HANDCRAFTING JA AUM (BHUTANESE FERMENTED TEA)

as taught by M. Lhamo (author of every video presented here)

Location:  Wangdue Phodrang, Bhutan.  ~4000m above sea level

Ms. Lhamo was our first guide into the world of Bhutanese buttered tea.  She is the youngest of 10 children, speaks fluent English (besides Dzonkha, of course) and happens to be a most gifted teacher.  Hospitality at her family's home was unbelievable.

Before we dive deeper into the consumption of traditional buttered tea, we must tackle perhaps the most surprising fact that we encountered when we landed in Bhutan:  a VERY large proportion of the 'tea' consumed in the country is not made with Camellia sinensis plants.  

Bhutanese people, like other ethnic Tibetans, traditionally imported tea from China (primarily from Yunnan, Hunan, Sichuan).  But since Bhutan was isolated many years, its people developed techniques to handcraft tea from a variety of wild plants that are readily available.  

Ms. Lhamo provided the following short videos and local names of the plants used in her region. For convenience, the names have been transliterated into Roman characters.

Robji Marp རུབ་སྦྱིས་དམར་པོ། (Parthenocissus Semidordata)

La Yi Lechu ལ་ཁའི་གླི་ཆུང་། (Sorbus sp.)

Jagay Lama བྱ་རྒས་བླ་མ།  (Scurula sp.)

Tepshi Shing (Malus baccata)

Sonam Choja (Hypericum perforatum)

HANDCRAFTING PROCESS

1. Mix all the leaf species and chop them into smaller pieces.

2. Boil approximately 10 minutes.

3. Strain the leaves.

4. Sun dry 2-3 days

5. Boil the (previously dried) tea leaves in an aqueous solution with ash (from oak or barley) or baking soda.  This process takes 30min - 60min; it continues until the leaves turn dark brown.

6. Sun dry again (about 1 week).

In the next blog post, we will explore how to serve this wonderful tea. 

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Drink some tea!  If you'd like to try M. Lhamo's tea, please check out the Divine Madman's Special Edition:  40g of C. Sinensis tea + 10g of Ms. Lhamo's herbal fermented tea) at O5.