Herbal · Cederberg, South Africa
Rooibos
Caffeine-free
Not a tea at all: a fynbos shrub of the Cederberg, cut and oxidized to a caffeine-free cup of brick red.
Recipe
- Temperature
- 100 °C · 212 °F
- Plants
- 3 g
- Water
- 250 ml
- First steep
- 5:00
- Each next steep
- +1:00
- Steeps
- 2
Suggested starting point.
Time this brew with Pekoe
Aroma notes
vanilla · dried apricot · cedar
Tasting notes
sweet · mellow · caffeine-free
Harvest
January–March
Making
Harvesting 
Bruising 
Oxidation 
Drying 
Sorting
Origin
Cederberg · South Africa
In the Cederberg the rain comes only in winter and the summer burns. Rooibos holds on through a taproot sunk two meters into the sand.
Lore
Aspalathus linearis grows wild in one place on Earth: the sandstone folds of the Cederberg. Khoisan gatherers cut and bruised it long before Le Fras Nortier proved it could be farmed in the 1930s. It ferments in low heaps under the African sun, turning from green to its famous red.
