On a recent episode of Shokugeki no Soma (‘Food Wars’ in English) the students were studying regional foods of Hokkaido, Japan. A tea made of ‘Magnolia Berries’ aka Schisandra Berries was served to the main character who mentioned the flavor being perplexing, and it caught my interest. Schisandra berries are said to posses all 5 taste sensations at once: Sweetness, Sourness, Bitterness, Pungency/Spiciness, and Saltiness.
I had a day off and I went to T&T to see if they had the berries any in the herb stores. I did find them, but the exchange left me somewhat skeptical of their quality. I asked the store attendant if they had the berries. He thought about it for a moment and went to a drawer along the wall. He pulled out a bag, it must have been 1KG and said the price was $30. I replied that it was too much quantity and asked if he had it in a smaller amount. He split the bag in half and said “ok $15”. Well I got what I came for, but how old are these things? What kind of quality are they? I guess I’ll find out.
I got home and read about them online. Seems Korea is a big user of these berries and Omija is what they are called in Korean.
https://mykoreankitchen.com/omija-tea/ was the first link I found about them. I tried using the method explained on their website (the overnight cold steep) but the liquid wasn’t so pretty and the flavor was really nothing special — just a little tart. When I got to work I did some further tests, this time with hot water.
330ml of water, 86 celsius, 2 minutes.
The wet berries give off a woodsy/forest aroma, juniper berries, lichens, labrador tea, premixed nestea iced tea powder, goji berries are other things I got. Neat. The color of the liquid was consistent throughout all of the following infusions, a sort of sandy brown with varying clarity. The more berries used, the less clarity there was, the the color was slightly darker. The color is comparable to silver needle tea, or tea in genereal that has a lot of white peony.
4.4g (1:75) at such a ratio, the infusion smelled like a discount running shoe store, and just generally dusty. The flavor was a little tart, otherwise not much going on. I recall hibiscus tasting like this.
6.6g the color was a pale sandy brown with some medicinal aromas, spicy like juniper berries. The flavor was tarter than 1:75 with a spicy/sour astringency
8.8g (1:37.5) the color was a pale sandy brown (a bit darker than 6.6) with aromas of tree bark, juniper berries, lichens, labrador tea. The flavor turned out to give some berry flavor, it was more concentrated with some sweetness. I like the direction this is going.
16.5g (1:20) I decided to ramp it up and take a big leap. Despite the earlier 3 infusions getting cloudier and darker as I added more berries, I would still say they were all 10/10 for clarity. This time the sediment haze is quite intense. I would say the liquids clarity is down to 60%. Aromatically it’s very tree like, very alive and evergreen-y. Cegar, Pine, and the aromas of the lumber yard of Home Depot or Totem. Flavor wise of course it’s more pungent, but it seems less nuanced than 1:37.5. It’s mostly just sour, and it’s borderline too strong.
11g (1:30) to dial it back the color is sandy brown, again coming off like silver needles tea in appearance. The aroma is woodsy, seemingly tart, juniper tree, and aromas of a garden center or tree nursery for evergreens. The flavor is in a better spot (the best spot so far) but I only really feel 3/5 tastes. Sour, Sweet, and Pungent.
The color of this tea from any website I visit for information is in the red spectrum, from pink to murky brick/terracotta. I guess it’s time to proceed to phase 2, its time to simmer.
I’ll proceed from here on out with a ratio of 1:30, as that’s my favorite so far.
I’ve brought 330ml of cold water to a simmer with the berries inside and started a timer when I started to see bubbles consistently hit the top. After 10 minutes I had apparently only 162ml left over. That seems too fast, especially since it wasn’t boiling. Anyway the color turned out like uncooked dry pasta yellow. The flavor was good, but for whatever reason that’s where I stopped writing. I tried adding some sweetness, via honey, it worked out well. It seemed to magnify the honeys flavor, which is somewhat disappointing because it takes away from the berries uniqueness, but the overall drink was nice.
Perhaps the reason the tea is not red is because the berries were not soaked for 12 hours prior, All of the berries used in my tests today have been mixed into a pitcher of cold water and I will let that steep until tomorrow. It will be a long soak (24h) but it should let me see whats up. An alternative reason the tea is not red is because the berries could be years old and super stale. Unless I have a chance to source some relatively fresh ones, I wont be able to know this.
The following day I made a pot of tea at a 1:30 ratio. I did not account for the weight of wet berries being more than the dried berries. I simmered the tea for 12 minutes and it came out to be a dark golden yellow / khaki color. The aroma was spice centric like juniper berries, old cedar, and sappy pine bark. The tea itself was spice centric too, but very mild, and definitely not sour. The tea turned out rather weak and flavorless. I am almost ready to give up on this batch of berries being used for making tea and instead will focus on its use as a spice. The final attempt will be to soak the berries with cold water and then prepare the tea. As mentioned previously, I did a 2 minute steep of the berries in hot water and then added those to cold water to soak overnight. They might have lost too much flavor in the process and that is why its not turning out, will update later.
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