Fu Zhuan Dark Tea Brick

Fu zhuan, or fu brick, is a dark tea from Hunan pressed into a brick and grown through with golden flower, a yellow bloom that gives the tea its sweetness. The cup is dark amber, with malt, dried fruit and date. Brewed gongfu style in boiling water, or simmered.

Origin & Story

The name carries a history. Fu brick tea began more than 600 years ago in Jingyang, in Shaanxi, where tea from Hunan and Sichuan came to be finished before it went north and west. Jingyang sat at the last crossroads between farming China and the nomadic lands, and the tea was a necessity for the herders of Tibet, Mongolia and Xinjiang.

Zhuan simply means brick. Fu is said to come from the fu days, the hottest stretch of summer, when the bricks were dried and the golden flower grew best, though some say it also echoes the word for good fortune.

In Jingyang's warehouses a golden-yellow mold, Eurotium cristatum, now classed as Aspergillus cristatus, appeared in the bricks. It was found by accident, and tea makers learned that it made the tea sweeter and less bitter.

In the 1950s production moved to Anhua in Hunan, where the leaf grows, because hauling it all the way to Shaanxi no longer made sense, and the first Anhua fu brick was made in 1953. The leaf is steamed, piled, pressed into a brick, and then held warm and humid for weeks so that the golden flower can grow before the brick is aged.

In the cup, fu brick tastes earthy and honeyed, with malt, brown sugar and red dates, and sometimes a note like bread dough.

Break 5 g from the brick, rinse it with boiling water for five seconds, pour the first infusion off at 15 seconds and add about eight seconds a round; for a mug, 3 g in 240 ml of boiling water for three minutes, or simmer 5 to 10 g in 500 ml for three to five minutes.

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