Oolong Inc

Thank you Roswell Strange for this weird, weird tea. It actually isn’t completely out there tastewise but I am finding two things weird: (1) the concept of a black bean tea is a bit strange and (2) someone said the leaves looked like strange coffee and for some reason I keep smelling coffee when I smell this. Is there coffee beans in this? Or is my brain somehow normalizing the idea of beans in tea by thinking coffee? And is that normal when I do not drink coffee?

Anyways, this tea is not bad, just different. Different but not totally unfamiliar. Like it tastes like parts of teas I have had before jumbled together in a new way. It is earthy. Leathery, almost. And a lot of bean. It is smooth. It is interesting. Do I like it? I genuinely don’t know. It is so unique and yet so easy to drink but do I want another mug full? Not anytime soon I don’t think. Yet I am also not throwing it into my swap box so make of that what you will. Thank you Roswell Strange for the experience.

Past sipdown – used the last of this in an iced tea “compilation” which worked out well enough, when also sweetened a bit.

Thanks for the share, Roswell Strange!

This tea smells somewhat fruity in the bag; nothing stands out in particular, although it is definitely more in the tropical realm than anything. If I had to guess, I’d likely go with mango as the fruit I’m smelling the most, but it would really only be a guess. Brewed up, the flavour is similar and nondescript, not bad, but not anything overly special. However, for some reason it’s giving me a strong craving for a french “red fruits” tea, or something with strong berry notes. Not sure why.

Overall, I suppose fruit punch is an accurate enough name for this, given that it tastes like a melange of fruits instead of any one in particular, but it also doesn’t taste like the fruit punch I’m used to (which is fine. I’m not a fan of juice box fruit punch!) It’s not a bad tea, but pretty mediocre.

Finished off a mug of this now and it’s just so dark, earthy and wonderful. Those really roasty toasty nutty and mineral flavours of the oolong and the strong beany flavour work so well together. I get notes of black coffee, mineral rich potting soil, and a great umami brothy vibe. It’s an incredibly unique tea and not something I always want because it is intense in those flavours, but when it’s right it’s soooo right!

Drank a mug of this because I was inspired by VariaTEA who recently tried it as part of her 365 Days of Tea challenge – it’s been awhile since I steeped this one, and I needed the excuse to dig it out of my stash and steep it up. It’s delightfully smooth, and – yes – very bean-y but mostly it’s just delightfully roasty tasting. I really, really enjoy heavily roasted teas and this definitely falls into that; has soba cha/buckwheat, coffee, and Guinness type notes along with that strong bean-y element.

Yum!

Drank this one earlier in the week and posted a pic on Instagram, and man did it get a lot of feedback. Like, I KNOW that this is a weird tea. However, I’ve also 100% had much weirder teas before as well. A lot of people seemed very confused and concerned in general by the concept of the tea though, and in turn I found that very entertaining…

Photo: https://www.instagram.com/p/BhXeGQgAb-y/?taken-by=ros_strange

The cup itself tasted good though – very full bodied, robust and earthy with a roasted oolong quality, nutty notes, hints of sweet smoke, and a bean-y quality for sure. I’ve always maintained that this is actually quite a good cup that’s really well suited in place of an equally bold/robust breakfast black tea – it’s just not the kind of thing that I personally can have as an everyday thing; it’d get to be overwhelming for me.

I was just in the mood for something really different this morning, so I opted for this one.

I did add a little honey to it because as much as I just wanted something different I wasn’t quite ready to kick off the morning with something so earthy/savory without getting a little sweetness out of the cup. It was actually very good with the honey; it exaggerated some of the notes that are often present in the cup but not main focuses like nut, cocoa, and espresso notes! The rest of the flavour wasn’t so much “bean-y” as it was earthy – really earthy, actually with soft smoke undertones and a roasty toasty quality.

Love this one! It’s so unique, and pleasant and smooth.

Iced Latte.

Because I fucking could.

So, this was REALLY earthy tasting, with a strong bean like quality and gentler smokiness to it. Also, very roasty as well. It was kind of super weird, and one of my coworkers described it as tasting “sort of like bitter coffee grounds” and they were kind of correct in that. Like, I didn’t see it before but as soon as the comparison had been made I couldn’t shake it. At the same time, because of the high milk content and that sweeter earthy and vegetal kind of quality I was also strongly reminded of Taro Bubble tea. And, I’ve yet to have red bean bubble tea but I feel like it would probably taste somewhat like this too.

