After my first banana tea of the day I couldn’t help but follow it up with more banana tea! I feel awful though, because I have two samples of this which I received from two different people and I can’t really remember who I received them from! I think one was from BrewTEAlly Sweet and I’m kinda sure the other was maybe from Janelle? Please correct me if I’m wrong.
For this cup I steeped up 1 1/2 tsp. of leaf in near boiling water. I had aimed for a 4 or 5 minute steep and was using the microwave clock to time it out, but then Tre came out to make his lunch and ended up using the microwave. He was sorta a dick and refused to wait the remaining 4(ish) minutes to heat up his food, so I waited for him to finish making lunch whilst the leaves were steeping. He said he was only going to microwave his food for four minutes but by the time he was done, the leaves had been steeping for nine minutes (four and eight minutes are not the same!).
Despite being oversteeped, I don’t think the cup was too bad. I’ll definitely need to remake this under the steeping parameters I wanted, though. I could taste the banana, and it was very natural tasting compared to the sort of candy banana taste from the 52Teas blend I enjoyed earlier in the day. That said, it was weird because the Stevia in the blend made the tea very sweet, and that didn’t seem to work too well with the natural, almost unripe taste of banana. Not sure why.
The oolong itself was pretty present, although it did taste a little off – likely from the oversteeping. It was a little vegetal which wasn’t too displeasing because it kind of worked with the banana, and I also got floral notes that reminded me strongly of the floral notes in Vanilla Orchid.
Overall, this was a good tea despite a steeping mess up (like I said, I’ll try it again), but ultimately while it was definitely drinkable and I enjoyed it, somehow I still felt a bit let down by it. Maybe my expectations were too high? I feel like it could have been much more than it was, though. As of right now, I wouldn’t look for it again once I used my samples up – although I’m sure I’ll be happy each time I make some of it!
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I hope Davids comes out with this again – I’d really love to try it!
I sent BrewTEAlly sweet a sample of this that I had mixed with Vanilla orchid and Butiki’s strawberry oolong. I wonder if that’s maybe what she sent you. Could be why you are tasting the vanilla orchid….
Oh! Maybe! That would explain a lot, actually… Now I really have to pull out my other Banana Oolong sample, to compare.
Would have been nice to know, prior though… I bought the sample through her tea stash sale, and it’s definitely just Banana Oolong that I was hoping to try :/
Just gonna chime in again to say that I went through my Oolong samples bag again to find the other Banana Oolong sample I had, and turns out that this one was the Janelle sample and not the BrewTEAlly Sweet one (I had labelled the other with who it was from), so this was actually straight Banana Oolong, not a mixed sample.
I hope Davids comes out with this again – I’d really love to try it!
I sent BrewTEAlly sweet a sample of this that I had mixed with Vanilla orchid and Butiki’s strawberry oolong. I wonder if that’s maybe what she sent you. Could be why you are tasting the vanilla orchid….
Oh! Maybe! That would explain a lot, actually… Now I really have to pull out my other Banana Oolong sample, to compare.
Would have been nice to know, prior though… I bought the sample through her tea stash sale, and it’s definitely just Banana Oolong that I was hoping to try :/
Just gonna chime in again to say that I went through my Oolong samples bag again to find the other Banana Oolong sample I had, and turns out that this one was the Janelle sample and not the BrewTEAlly Sweet one (I had labelled the other with who it was from), so this was actually straight Banana Oolong, not a mixed sample.