Our latest special is actually a return to a very limited edition of a black tea Kombucha that we have made few months ago.
The name of this Kombucha, as usual, comes from the name of the tea - Black Jungle Tea.
We sampled this particular tea almost a year ago. Few months later, we have decided to see how it comes out as a Kombucha.
The tea is really of high quality, and what usually goes with that, is of a high price (about 400 Euro/kg).
The tea leaves look gorgeous, and they smell wonderful.
The tea has a beautiful color, and it is malty and very fruity.
Black Jungle Tea comes from Taiwan, from Sun Moon Lake area, and it is a Ruby 18 cultivar.
"Ruby 18 is a modern Taiwanese invention, also known as Sun Moon Lake black tea. This cultivar is a cross between indigenous Taiwanese tea bushes and Assam varietal bushes. It was bred by a member of the Taiwan Tea reform institute back in 1999." see here.
It is semi-wildly grown, which means that the tea trees are not pruned.
This tea, which is available through Tea is the Answer, right here in Berlin. It is also a thee times prize winner. And it is pesticide-free.
Tea is the Answer lists the following tasting notes on their website:
"Gelatinous. Amazing tapioca and berry fruitiness in the aroma. Sweet malty notes."
From our experience, we already know that any high quality tea, and especially black teas and darker oolongs, make a good quality, and a very tasty Kombucha.
So, when we made the first small batch of Kombucha, it was obviously delicious.
After posting our Instagram post about it, we got a message from Gregor, who sources all the yummy teas for Tea is the Answer. He had some broken leaves from this particular tea (called tea fannings), and he was generous enough to send them to us (Thank you, Gregor!).
Visually, those fannings might look like a lower quality tea, flavor-wise there's really no difference, especially when you brew them for Kombucha.
So, we were very happy to get them all the way from Taiwan. This way, we can make more of this tasty Kombucha, and we can share it with our customers.
Especially, that Kombucha made with fannings will not break anyone's budget.
So here's how this tea looks like:
Still beautiful, and it still has a great aroma.
When we make Kombucha with it, we steep the tea twice.
That's how we proceed with any complex dark, or black tea. It would be a waste not to do that.
Above, is the first steeping, and below is the gorgeous color that this tea gives.
Even after fermentation, Black Jungle Tea Kombucha was still quite chocolaty dark.
And it looked great inside the bottles.
As it can be seen, we filled these bottles by hand, as opposed to our normal procedure - bottling with our bottling machine.
Sometimes we do that, especially when we do not have too many bottles to fill on that particular day.
When finished and conditioned, we obviously have to taste it to compare the flavor notes.
Those notes will change a bit with time. It is quite normal for good quality, complex teas.
Kombucha made with them ages exceptionally well, and they usually taste even better after a year (or two), than when they are only few weeks, or few months old.
The initial tasting notes are: a young red wine with berries!
Very yummy.
Ingredients: Filtered and Revitalized Water, Live Kombucha Cultures, Unrefined Brown Sugar, and Black Jungle Tea