It was just so weird, but in a pretty good way.

Finally trying this very weird oolong.

It’s actually really good, which is a relief because I have quite a lot of it now. I think that overall the flavour could probably just be summed up as “earthy” but there some slight complexities/nuances to it as well.

It’s weird ‘cause as earthy as this tastes, it does so in a way very unique from other earthy teas I’ve consumed – it’s not like pu’erh, or the earthy notes sometimes found in darker oxidized or aged oolongs or black teas. It’s a, and I know this is an obvious statement, ‘beany’ sort of earthiness. It’s also weird because it’s got a little bit of a bitter top note but the finish is sweet and somewhat cocoa like. I don’t know if I’ve ever really experienced a tea with a bitter start but such a smooth, roasty and sweet finish like this. It’s very pleasant though! A great way to finish off a sip, and encourage taking another.

Apart from that, there’s some overall roasty notes, hints of smoky notes (sweet smoky), and almost this coffee like flavour as well. That’s in addition, of course, to the already mentioned earthiness, cocoa, sweetness, and beany qualities.

I really like it! Bonus points for it being really affordable too.

Sipdown (216)!

I was excited about this tea – I love tangerine, and I could really see it working well on a black tea base. In practice, I ended up liking the steeped tea a lot less. I drank this one iced, and I just found that overall the tangerine was a little too tangy, and a little too generic citrus to really nail that flavour for me. I feel like if I had to blindly guess what the citrus flavour was I would have settled more in the “Meyer lemon” range of citrus fruits. The black base was also really full bodied and somewhat “choppy”/unrefined feeling. For how strong of a presence it was, I really didn’t like it.

All in all, that just made for a tea that was drinkable but not great. I think all in all, this is just going to wind up being a forgettable experience. There’s just nothing noteworthy here.

Smooth generic black tea with a mild red fruit style flavouring – so simple and uncomplex and honestly just a good “backdrop” tea to sip on in the moments that I want flavour without having to provide focus. Plain can be good sometimes, y’all.

My cravings this week for fruity, tropical and/or summer inspired tea blends is apparently not isolated to teas from DT, because I felt myself deeply “called” to revisit this tea…

I feel like my rating of 68 is maybe a little bit harsh. There’s really nothing wrong with this tea at all, and it makes for a pleasantly smooth and simple drink with lots of the black tea flavour coming through and complimenting a stripped back and approachable “Hawaiian Punch” profile. It’s a pretty good tea for the super simple ingredient list and, while it does fade to the back of mind quite often, at this moment I have no complaints.

Cold Brew!

Vaguely fruity in that generic “mixed fruit” with a tropical edge sort of way, but majority a flatter “bakey/bready” black tea profile. Not bad – but not ideal in a cold preparation method such as this one.

Cold Brew!

This is my second tea of the day; after my first mug around 1PM today I didn’t eat/drink anything else all day except for water but I started feeling a bit light headed and realized it was probably from all the unintentional fasting – so I just strained the cold brew that has been going in my fridge since last night and made myself a watermelon salad, since I had bought all the ingredients for it afterwork on Thursday and I don’t want them sitting around too long. We’ll see how it settles…

Cold brew is good – it’s smooth and the flavouring is really mild, which I think coincidentally turned out to be a really good thing. My stomach still feels a little shaky so I think anything strongly flavoured or really harsh would have upset it. As it stands, this is refreshing and smooth with a really delicate generic fruit flavour.

The salad is also good – but I think the onions were a bad call. Other than onion, it’s made from watermelon, feta, tomato, and some chopped leafy greens with a very small amount of lime juice. It seems to be sitting alright, except for the red onion I added which is intense. I did use it sparingly, but even so I think it may have been too much for the state I was in beforehand…

Tea press.

Definitely astringent, and with a mild berry and mango sort of taste. Not exactly fruit punch but also not exactly not fruit punch. I think this one just really doesn’t hold up to travel mug preparation very well – but not really sure why? Some teas just don’t…

Today’s cold brew – but admittedly not a very good one. It’s hard to place exactly what about it was off though; it was kind of fruity, a little mango like for sure. It just had a very funky sort of finish/aftertaste that was… off.

Bleh. I’ve not had much luck with cold brews as of late.

Iced tea.

I think I probably should have added just a pinch of some kind of sweetener to this one to draw out more of fruit flavours of this tea, however I did end up finishing off the cup straight. It was way more base than ‘punch’ though; quite full bodied and strong, and even the tiniest bit astringent too. I got a little bit of very generic fruit flavour but it was STRONGLY covered by the malt and floral notes of the base.

