Tagged: food safety

Not Every Plant Cut Into a Rooibos Harvest Is Rooibos

A Cape weed common across rooibos country looks enough like the crop to be missed at harvest, and carries a compound the tea plant does not make on its own. Here is what South African chemists traced it to, and what independent testing has actually found.

Rooibos Ferments in the Open, So Processors Heat It Before It Ships

Rooibos is fermented and dried outdoors on bare ground, which is exactly why Cederberg processors run every batch through a heat and steam step before it ships. Here is what that step actually does, what a 2014 peer-reviewed review found it does not fully guarantee, and how long the kettle you already use needs to run to close most of the gap.

How Rooibos Is Processed

The Ministry's standing account of how a cut branch becomes tea, from the fermentation heap and the drying yard to grading, the food-safety step every batch clears, the weed that has to be kept out, and the separate path that ends in an extract.