.
Through previous experiments, we discovered that a key stage in achieving a green tea is one referred to as kill-green. This means you heat the leaf to halt the enzymes which cause oxidisation. Ensuring the leaves stay green, and do not start turning black as we saw in Ti Deuchainn (our previous attempt).
Processing this single smaller batch worked like a dream in a larger pan. Kill-green was carried out for about 25 minutes, which involved constantly moving the leaf. Watching for any changes, the smell sweetened slightly but the most notable transformation was the feel of it in my hands. It was so good to realise there is a notable texture change to watch out for to know when to stop.
Our initial idea was to hand roll it in muslin, drawing on my small batch success. The quantity did however allow us the option of using the rolling machine again and we only wanted to roll it lightly. We rolled in the machine for about 15 or 20 minutes in total, stopping every so often to tease out any little lumps of tangled tea leaf. They turn into tangled up little balls, not unlike yarn, and you have to carefully ease them out.
When we were content with the rolling, the leaf was quickly transferred to the dryer.
At this stage I feel we might have dried the leaf at too high a temperature for a little too long.
Sampling a leaf when we took it out of the dryer and there was a slight toasted note.
Overall we were really happy with the look and smell of this batch, the fresh notes in the dry leaf were reminiscent of a warm spring day.
Creating a Schrodinger’s tea situation, I was really worried that it would suddenly change and oxidise!
Checking in on the leaf once a day I was delighted that even by the 12th of July the green colour and aroma was still there. By this point I decided to be content that we indeed created a tea that is actually green.
This tea debuted at the Tall Ships market in Aberdeen alongside Tea Scotland, and sold out within the first day.
As you can see I could hardly contain myself, and Donald was persuaded to join me for a photo with our first batch of Ti Uaine.
Ti Uaine, as you may or may not have guessed, means green tea in Scottish Gaelic.
Huge thanks to Aurora who joined us for this day, and took some fantastic photos documenting the process.
And of course for facilitating my meeting Donald and Sue which started this endeavour.