I definitely would have loved a bit more fruit flavour out of this one because that’s what I was craving in the first place – but as an iced black tea, it wasn’t bad tasting. Save for the astringent edge, it was actually a very solid black tea profile. Only downside is that I wanted fruit punch!

Maybe it’s the tea version of stockholm syndrome; but the more I drink this one the more I actually like it. It didn’t originally taste very fruit punch like to me, but now? Yeah, totally picking up some sweet fruity notes. In particular the mango.

I think a rating increase is in order.

There we go; up 18 points from the 50 rating it was at. Still not mind blowing, but totally moving from bad to… average?

Hmm, I think this one is growing on me.

The more I drink it, the more I think I’m actually picking up on the fruit notes! I’d say, arguably, this is more mango than anything else? With hints of red fruits. Still not the most vibrant “punch” flavour though. I think maybe the mango explains the pine note that I’ve experienced a lot with each infusion though (including this one). Underripe mango tastes a lot like pine to me, so that could be the solution to that weird, out of place flavour.

Cold Brew.

The overall flavour of this tea is definitely improved by cold brewing it. It gets a bit of extra sweetness, and is much fruitier overall although still in a really muddled way. Oddly enough, I thought the undertones were rather pine-like? Both in the sense of pine wood but also like the sort of pine taste that comes from juniper berries or under ripe mango.

Fruit Punch black tea just sounds like such a good idea, but when I brewed this one up this afternoon I was sadly disappointed by an overall lack of flavour. What’s especially disappointing is that the dry leaf smells REALLY lovely/strongly of fruit punch. It just doesn’t carry over into the taste…

Not that it tasted bad; but just very strongly of somewhat plain/average black tea. Strong but relatively flat malt notes, and just a general “stillness” to the flavour if that makes sense. There were subtle peachy undertones I suppose but nothing that screamed “Fruit Punch”. Also somewhat oddly floral?

Again – I didn’t HATE this but it wasn’t what I was hoping for/expecting. Thankfully due to the really low cost of this I do have plenty left to play with so hopefully I can coax out more flavour in future infusions.

Sipdown (217)!

My first tea from Oolong Inc!

I have to stay, I’m starting my Oolong Inc. exploration on a pretty positive note; I was really impressed with overall cost of the tea and shipping, and then on top of that it arrived really efficiently as well. The packaging seems pretty solid, and they even included this tea as a free sample in addition to what I had ordered. All positive starting signs.

The tea leaf itself seems pretty broken up looking and has a lot of fanning looking bits. I made this into an iced tea though, and I have to say I don’t really feel like I’m getting any bitterness/overwhelming astringency which would have been my principle concerns from such broken up looking leaf. In fact, this is pretty smooth with quite defined lychee tasting notes. It does taste a touch artificial, but I don’t mind it. Very juicy, and floral and as an iced tea I think it works REALLY well. I feel like it almost has a honeyed quality to it as well, which is nice.

If the rest of my teas from Oolong Inc. stay in roughly this quality range or better I think I’ll be really happy with this order overall.

I’m working my way through these odd and unusual teas. This one was verrrrrryy difficult to photograph. This is probably one of the least photogenic teas I’ve ever had, but i still was curios as what beans and oolong tasted like. The leaf is made up of small bundles of dark oolong balls along with lots of black beans. The aroma is some roast and black beans (duh). I warmed up my gaiwan and placed the snack inside. The scent opens into lots of roast along with prominent edamame notes. I washed the leaves once and prepped for brewing. The taste of the drink was full of starch and sweetness. This reminds me of Americanized mole sauce on an enchilada. Its an odd sweet tone with bean and pungent smoke . I was not a fan of this tea.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BRUI-6eAF5n/?taken-by=haveteawilltravel&hl=en

Black bean oolong, wth?

This oolong is for all the people who love that roasty smoky taste, but the black bean improved it by removing that bitter element of smoke. What you get is a sweet, roasty oolong smoke and a bombproof tea that you can grandpa or gongfu. I gongfu’d mine and it was bright, roasty, and sweet with a unique savory brothy taste. You’ll love this one especially if you like houjicha, roast barley teas and high roast oolong. I can see this tea being awesome iced!

Full review on OolongOwl http://oolongowl.com/black-bean-oolong-oolong-inc-tea-review/