oak leaf tea

[mr-pearson58]

hi peeps,
i remember watching one of the first river cottage programmes
years ago and hugh went to see a lady that made oak leaf tea, i've
searched the web and asked people only to be told ( i think oak leafs are
poisonius ) or the web tried to sell me tiffany tea lights with oak leaves
on. can anyone shine some light on this 8 year old thought in the back of
my mind please

[MKG]

Oak leaves are certainly toxic (eventually) to horses. People - well, I don't know. But there are old recipes for oak leaf wine, and I haven't heard of anyone dying from it. Oak concentrates tannic acid, which is an intensely bitter substance. So if you were eating/drinking stuff totally loaded with that - to the point of danger - I think you'd probably know. Come to think of it, I'm fairly sure that I and my friends (it's their fault), when we were very young, used to pick and chew young oak leaves - and that's the point at which they're supposed to be most loaded with tannic acid. Less than half of us ended up in rather nice hospitals, with very nice nurses.

On a personal note, I wouldn't worry about oak leaves at all. Not until the moon changes, anyway.

Mike

[zaxdog]

I can certainly recommend Cairn O' Mohr Oak Leaf wine

[chickenchargrill]

I've seen a recipe for oak leaf wine so it can't be that poisonous. Never heard of the tea, but if you can make wine from it, I'm sure you could make tea too.

[mr-pearson58]

thanks so much for the input. you right about the wine and first
step of making wine and beer is cooking the wort up isn't.
think i'll try it this weekend and hopefully its not foul lol.

[mr-pearson58]

i got round to trying this a couple of days ago, (it took a while dew to drying the leaves in my solar oven
which isn't that great even with alot of sun). anyway i didn't die from poisioning and it isn't that bad at all.
it just looked a little weak blonde in colour. going to make a new solar oven this weekend which hopefully
will work better and be bigger.

[Zech]

I made some oak leaf wine, and noticed that the unfermented mixture tasted pretty good, so I made up a second batch as cordial. It's really nice and funnily enough, it tastes rather like iced tea (at least, the commercial, bottled kind that I've tried).

[frozenthunderbolt]

Ok, Stupid question time.
Can i get a recipie for the wine (i've seen jack kallagers) and the cordial