Golden Moon Tea

I was very very pleased when I found this tea in the 007 select, because well, …coconut, and also because I had been wanting to try a pouchong and just hadn’t been able to pick one out for purchase.
I am usually worried when loose tea leaves have such a strongly flavored smell, but Im pretty sure I sunk my nose into this bag for a good 20 seconds and then exclaimed to my boyfriend that he rush over immediately to check this out. It’s a wonderful coconut treat aroma like you would get from a proper full fat macaroon, as one would expect from a tea thats been given its flavor from hearty coconut milk.
I brewed this in a Gaiwan at 180 for 3 minutes, 3 times for 3 infusions. I found the tea to change slightly between infusions, as the coconut aroma and taste subsided, the tea gives up more complexity. First of all, it’s a very pretty colored brew, most likely the obvious sign it’s a pouchong, as its a medium golden tan color. The wet leaves smell, again, strong with coconut but it had a very decadent appeal, I almost want to equate reminiscently of slightly toasted mugginess from autumn leaves.. it’s great. Each infusion brought more of that aroma and less coconut.
The taste of this tea is a full bodied balance of the sweet buttery coconut and an earthy toasted pouchong. It leaves a lovely slightly nutty finish, perfect for sipping on while barely working on something.
I really enjoyed this tea, I desperately want to serve this with a mushroom Tom Kah Soup!

I’ve been holding off on buying this because I absolutely hate paying to ship a sample sized item. Then they had a free shipping thing and I went ahead and ordered a couple of samples from them. Next time I order from them, I’m getting a pouch of this. It’s fantastic!

I don’t think I’ve ever had pouchong unflavored, which is a shame because I happen to love green oolongs and I love how the base tea tastes in this. So buttery and green and slightly vegetal. Totally yum. And the flavor is absolutely coconut milk. Like someone toasted the coconut a bit before getting the milk from it. So luscious and decadent. I think this is the best coconut flavored tea I’ve ever had, and I"ve had lots! It’s so creamy! How do they do it? It’s also sweet. It makes me think of a coconut macaroon. And at the end, something a little like lemon rind.

I love the way the flavors blend with the tea base. I love the mouth feel. So tasty! There are few teas that I want to stock up on once I’ve had a taste of it, which is why I like to swap or get samples. This one, however, I will certainly be happy to make room for this to stay permanently.

I received this one from Infusin_Susan. So there is almost a full tin here. I opened it and whoa! There is a very strong aroma here. Maybe a little perfume like. So I tried it the first time and I thought okay. Interesting(thinking oh boy I have a whole tin of this to drink). I tried it again this morning. I have to say it’s not a bad tea at all. I wouldn’t call it a daily drinker, but I’m more of a straight tea drinker. It reminds me somewhat of lychee tea(and according to wikipedia it is a cousin of the lychee) that I have had. There is almost a grapefruit like flavor that abounds from this tea. It’s not knock my socks off amazing or terrible either.

This is a really refreshing blend. The tea base is both green and black tea, so the flavor is rich and sweet without being too bold. This allows the flavors of mint and vanilla to really shine through. The flavor is crisp and sweet and very pleasant.

This is a mellow white tea with a nice fruity tone. The melon is subtle and soft. The fruit flavor seems to be a continuation of the sweet, hay flavor of the white tea. I wish I had more sweet, juicy melon. I have yet to find a Golden Moon tea that I truly enjoy. While this isn’t horrible, it’s uneventful and not the most pleasant thing to drink.

This was my favorite flavor of tea until I discovered Teavana’s chai/chai blend.

Oof. Adagio needs a social media makeover….whoever’s on their Facebook page thought it’d be great to call Teavana the “Enron of tea” and this is so beyond tacky it amazes me someone tried to defend the comparison. Swindling billions out of your employees via fraud is so like people choosing to work in a high pressure sales position, right.

Anyway. This tea relates to neither companies obviously but that is seriously bothering me right now.

Typically I am not a big fan of Earl Grey because I think it smells like cleaning solutions, but this smelled a bit different from the lavender, so I figured I might like it.

Without milk, no, it’s too much bergamot for my liking. With some coconut milk added, it’s much, much better. (And seriously I love using this stuff, no coconut flavor detected!) I do like the floral note added by the lavender, it makes it a bit different, but I still don’t care too much for Earl Grey.

