Article · The process
Rooibos Sweats in Heaps for 10 to 14 Hours Before Sun-Drying
How a cut rooibos branch becomes tea: bruised in the cutter, left to sweat in watered heaps for 10 to 14 hours at 34 to 38 degrees Celsius, then dried in the sun.
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Between the moment a branch is cut in a Clanwilliam field and the moment loose rooibos goes into a packet, the leaf passes through a sequence timed by the hour, the degree, and in one stretch, the clock through the night.
Cutting the branch, not the leaf
Rooibos is not plucked leaf by leaf the way Camellia sinensis is. Once a year, from summer into early autumn, whole branches are cut about 50 centimetres above the ground. The cut branches are bound into sheaves and carted to the processing yard, where each day's cutter run works through the previous day's haul. South Africa produces more than 20,000 tonnes of rooibos a year3 (roughly 22,000 US tons), centred on Clanwilliam, with more than 8,000 farmworkers employed and about half the crop exported to more than 60 countries.
- Rooibos harvest season in Clanwilliam, South African Rooibos Council
At the yard, the sheaves go through a rotary cutter2 that chops the branches, leaf and stem together, into uniform lengths of 1.5 to 5 millimetres, the blades sharpened roughly every hour. The same pass that cuts the branch also bruises it, cracking the plant's cell walls just enough to let its internal compounds reach the air.
- Rooibos Processing: From Field to Cup, Roemer's Grinding Works
A heap that keeps its own clock through the night
This is the step the trade calls "fermentation"; it is oxidation, brought about by enzymes naturally present in the plant. The cut, bruised rooibos is spread across open drying yards, watered, and left in heaps to "sweat." According to Roemer's Grinding Works, on the Skimmelberg farm the watering starts around 3 p.m., and the heap is turned and aired several times before evening, then again at intervals through the night, roughly every four hours.
The heap is left to sweat for 10 to 14 hours at 34 to 38 degrees Celsius (about 93 to 100 degrees Fahrenheit).
Sunrise, and the part that actually dries the leaf
Work on the heap resumes around dawn. The fermented rooibos, by now a deep amber rather than the green it started as, is pressed to squeeze its own coloured liquid back through the pile, then spread thin and even across the yard to dry in the open Cederberg sun. On the Skimmelberg farm, workers reposition it through the day to dry evenly, a process that runs about nine hours and is judged finished once the moisture content drops below roughly 8.5 percent.
From there the dried rooibos goes to a processing facility for two finishing steps. First, sorting and grading: trained graders assess every batch on cut length, colour, aroma, and flavour, the same four criteria the South African Rooibos Council lists, before it is sized into the loose-leaf or tea-bag grades a buyer orders. Second, steam pasteurisation, the food-safety step all rooibos passes, set out in how rooibos is processed.
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Referenced by
- Some of the Oldest Rooibos Never Reached a Cup
- Green vs Red Rooibos: What Oxidation Changes
- How Rooibos Is Grown, From Dormant Seed to Rested Field
- How Rooibos Is Graded, and Why a Finer Cut Tastes Stronger
- Rooibos Ferments in the Open, and Processors Heat It Before It Ships
- The Cut That Used to Take All Day
- How Rooibos Is Processed
- Rooibos