Official Oolong thread!
Well I’ve had the opportunity to try almost all of the teas I purchased from Taiwan Tea Crafts and not only are they some of the best oolongs I’ve ever had, they are some of the best teas period. I had to report back because I just received an e-mail from them stating they are offering 15% off until September 28th. Also…
“Add any teaware item to your cart and receive an extra 5% of your total purchases when you spend $100 or more. This offer is good with any tea ware item and includes tea ware sets already reduced or not. The extra 5% will be applied on your total purchases (tea and tea ware) when you use coupon: GiveMeFive”
I think I’ll be adding some of their black teas to my order, I hope they’re on par with the oolongs I’ve tried.
I’m a big TTC fan as well and I wish I hand’t seen this post. I have so much oolong I need to drink.
See? I KNEW you would see that. I’m going to behave. Although, I just got back from grocery shopping and am thinking about some oolong – suggestions????
Lol yep…lets both try to behave!! Cause we have PLENTY of excellent oolongs…
Hmm…I’m thinking about having that superb lala shan from Taiwan Sourcing
You two are much better than I am! I’m justifying it since they vacuum pack their tea with silica packets… theoretically I can hide it away for a bit until I sip down some of my stash.
Drinking White2Tea Qilan Trees right now, and I am loving it. I have never had a wuyi oolong like this. The Fire is nice, but the Trees completely steals the show for me. I’m going to review it eventually when I can articulate beyond “yummy.”
Qilan might be my favorite wuyi, the best I’ve had was from Joseph Wesley.
And “yummy” is my favorite description, lol ;-)
That JW Qilan is the yummy in the extreme. Maybe I can find my last little bit and we can haz some?
Just shared a Joseph Wesley Qilan session with the awesome MzPriss and it was mighty good!!
Plus something fantastic happened…I thought I was almost completely out of this tea but I found two unopened one ounce pouches!!! How cool is that?
I am trying some Oriental Beauty Bai Hao from Tao Tea Leaf. I usually love their oolong but this is just not what I was expecting. I wanted some lovely leaf hopper sweetness and I find this really bland. Sadness :(
Question, what is oriental beauty supposed to taste like? I’ve heard descriptors like sweet and honeyed but the one I had from Beautiful Taiwan Teas had none of that. It straight up tasted like black tea. Is it me or is that how it that really how it tastes?
that sounds wrong – it should have an almost cinnamon aroma & some sweetness, sometimes reminds me a tiny bit like the sweetness from roobois/redbush. ive got one which is more honeyed and sweet, and another which is almost spicy with this cinnamon flavour. how did you brew it?
LuckyMe, OB is one tasty tea, and it should be really sweet…here’s a review I wrote a while ago where I described it to the best of my knowledge. (Just skip the “story part” at the beginning lol)
I did my standard oolong brew: 2 g of tea in a 4 oz gaiwan steeped in 190 F water for 2 minutes following a rinse. Is there an oriental beauty you guys would recommend?
I like mine western style – 3g 10z just off boiling for 3 mins.
how much do you want to spend, the three that I love are pretty expensive, and im in the UK, which makes it even more so. Im trying to find a good cheap day to day OB as well, so im interested in any answers. I just bought this one: http://mountaintea.com/collections/competition-grade/products/oriental-beauty-competition-grade and its lovely with lots of honey & spice, but expensive
Unfortunately, good OB doesn’t come cheap… The lower quality I have tried were bland.
The very best I have tried is from TeaAve, by far my favorite.
http://teaave.com/collections/all/products/oriental-beauty?variant=1163520063
Drinking mountaintea.com 2014 hsinchu dongfang Meiren OB, Da Yu Ling & their free gift, a light roast Dongding.
all are quite lovely! getting a delivery of more dancong and some da hong pao red robe tomorrow because all my favourite dark oolongs have been drunk and im missing being able to swap about
I spent yesterday evening with my tea guy. We drank and explored 6 different teas. Once of which was a 2015 Qi Lan. This is his favorite tea and he tried really hard to make me understand why it was so special. Sure it was nice, nothing offensive, but not really my style. I don’t really do green oolongs and while this one wasn’t green it also wasn’t dark enough for my tastes. I think he likes it because it is the best of both world, where as I thought it was a “want to be” dark oolong and just didn’t quite make it. Fun evening – interesting to get to actually get to sit and drink tea with someone who loves and is knowledgeable about tea. I bought 50g of rou gui from him, will have to drink that soon and see how it is.
I honestly haven’t tried very many, but of the few that I have tried Mandala’s was my favorite. I just got some from Verdant in the mail a couple of days ago and then this package. Will have to compare them and see if I have a new favorite.
what does it taste like? im trying to find reviews here and having trouble.
edit* just found some :)
I had some brand new Autumn Jade TGY from Whispering Pines and it was LOVELY! So fresh and green and floral.
I finished my early spring TGY from Verdant a few weeks ago – a delicious tea btw – and am contemplating pre-ordering some autumn TGY. For those of you who’ve tried both, how do autumn oolongs compare to spring?
More buttery, deeper green flavor, brown sugar instead of nectar sweetness. Thicker mouthfeel and much less floral. Autumn TGY is what the TGY name was built on, I believe. Of course, all these descriptors are rather hyperbolic, since I’m trying to emphasize the differences. Spring, particularly Early Spring, is thin and light and floral, and Autumn is thick and rich and complex. Both are good, but Early Spring is the exceptional one in my opinion, but, of course, I’m crazy for florals!
is it the same as darjeelings, where the autumn are more forgiving & the springs can be finicky, but when you get the first flush right they are really good?
I honestly don’t know anything about darjeelings (not really a black tea drinker TBH), but I would say oolongs are one of the most forgiving teas for everything except water quality. The strong notes from oolongs (like butteriness, and the sweetness) will typically come through regardless. The high florals and rich character get lost in hard water, and sometimes too hot of temperatures.
So, no, I do not think one season is more finicky than another, but I think the high notes you would lose with poor brewing technique are more noticeable in spring oolongs.
I tried a Thai oolong that’s a completely new style for me in the last month or so, a tea produced by indigenous people in the North (they call hill-tribe here; seems that would get flagged as non-PC back in the US somehow, but it’s a neutral term). It’s kind of a shame this doesn’t have a picture function; it’s something to see. It was odd because the roast level (oxidation) wasn’t completely uniform, which you don’t see. The taste was nice but odd, and it took a good bit of messing around with brewing variations to get really clean flavors out of it, cinnamon, some sweetness, and woody tones (in the end settling on lower temperature Western style). No matter how much I switched it around one primary taste like dried oak leaves smell stood out, so I guess earthy towards woody / spice in a unique way. At first I really didn’t like it but now I’ll be sad to finish it since it was a gift my aunt picked up and I’ll probably never see it again. I wrote a blog entry about it but this post is chatty enough to cover most of that, except the part about trying brewing the sticks included separately (which worked better than one might think, and led to reading up on a Satemwa estate Malawai tea made from tea branches / sticks, and to me including a white tea review by them with it since I found some stashed away).
TGY:
Before http://postimg.org/image/51eeky8gj/full/
After http://postimg.org/image/mq65ckk7n/full/
46 minutes of tedious work
Steeped http://postimg.org/image/wq11sgvgz/
Fun experience :)
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