Tea of the afternoon…….

Since I love coconut and was drawn in by all the reviews of this one, I broke down ordered it from a vendor other than Golden Moon that was running a free shipping special. It definitely was not a hardship, because I had to buy $5 worth of British chocolate to go along with it to reach my minimum. Yes, you can start feeling sorry for me, now.

As for the tea…..yum. Sweet and creamy, light and smooth. I could get used to this…..

Mug method with about 185 water for 3 minutes. I did very lightly sweeten this just to bring the coconut out a little.

I am excited about the Insider Tea Club, and I am excited about this tea! I am using a small, 4oz, teapot for this, to allow for multiple resteeps and forces attention to each sip. I am doing this note from memory, so I look forward to documenting the next one a bit more clearly. What I remember most about this first pass was the smooth mouthfeel and the pale color. It was also slightly sweet. In fact, I wondered if the instructions were spot on due to the pale color, but really, the instructions were perfect. Here are the photos: http://www.flickr.com/photos/lauren_pressley/6772671397/

Infusin_Susan sent this one to me in our recent swap. These days I tend to be drawn to almost anything flavoured or partially flavoured with vanilla. I blame JacquelineM for this. She was the one who started singing the praises of the Vanilla Comoro from Harney & Sons and others quickly followed. I had tried one or two vanilla blacks before that and hadn’t been super impressed by it, so what, I wondered, was I missing?

This led me to explore the flavour. There was a relatively good one from Whittard of Chelsea, which took a little time for me to really get into and an awesome one from Chi of Tea, sadly now having been out of stock for rather a long time. The Chi of Tea one was the last straw for me. It pushed me completely over the edge because it was flavoured just right!

Since then, I’ve been drawn to all things vanilla black. If I see one while I’m making a purchase I’m likely to try it out at least once. The AC Perch’s was acceptable. The vanilla assam from 52 teas that I discovered in the Christmas box? I’ve bought two pouches and I’m hoarding them. The add-a-vanilla-pod-in-pieces-to-a-random-tin-and-leave-for-three-weeks method that JacquelineM uses? Yeah, I’m giving that a go with my otherwise fairly boring Kenya at the moment. (The pod was pretty old, though, so it might not work too well)

So when Infusin_Susan put this one up as one she would like to trade for something else, I acted. Obviously.

When one wants to find one’s perfect whatever it is, one generally has to put some thought into exactly what it is one seeks in that particular tea, and with vanilla, I keep thinking I have this worked out, but in truth I’m jumping back and forth like a frog on a warm rock. If I’m having something disappointing which has a subtle flavour, I will say that I want the flavour to be stronger. If I’m having something disappointing with a strong flavour, the opposite will apply. If I’m having something great but not quite there which has a subtle flavour, I’ll say I prefer the flavour to be subtle. And of course vice versa. I keep thinking I know what I want, but in reality I appear to be lying through my teeth. I think, though, that I’m mostly in favour of relatively strongly flavoured, but primarily showing up on the swallow and in the aftertaste. I want to still be able to tell that it’s tea and I don’t want something super-sweet.

As this is not supposed to be a post about vanilla tea in general, does this particular one live up to this wish?

No.

The aroma is strong, yet controlled, just like I want it to be, but the flavour is rather lacking. It shows up in all the right places, but there just isn’t enough of it. It doesn’t give me that rich and creamy flavour at all, it doesn’t make the whole inside of my mouth taste like vanilla and the only aftertaste that really lingers is that of the base tea.

What is the base tea of this stuff? Ceylon, it would seem. Well, that explains the aftertaste. Ceylons have, for me, generally a very long aftertaste and as I really wanted that to be primarily the added flavour here, it just doesn’t work out for me as a vanilla base. Something with a shorter flavour, primarily on the first part of the sip so that the vanilla can run the show from the middle-ish and onwards. Ceylon just doesn’t swing that way for me.

As it is with caramel, it’s difficult to find the perfectly flavoured vanilla black, but even the really boring, disappointing ones are likely to be finished off fairly quickly in this house. With caramel, luckily, I’ve found it, but with vanilla I’m still searching. I’ve come close, but limited supply keeps getting in my way. However, I am enjoying the search.

