Extra Tips on Waking Up Aged Oolong

After posting about waking up aged oolong I had gotten a lot of questions, so I thought I should post some more specific guidelines. This is a new technique for us, too, but we are very excited to practice and share. We decided to do an experiment, which I will lay out for you. I hope the outcome of our experiment will be a good starting point to practice waking up aged tea with heat.

We got the idea of waking up teas from footage shot in Taipei for the documentary. The tea brewing master she interviewed used his brazier that keeps his kettle hot to heat his clay teapot, dry, with aged tea in it. This, he said, was to wake up the tea.

We had touched up old teas before, but this encouraged us to practice it and make it a more regular part of our tea brewing.

The Experiment:

We did a side by side tasting of the '66 Aged Beipu before roasting, after being touched up in our electric tea roaster, and after being touched up in an old teapot over a candle flame. The three versions of the same tea all tasted different, and we preferred the candle flame tea.

Earlier this week, Shiuwen tried herself to touch up the tea in our electric roaster. After roasting it, she felt that although it was clearer tasting, the heat was not enough. So we tried again. This time, we tried 60 degrees Celsius for 20 minutes in our electric roaster. Despite being slightly over-roasted (had a stronger drying effect on the tongue), the tea was pretty good.

With the teapot roasting setup above, I started to heat it over the flame myself. The tea started out smelling slightly prune-like and moist. When I felt that most of the moisture was out of the tea, I showed Shiuwen. She smelled it and said "It's not done yet. Don't be afraid of the heat. And you don't need to toss it the whole time." You can see me babying the tea in the picture, continuously holding it shaking it so it wouldn't burn.

She placed the pot directly over the flame and let it sit. When she pulled the tea off the heat, we smelled the dry leaves. The fragrance was more clear, and I noticed
it penetrated deeper into my sinuses.

Brewed, the teas were all great because we started with a very good base. But the MVP was certainly the flame touched tea. It was not only clearer without the stale note, but it also 'opened' much more. The broth felt soft and round and expansive, and the scent was clear and assertive. The untouched tea was good, but the teas we 'woke up' felt like they had just a little bit more. The electric roaster tea was definitely right in the middle, clearer but without as much smoothness or roundness as the candle flame tea.

So go ahead and wake up your aged teas, if you like. It may help them to shine even more. If you discover something really awesome, let us know. We're on the same journey. And don't fear the heat, or you may find yourself outside the kitchen ;)



Written by Noah

Tea Refresh and Tea Roasting at Home Part I

I had taught a class on how to refresh and spot roast tea at home. Some of you have written me saying that you don't live in Seattle and would like to learn how to do it. As promised, I am writing about it here on my blog.

Many of us tend to buy more tea than we can drink, and even our good teas will eventually become stale. The following two methods will help you to get rid of the staleness, revive some of the strength and bring out more body in a tea (please note, this is good for a pot or two worth of teas. It doesn't stabilize a tea, so please don't use these techniques for too much tea).

The first method only requires a candle and a piece of paper. Please see the picture below:

It's very simple, but please be careful. You want to get the paper close enough to the flame for heat, but not too close that it overheats the paper; I have seen the paper get burned from time to time. If you try this method, please focus on it and do not do anything else. Hold the paper steadily so that the heat can get into the leaves. Occasionally shake the paper a bit so that the heat can evenly get into the leaves. This method requires some patience. It takes at least 25 minutes for me to revive a tea.

There is a second, simple method you can use at home. Please see the picture below:


You can find this kind of metal stand in many kitchenware stores. Use a Yixing pot that you don't care much for or from which the lid of the pot has broken. When you use this method, it's faster than the previous one. I notice that sometimes it takes only 15 minutes to revive a tea. Like the paper method, you want to shake the leaves around from time to time. You can gently shake the pot; I also like to cover the pot with my hand and give it a good shake.


So how does one tell if a tea has been revived? Smell it. When a tea is stale, you can smell the "moisture," the disappearance of the original scents, and some sort of plummy smell. When refreshing a tea, you should be able to smell the moisture leave the leaves. It seems to me like some sort of "baked" smell starts to show up. And of course, the best way to tell is to taste the tea. Try to remember the smells in the tea when you think you have done a good job of reviving the tea. Over time, you will be able to learn how to be consistent with your "roasting."


In my next post, I will talk about other ways to revive or roast a stale tea at home.