During the first class, we worked on a Buddha's Hand Oolong I received in Spring 2012. The bag of tea was rolled up, but it had not vacuum sealed after I opened it last year. The tea was a bit stale and it lost some of its strength. I initially thought to turn it into a medium roasted tea, but didn't like the results from my experimentation. The "Buddha's Hand" fruit taste disappeared quite a lot through the roasting. I roasted a second batch and intended to preserve the Buddha's Hand tea flavor. I touched this tea up in my mini tea roaster for just about an hour: 40C for 30 minutes and then 50C for 30 minutes. The touched up tea is noticeably more fruity and has more tea body, too!
Next, we tasted a DaWuYeh Phoenix Oolong. The original tea tasted fine, but I wanted it to have a deeper body. I touched this Phoenix Oolong up in the mini tea roaster for more than an hour: 40C for one hour and 50C for another 20 minutes. The tea tasted deeper, with a longer lasting aftertaste, too.
Then I used a candle and a Yixing tea pot to do spot roasting. I wanted to show the participants that they can easily use a small tea light to roast some tea at home. To make this method easier, you can use a butter warmer stand and set the tea pot on top so that you don't need to hold the pot the whole time. Some butter warmer stands are taller than others and will cause the tea pot to heat up a lot, so from time to time, lift the tea pot from the stand and set it aside for a bit. This method only takes around 15 to 20 minutes and the results are pretty clear. You will have a nicely roasted Oolong to drink for sure!
In my next post, I will share experiences and insight from our second roasting class. If you ever try any of this at home, please share your results with me!