This is okay, I think I would like it stronger. But I’m not really a fan of black/green mixes. The mint and vanilla are both really good, I just wish there was more to the tea flavor.

On the plus side I got my boyfriend to drink some of this :O PROGRESS. It probably wasn’t the best of things though getting to this point started with some tea at a Chinese restaurant last night.

When I first read the instructions for brewing this tea, I thought it was crazy. Boiling hot water for 15 seconds on green tea? Sounds like it would taste like nothing with an aftertaste of bitter. Boy, was I surprised.

I took a leap of faith and brewed this according to instructions, and it was delicious. The brew itself was the palest jade green, and the taste is vegetal, light, refreshing, and with just a hint of sweet. It is very smooth and not in the least bit bitter, and it tastes just as lovely even after multiple steepings (my record so far with one batch of leaves is 4; unfortunately it got knocked over into the sink!)

Floral, like jasmine, but not. Is this what orchids taste like? Very clean and smooth on the tongue, I like the floral mixing with the crispness of the oolong. It’s a nice assault on the senses!

Sample two out of ten this week!

Actually this one is sort of cheating a bit, because the whole point of these sample challenges is to get some of the older ones that I’ve had around for a while used up, and this one I just got today. I did a swap with Infusin_Susan and this one was included as one of a couple of bonus samples.

It’s even more cheating for sample week, because this isn’t one that I think would end up lying around untried for very long anyway. It sounds so interesting! I’m totally intrigued by the idea of honey flavoured tea. I’m not sure honey and pear would be something I would come up with on my own, but why not?

The aroma was definitely strongly honeyed, both dry leaf and after steeping. I didn’t get much pear on the aroma, mostly just the honey. I find this odd, because it seems the majority of people have found it to be strongly pear with a little honey around it and my impression is exactly opposite. Maybe they’re right? Now I’m sniffing at this and am suddenly unsure of what I think it smells like. But I do still think it has more honey than others seem to think.

The flavour is strongly pear, definitely. It makes me think of the big light green ones that turn yellow as they ripen and they have little brown dots on them. I can’t remember what the sort is called. Lukas?

I’m getting honey almost exclusively on the swallow and the aftertaste, but not in the flavour proper. But is this a bad thing? No, because that’s what honey taste like. It has a stronger flavour just when you swallow and it leaves a good strong aftertaste, and this is exactly what this tea mimics. It’s not enough to make something taste like something else. One also has to pay some attention to how that something else is actually experienced in its proper form. I think I’ve just realised when a flavoured tea is the Perfect One and when it’s just good.

That said, I wouldn’t call this the perfect pear tea or the perfect honey tea. I don’t know, I find the combination a bit odd, I suppose. I’m sure it’s great as a dessert, but I’m not sure I think it works super-well as a tea flavouring.

I’m not getting any real impression of the base black, other than I seem to be picking up a small amount of astringency, but not very much. It could be anything really.

I’m glad I got to try this one. I’m quite enjoying it.

Still meh about this one. I have had it for awhile now but it’s been stored properly and everything. Given my last note from it, I think my tastebuds have just grown out of taste for this one. There’s still enough for a couple cups though, I think it might be interesting in the oatmeal experiment.

It still smells so good, but I just don’t get the sweet flavors that I used to taste. And I know I’m not the only one who was in love with it with the first cup and subsequently didn’t like it after that.

Ohhh earlier this afternoon we went to Delta’s small museum and I picked up a teacup for 50 cents and a box of prepackaged green tea sachets for $1. Seriously the gift shop was just as cool as all the planes and memorabilia. You could buy cups, mugs, plates, utensils, etc from first class. They had vintage posters, postcards, travel brochures, first flight cards, pins, models, stickers. I really want to go back just to buy utensils, they were fifty cents each! But the teacup I am really excited about. I’ll get a picture of it later.

I don’t know if I mistimed everything and maybe oversteeped a bit but blah, this is not as good as it was the first time I had it. It hardly has the caramel taste, or it’s just not working and it doesn’t taste good to combine sweet with roasty right now for my tastebuds.

I’m glad I didn’t buy a whole tin of this just based on that one try. I’ll probably give it a try again some other time.

Best aftertaste ever.

I don’t know why this is so weak, I steeped it probably closer to 4 min because it looked like plain old water still around 3. It’s definitely not as strong as I would like but…

Even though the tea is pretty weak I am getting the most spectacular creme brûlée aftertaste. And it is delicious! I hope it’s still there on the second steeping because there will be one before I get to cooking.

