Tuesday, April 27, 2010

Spring 2010 Harvest Report

The South Seattle Tea Estate's first harvest of 2010 took place on April 26, 2010 at 8:00 AM. The weather was 55° F, overcast and a little bit windy. The actual harvest lasted about 15 minutes and yielded 93 individual leaf-and-bud sets weighing in at 19 grams.

The young, tender leaf-and-bud sets just before harvest.


The total 19 gram harvest.


First the leaves were withered indoors (at around 68° F) in the green stoneware bowl pictured above for 5.5 hours. Then a plate was put over the bowl, to act as a lid, as I shook the leaves very vigorously for 3 minutes. At this point the leaves were uncovered and allowed to oxidize in the bowl for about 16 hours. During this oxidation time, I occasionally mixed the leaves gently and sniffed their developing sweet aroma.

After 5.5 hours of withering and 6 hours of oxidation:


At 5:15 AM on April 27, 2010, I preheated my electric oven to 250° F and baked the bowl of leaves for 22 minutes (mixing once during the bake). After the bake, I transferred the leaves to a cool bowl, then, once the leaves had cooled down, I weighed them. The total yield of finished tea was 6.5 grams. Finally I put my newborn oolong tea into a little glass jar to wait until its debut later this week.

6.5 grams of finished tea:


I am looking for a few tea friends to join me at Teacup on Saturday May 1st at 9:30 AM for a free tasting of my home-grown tea. All are welcome. Please contact me if you'll be able to come.

7 comments:

Alex Zorach said...

This looks delightful! I would be very curious to hear how this turns out!

Sir William of the Leaf said...

Makes me want to plant some tea bushes! Could I make tea in a college dorm room...? hmmm...

Gingko said...

This is great! Show us some tea brewing pictures later! Please!

CindyW said...

How often will you be able to harvest your tea plants?

Brett said...

Thanks for the comments everybody. I'll definitely do a post in early May about how the tea actually tasted with some pictures too!

Cindy- If this year is anything like last year I'll be able to make another harvest in the late summer. (One harvest usually makes only enough tea for one small teapot!)

Nicole said...

Very cool, Brett! I love that you have your own tea estate. How did it smell while it whilted? Was it anything like what we smelled in Alishan?

Brett said...

Hi Mei Mei, It was very much like that heavenly aroma that we smelled during Alishan High Mt. oolong production!