Ivan the Tea (4). Siberian Tuo-Cha

n the last part - Ivan-Chai (3). Juan Puer fermented not all the tea after pre-drying.

The thing is that I wanted to try to make pressed tea. The analogue of Chinese is 沱茶 (tuo cha), tocha.

To do this, the rest of the dried, non-fermented tea laid on a thin fabric.
In principle, everything has already started to do wrong, but so far the process itself, about the mistakes later.

And sent all this steamed.

Not for long, a few minutes for a couple, so that the leaves warmed up and became soft for pressing.

I put the steamed tea in a mold. As it perfectly fit the marble mortar. And at that moment I realized that all this had to be done before drying. That is, steaming and pressing a wet sheet. But it was already late and decided to continue.

Tea after the day of being under the press, despite the fact that it laid it there was not enough wet, it was well pressed and after another couple of days of drying at room temperature, this cup turned out to be this. Not quite like the Chinese, so, as in the bottom there was no deepening.

All this beauty was packed in paper.

A month has passed and before preparing this post I opened this badge. Basically, due to the fact that I bought a normal parchment and decided to repackage the tea.

At the same time he took a close-up photo. In appearance the tea was very different from all the others.

I do not know what influenced the view so much. Additional steam treatment and a little fermentation under the press or something else. But not only the sight, but also the smell and taste changed.

Crumbling part of the wine, I made a try.

Well, it's hard to describe ... Unexpected taste.

Let's start with the smell. Flower-chocolate, probably, a little with vanilla.

With taste, everything is more complicated. The tea turned out to be very playful, like a good cognac ... A few gradually opening aftertights prevented him from understanding exactly what it was. The first wave of wood with a haze, almost immediately replaced by fruit flavor, perhaps pear, and then added notes of chocolate and all this against the background of the first wood taste, like cognac from an oak barrel.

Tried the three of us and agreed on the opinion that we can not compare with teas, namely with aged alcohol))) About the same effect in good Shen-Puerh, only the taste of the other is quite recognizable as ivan-tea.

To drink this in the usual way, brewing for large mugs is not worth it. The taste is very rich and irating, so it's better to use the method as I described in the Siberian tea ceremony

In general, this part of the experiment was very pleased, made conclusions for the future and put it aside (in the photo on the right) for about half a year approximately, then it will be possible to try it normally and tell the result.

And ahead of a couple of experiments.