Recipes for Making Tea from Tea Plants

I didn't try, but here is the translation from a Japanese book ("ocha no kagaku" editition natsumesha)

For green tea (kamairi cha),

Pick up the 4 or 5 young leaves (not yet developped).

1. Put the leaves on a dish, cover with plastic film and cook 1 minute in micro-wave.
2. Put the leaves on your table. Take a little quantity in one hand, amd massage it lightly between your 3 hands. Roll the leaves gently avoiding to make lumps. If you do it too strongly the taste will be affective. Do that with the rest of leaves, that should be done in 5 to 10 minutes.
3. Transfer the tea on a hot-plate* at 100 to 150 degree celsius. Put a gleve on one hand and take a pair of wooden chopstick in the other. Use both hands to move the tea on the plate and turn each bit. During 5 to 8 minutes.
4. When a good smell comes from it, take the tea away from the hot-plate. Clean the hot-plate [I assume they stop it too] and cover it with kitchen-tissue-paper. Spread the leaves on it and let dry 15 to 20 minutes. When it's finish, the tea will have a yellowish color and be very fragrant.

*like the ones used to make crepes in Europe and teppanyaki at home in Japan, if you have none, I think an anti-adhesive skillet can be used.

They say you can make oolong the same way (let the leaves start oxidation before nuking them).

Please, tell us if you try.

Kuri

I don't think I could manage this. Is there a procedure that requires only two hands?

Ooops ! Maybe if I stop tea, I'll manage to type one with "2" hands...

Fukamushi-Kuri (killed by the heat !)

Funny you should ask. I happen to be right in the middle of processing my very first batch of tea from the C. Senensis plants I mail ordered about 2 years ago. I have 2 plants: one a large leaf variety, and the other a small leaf variety. I live in Dallas, which is damp enough (marginally higher average rainfall than Seattle), but exceedingly hot, and with very dry summers. This spring and summer has been unusually wet, and I recently repotted the small leaf much more carefully, and the thing has absolutely taken off. Anyhow, two days ago I trimmed many branches of the gangly, sprawling plant to try to train it more upright. Since I had never actually processed any of my tea, I decided to try it with the more tender leaves I had picked. I read online many accounts of the orthodox method used in India, and tried to kind of adapt it to my own environment. For what it's worth, here's what I've done so far...

1. Seperated leaves from stems.
2. Laid all leaves outside in full sun (on a dry birdbath in my yard) for

24 hours to wilt. One evening to the next.

1. Hand rolled the leaves. This is by far the most labor intensive part of the process (this took probably 15 minutes, and I talked with my wife the whole time). I did this last night, so it's fresh in my mind. I tried several methods, including rolling them in a kitchen towel, using a rolling pin etc, but settled on a far less high tech method than even those. I took a small quantity of leaves (4 - 10), and rolled them in my hands like I was making worms out of clay. This requires pressing very hard, and rubbing very fast. Fast enough that your hands get warm doing it. I wound up actually breaking a sweat doing this, but afterward the leaves were uniformly and tightly curled, and very wet. The fewer leaves you do at a time, the more thorougly soggy and gummy they get, which seems to be the point.
2. Spread the leaves outdoors in the shade to oxidize. I put them on a small childrens table under a patio shade (along with several orchids and a couple of bromeliads).

Today they are much browner/blacker than yesterday. I've moved them indoors (my 2 year old got in to them while I was cooking dinner tonight). I plan on leaving them until the day after tomorrow (Saturday), then firing them at

250 F in my oven. Depending on how the leaves feel and smell, I'll probably try a pot soon thereafter.

If anyone would like, I have some pictures of the rolling process, and of my tea plants. If there are any responses to this, I'll post pictures of the final product, and give tasting results of the processed tea.

- Steve

suggestions.