Yellow Sun is a Chinese tea belonging to a rare category of yellow teas.
The other tea categories include the following: white teas, green teas, oolongs, hong cha (red tea), black teas and puerh teas.
Teapedia writes this about yellow tea:
"
Yellow tea (|黃茶) usually implies a special tea processed similarly to green tea, but with a slower drying phase, where the damp tea leaves are allowed to sit and yellow. The tea generally has a very yellow-green appearance and a smell different from both white tea and green tea."
There are of course many varieties of yellow tea and Yellow Sun is just one of them.
It comes from from the Huang Shan Yellow Mountains, in Anhui, China.
It is light in color and it has a sweet, nutty flavor thanks to its unique drying process. After freshly picked leaves are dried they are covered with a warm, moist cloth for a few hours so the aroma is detained in the leaves. This process removes the grassy notes from the tea.
The production process is time-consuming and a bit complicated. Mansa Handcrafted Aged Tea
writes this in their blog:
"The technique of making yellow tea is time-consuming and complicated compared to other types of Chinese tea. Only an experienced tea master can make it as the method calls for a skill that is becoming increasingly rare.
The first few steps are the same as those of green tea. After picking young leaves of tea plants, tea farmers wither the leaves and pan the at a lower temperature.
Once the tea is half-dried over strong heat, yellow teas go through a unique process called menhuang, also known as "yellowing", "sealing yellow", "smothering", or "wrapping". In this step the tea master wraps the warm leaves in paper, causing "micro-fermentation" and creating loose leaf teas with mellow sweetness and creamy texture. It is up to the tea master to determine the number and the time required for "wrapping" steps.
Because this step can be hard to execute well, yellow teas need to be made by an artisan with a high degree of craftsmanship."
Because of this unique process, yellow teas develop extra health benefits. The above mentioned Mansa lists the following:
(Consumption of yellow tea) delays signs of aging, promotes healthy metabolism, regulates bad cholesterol, improves dental health and prevents neurodegenerative diseases.
For more details, please visit their website.
From the way this tea looks, it could pass for a black tea.
Here's the concentrated broth from steeping for our Kombucha.
And the leaves after steeping.
After about a week of fermenting, the Yellow Sun Kombucha is ready.
Nice natural bubbles and now it's time for bottling.
When we have small batches and not too many of them, we tend to fill our bottles by hand. When we have more, we use our bottling machine.
Our filled bottles undergo the process of second fermentation (F2) to build up the natural carbonation.
Then few more days of conditioning inside the fridge, and then the fun begins.
With this one we even took an outside shot, so we have Yellow Sun in the yellow sun.
Ingredients: Filtered and Revitalized Water, Live Kombucha Cultures, Unrefined Brown Sugar
and Yellow Sun Tea