eggs & tea

Now that we finally have some processed tea to share, it was time to make a site for the tea side of our farm. It’s still very simple, just a beginning, but here it is: Ahualoa Tea Farm

Our second harvest, as an orthodox black tea, turned out great. Slightly sweet, no harsh tannins, and keeps giving flavor over 4-5 steepings. Experienced tea tasters tell me that it’s unique, somewhat like other Hawaiian black tea but unlike tea from anywhere else in the world.

We brewed it a couple different ways, and just for fun, did a side-by-side comparison with a “normal” commodity black tea in a bag:

There’s no comparison – they are completely different things. I almost hesitate to call what we’ve made “black tea”, as it brings up entirely different associations for most people.

I visited San Francisco a week ago, and visited the nice people at Samovar Tea Lounge. They have a little Hawaiian tea to sell (not ours, yet) and really nice ambiance and food to complement it. I met the owners and we brewed up 10g of our tea for them and their staff to try.

From their positive reaction, it seems likely that connoisseurs of hand-processed teas will ‘get’ our tea right away.

This entry (Permalink) was posted on Tuesday, October 20th, 2009 at 2:46 am and is filed under food, tea. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response , or trackback from your own site.