The dessert tea before dinner approach is my favorite.

I just had a second steeping of it, steeped for a little over 6 minutes and now it’s full on amazing. I’m actually surprised the sugary flavor is still there! I hope it’s ready for a third cup later on!

I cold steeped this before, which is a total waste. Seriously. In the future if I want it iced, I’ll do it a normal way because it does not do it justice.

Now I can really taste all the cantaloupe flavor, with just a touch of honeydew. I love it. I don’t even care for cantaloupe or honeydew, and this makes me want to go out and get one of each and eat them.

There’s still a bit of flavor from the white tea, it gives it a bit of a floral edge and adds to the natural sweetness. This was good before when I couldn’t even taste all it had to offer, so now it’s even better in my eyes.

I cold steeped this and its surprisingly flavorful! I thought the white tea might be muted but it definitely isn’t. It’s crisp, clean, and fruity. I will try it hot soon for sure.

This is so good cold brewed. I probably should have given it another 4-6 hours but I wanted it now (despite there being 2 other teas getting the cold treatment in the fridge).

I finally cancelled my internet and I really am glad. I flipped out at the woman because she told me the early termination was $180 rather than that the early termination is prorated from $180. And then she’s like well if you didn’t cut me off- no, you phrased that VERY poorly because what did you think I was gonna say to you when I have a month left of this horrible internet and you say $180. I own the modem now apparently so I think I’m going to go actually drop kick it now after threatening it so many times over the past 11 months.

Anyway yes, this tea. I think I love it this way more than any other way. Like drinking coconut macaroons.

I guess apparently I wouldn’t want to steep it any longer because it seems just slightly bitter. But the coconut, yum! It’s so creamy and I almost want to add just a little coconut milk to it…

This of course turned into a little coconut milk in the glass and more coconut milk on the counter and cabinets. Sigh. The sugar in the milk is taking away from the bitter notes. It reminds me a bit of grains too, I have noticed that every time I’ve had this tea but I couldn’t pinpoint what it was until now. Like sweetened corn flakes.

I will continue hoarding what remains of my little tin. This is a nice treat.

Also check this out, this one photographer decided my car was worthy of FOURTEEN pictures on Friday and this one rules: http://goo.gl/NEpaB I don’t know why I am so interested in this one, it all just has to do with the tires kicking up water. I’m weird.

I am tempted to go out and get some green curry right now to eat with a resteeping of this tea because I bet it would be AMAZING.

I can so clearly taste the coconut milk in here and it is so good. This is the first time I’ve ever had a pouchong but I can taste how good of a tea it is too. Floral, buttery goodness with the most delicious coconut flavor, I do not want to stop drinking this ever (except that there are 5 other Golden Moon teas to try so maybe later).

This is the best tasting coconut tea I’ve ever had, and I really like coconut in tea. I am definitely buying more of this in the future, because this little tin is going to be lucky if it makes it another month around me.

I’m not a ginger fan when it’s by itself, like fish sauce. So I knew I wouldn’t like this tea much. Still gave it a chance. Underneath the ginger flavor, the white tea was just ok. Just not inlove with it. Not bothering to rebrew…

Waaaoooow!! Love this!!! Thank you to Amy Oh for sharing! :)
This is superb. Sweet and toasty, with a perfect amount of coconut. I’m on the second infusion now, which is, as usual for an oolong, better than the first.
I find this very similar to my Spice Exchange Coconut Oolong. I’d like to do a side by side to see how they compare. Going by memory, I think the first steeping of this is a bit toastier whereas the STE version is more “fresh” coconut, but negligibly so. This second steep seems less toasty, and a bit more like what I imagine coconut spun sugar would be like. Very sweet and satisfying.
It says that this is a green/oolong but to be honest I can’t really see any green here. It’s got the teensiest hint of scratchiness in my throat when hot, but that’s disappeared now that it’s cooled some. I’ll probably see more of that, and perhaps the green aspect, in later steeps.
I’m very much looking forward to seeing what comes out in a third and fourth steep. Thank you again Amy! xx

EDIT:
Well I made it to six steeps! and I was right, the coconut waned while the green perked up. It was quite lovely!