Gaba Oolong Tea

The Gaba oolong is a typical kind of tea from Taiwan obtained by processing the leaves in and environment without oxygen. In our offer there are also other two products similar to this (the organic Gaba oolong and the ruby Gaba oolong) where you can find more info about the health benefits of the GABA molecule which is highly concentrare in these leaves and more details about the processing of this tea. The reasons why we are offering you another version of this product are two. First this tea is made of the fresh 2020 spring harvest so it brings to your cup the freshness and fragrant tastes of this year. Secondly, this product had a less intense roasting phase than the other two oolongs and so another considerably difference in the flavor profile.

In particular this tea is characterized by how it reveals its fragrance during the tasting session. Despite the other two Gaba oolongs, in fact, here it comes first a sweet taste and only later you can find the toasted and GABA molecule flavors. The sweetness of this infuse is associable with a tropical fruit like a mango and it is paired with a slightly refreshing vegetal note. After this first impressions the infuse tends to give a warm feeling in the mouth and a taste of raw cocoa (due to the high concentration of GABA) and some woody notes. Instead of the other oolong this one hasn’t a really intense spicy feature in the flavor profile. Anyway, in order to understand better the character of this particular taste from Taiwan, we suggest you to compare the three products in our offer and deeply discover this tea using you palate.

Place of origin

Taiwan

Production

After the harvest the leaves wither under the sunlight for some hours before going on bamboo trays indoor. Here it’s where the oxidation process begins thanks to the tea master who rolled the tea leaves by hand and take care they don’t take too much fresh air in order to accentuate the production of GABA molecules. When the leaves have the desired oxidation level (around 60%) the leaves go into an oven heated up by coal where the enzymes related to the oxidation process are deactivated. After this phase the leaves are rolled into their ball shape thanks to a machine or by hand and after the tea is totally dried it’s ready to be consumed.

Preparation

We invite you to brew this tea in the traditional Chinese style (gong fu cha) in order to extract more from your leaves. Following this preparation you could use 5 grams of leaves (about 3 teaspoons) in a gaiwan of 100 ml so you can obtains more infusions with different flavors. After a brief rinse of the leaves in a 95°C water you can go with a first infusion of 10 seconds and, after that, at the same water temperature, you can do multiple infusion adding 10 seconds every steeping time (10 – 20 – 30 …).

These leaves could be steep about 7 times.

To prepare the tea in the western style we suggest 2 grams of leaves (about 1 teaspoons) in a 150 ml cup with 95°C water for a steeping time of one minute and an half.

If you want to change the recommended quantities of tea mind the fact that these leaves will expand a lot their volume in water and this could compress the leaves in the vessel preventing the water to flow free and so limit the taste extraction.

The tea could be filtered if you want to avoid some little piece of the leaves during the tasting time and also the steeping time we recommend here could be modify on your personal preferences.

We recommend you to store this tea in a dry and cool place avoiding the direct sun light on the leaves.