Aged An Hua Dark Tea – Fu Brick 2012

A rarely found aged Fu Brick made of pure material from Jiu Long Chi stored for more than 10 years

This Anhua Dark Tea is from An Hua, Hunan province, China. Fu Brick is one of the renowned and classic type of An Hua Dark Tea. It is special of its “golden flower” inside of it. The gloden flower is actually the beneficial bacteria, which is a Eurotium cristatum. It is usually considered as having health benefit.

This tea is handmade and loosely pressed into a Fu Brick in 2012. It is made of tea material from Jiu Long Chi, An Hua. The tea leaves is fat and strong, rich in nutrient component. It is using a traditional compressing technique, the whole leaves is compressed directly in a wooden mold, you can still see the whole leaves inside the brick, which is good for post fermentation. As the Tea is made of fine grade material, leaf stem is less than 2%, and it is apparent in its golden flower inside the brick. After ten years of transformation, it turned out to be a soft and sweet aged tea, it is not that earthy with heavy aged taste. Instead, it is very smooth in mouthfeel with light notes of honey and jujube.

What is the aging process of Anhua Dark Tea?

Dark Tea is a famous kind of post-fermented tea and a special kind of microbial fermented teas, which means microbial fermentation still take place after the tea leaves being processed. The special making process of dark tea helps converting the chemical components during the microbial fermentation of dark tea.

Special Making process:

The making process is quite complicated: Step(1): Kill green; Step(2): Rolling; Step(3): Wet Piling(Wo Dui); Step(4): Rolling again; Step(4): Baking and Drying ;Step (5): Compress and wrapping the maocha into different shape. And there is a special step of “Growing/creating Golden Flower” for Fu Brick to generate a special kind of beneficial bacteria – Eurotium cristatum, commonly known as golden flower.

There are three stages of fermentation for Dark Tea:

Pile-fermentation: After the tea leaves finished the step of green-killing, it undergone the first stage of “Wo Dui” “Wo Dui” means “Wet Piling”, which is the key step for the growth of microorganism that changes the chemical and nutrient component of the tea and form the special tasting profile of dark tea. The whole process of wet piling is time consuming and required several steps. The tea leaves are piled in a warm and humid indoor environment, room teampearture need to be above 25C and humidity need to be around 85%. The pile is usually around 40-100cm height, and tea maker need to wet it with water and cover it with a cloth, the tea will starts to ferment in the warm and humid pile, the pile needed to be turned frequently to avoid over-heat and sticking together. The whole stage of pile fermentation may last for around 45-60 days. The leaves will eventually turn from green to dark.

Re-processing fermentation: After the maocha finished the pile fermentation, it was then compressed into different shape, like the Fu Brick, Flower Brick or Qian Liang Brick. It needed to be steamed for compressing and shaping. In this stage, the water content of the tea is high, it will then undergone further fermentation for around 20 more days before the drying it in the next step.

Storage fermentation: After the finished Dark Tea is processed, microbial fermentation still take place during the aging process.

Weight per brick: 800g

Weight per Taster Pack: 25g

Tea Farm Location: Jiu Long Chi, Anhua, Hunan China

Harvest Time: Spring 2012

Tasting Notes: soft and mellow, honey, hint of woody and herbs aroma

Tea Liquor Colour: Bright and clear red-orange colour