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Tea leaf from Anhua, Hunan

Fu brick tea (Fuzhuan)茯砖茶

Fu brick tea is made in two ferments. Rolled leaf is first piled wet for up to 40 hours, where yeasts and bacteria change it into raw dark tea. That tea is steamed and pressed loosely into bricks, which sit warm for about three weeks while the yellow "golden flower" mould Aspergillus cristatus grows through them.

Fully documentedTea leaf22 days – 23 days

Recipe

No fixed amounts recordedFactory process. One primary pile studied held about 930 kg of rolled leaf (Li 2018). No recipe amounts are published for the bricks.
Rolled fresh tea leafPiled at about 78 % moisture for the primary dark-tea pile[li2018]
Raw dark teaBlended, steamed and pressed for the golden-flower stage[xiang2022]
No starter in the traditional processXiang 2022 describes Aspergillus cristatus as present on the fresh leaf and becoming dominant through the indigenous microbes alone[xiang2022]
Starterspontaneous (Aspergillus cristatus is on the fresh leaf and becomes dominant through indigenous succession)

Total time across the recorded steps: 22 days – 23 days

Start
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280–320 °C

What changes: Mature leaves are fixed with heat to stop their enzymes, then rolled

Step 1 of 6
Sprinkle, kill-green and roll the fresh leaves
Time
Not documented
Temperature
280–320 °C
Reported
Salt
None given
Acidity
Not documented
Which microbes the steps name, step by step
Cyberlindnera
Lactobacillus
Bacillus
Aspergillus cristatus

Mature leaves (one bud and three to six leaves) are sprinkled with water, fixed and rolled twice by machine. Output: rolled green leaf.

Flavour
Not documented
Texture
Not documented
Colour
Not documented

Microbes at work in this step

Methylobacterium and Klebsiella among bacteria; mixed fungi on the leaf

Method

Measured measured in a studySet fixed by a specification or tested recipeReported one source reports itTypical a general value, not sourced for this fermentUnconfirmed not yet checked against a source

At a glance

Fu brick tea is made in two ferments. Rolled leaf is first piled wet for up to 40 hours, where yeasts and bacteria change it into raw dark tea. That tea is steamed and pressed loosely into bricks, which sit warm for about three weeks while the yellow "golden flower" mould Aspergillus cristatus grows through them. Made in 6 steps over 22 days – 23 days. The longest step, grow the golden flower (fa hua), takes 21 days (Xiang M 2022) and runs at at least 25 °C (Xiang M 2022). Aspergillus cristatus and Cyberlindnera yeasts (to 95.52 % of fungi) and Klebsiella (to 99.06 % of bacteria) in the primary pile do most of the fermenting.

Key numbers
Main step21 daysReported[xiang2022]Grow the golden flower (fa hua)
Temperatureat least 25 °CReported[xiang2022]Grow the golden flower (fa hua)

What makes this one different

Fu brick tea adds a second, fungal stage to raw dark tea. After blending, steaming and pressing into bricks, Aspergillus cristatus blooms as golden flower (Xiang 2022). Liang 2025 compared it with Fu loose tea made from the same raw dark tea, and found that pressing changes the metabolites and sensory properties.

Related ferments

Variants

  • Shaanxi Jingyang Fu teaFu tea is native to Hunan and Shaanxi, and Jingyang County in Shaanxi is the most famous area there (Liang 2025).
  • Fu loose teaThe same raw dark tea fermented with golden flower but not pressed into bricks.
  • Lab golden-flower bricksInoculated tea pressed into 15 × 10 × 3 cm bricks and fermented 7 days at 28 °C and 70 % RH (study).

Safety

Fu brick tea is fermented with mould. A study of 158 Chinese post-fermented dark teas found aflatoxins in 2 samples (1.27 %). The exposure it estimated for heavy tea drinkers was below the JECFA acceptable value (Cui et al. 2020). The abstract does not report Fu brick tea separately.

Hazards the sources name: Aflatoxins, found in 2 of 158 Chinese post-fermented dark tea samples (the abstract does not report Fu brick tea separately).

History and sources

Every number is labelled with how it is known. How this atlas is made

Fu brick tea is said to date to the Ming dynasty in Hunan. It is a necessary component of milk tea and butter tea for nomadic groups in the border regions of southern and western China (Xiang 2022).

  1. [xiang2022] Xiang M., Chu J., Cai W. et al. 2022, Microbial succession and interactions during the manufacture of Fu brick tea, Frontiers in Microbiology 13:892437paper
  2. [li2018] Li Q., Chai S., Li Y. et al. 2018, Biochemical components associated with microbial community shift during the pile-fermentation of primary dark tea (Ba Jiao factory, Yiyang, Hunan), Frontiers in Microbiology 9:1509paper
  3. [cui2025] Cui P., Li J., Yao T., Gan Z. 2025, Fungal community composition and function in different Chinese post-fermented teas, Scientific Reports 15 (Aspergillus 91.16 % in Fuzhuan)paper
  4. [liang2025] Liang Y., Zou J., Wu F. et al. 2025, Effect of pressing process on metabolomics profiling and sensory properties, a comparative study of Fu brick tea versus Fu loose tea from identical raw dark tea, Foods 14:3053paper
  5. [wang2026fu] Wang Y., Zhen L., Li Y., Han S. 2026, Preparation-route-associated differences in color and non-volatile metabolite profiles of Eurotium cristatum-fermented Fu tea, Foods 15:2719paper
  6. [gbt9833-3] GB/T 9833.3-2013, Compressed tea, part 3, Fu brick tea (紧压茶 第3部分:茯砖茶), national standard of China (register entry read; text not read)spec
  7. [cui2020] Cui P., Yan H., Granato D., Ho C.-T., Ye Z., Wang Y., Zhang L., Zhou Y. 2020, Quantitative analysis and dietary risk assessment of aflatoxins in Chinese post-fermented dark tea, Food and Chemical Toxicology 146:111830, doi:10.1016/j.fct.2020.111830 (abstract)paper