Sugar Caramel Oolong

Purchased from Iheartteas.com – thanks Rachel! :) Today’s cup is an old Aynsley bone china teacup, that is bright goldenrod colour, overlaid with a heavy gold floral pattern. Small flowers adorn both the centre of the cup and the saucer. It’s a very cheery, yet elegant cup. I admit that it isn’t my favourite, but for some reason, I felt drawn to it today.

Dry – very sweet smelling leaves. Smells like caramel popcorn.
Steeped 180 degrees F, for 3mins.

1st Steeping, 1st cup:
Steeped 180 degrees F, 3mins
Colour: pale yellow liquor
Slight vegetal smell, overlaid with a sweeter, caramel smell. A slight hint of nut.
Taste: Quite light, and refreshing. It’s not a sweet tasting tea, as I had first expected. I can taste the oolong, but the burnt sugar/caramel is along side of it, gently easing onto my tongue. I find the caramel more prominent at the finish.
Quite nice.

1st Steeping, 2nd cup:
Per the Golden Moon Tea’s website, they recommend adding some sugar to help enhance the caramel flavour, as well as some milk to make it a richer cup. I only added a small amount of sugar – they suggest one teaspoon, and I imagine that would be for a larger vessel than the old teacup that I am using. I can always add more sugar if required. I also added just a dribble of milk. Hmmm, this concoction looks a little sad in my cup now. As the liquor was so pale to begin with, it looks like I’ve just poured really watered down milk into a fancy teacup LOL! Ok, I guess it doesn’t matter what it looks like, but how it tastes is what counts, right?

Well, it could just be me, but I’m not sure if the sugar really brought out the caramel. Maybe if I had used rock sugar instead of plain old white sugar, that might have made a difference. The cup is definitely sweeter tasting, but I wonder it’s perhaps taking away from the taste, not improving it. That also could be the milk too. I will need to do some experiments with it….
Another cup, with a wee bit less milk and same amount of sugar has made this grow on me, and I am getting more of the burnt sugar and caramel flavour from it. Tasty!

2nd Steeping, 1st cup, no additives:
Steeped 180 degrees F, 3mins 25secs
I noticed that the leaves had opened up more during this second steeping. Quite frankly, it smells pretty much the same as the first steeping. Maybe slightly more vegetal.
Upon tasting it, I’m not finding the sugar/caramel notes as strongly as I did in the previous steeping. As with the other cups, the caramel swoops in at the finish.
Very enjoyable, although now I’m hankering to add some milk and sugar and amp it up somewhat and make it more dessert-like.

2nd Steeping, 2nd cup, milk and sugar added
I think I’ve found the right milk/sugar combo – yum!

3rd Steeping: 1st cup, no additives:
Steeped 180 degrees F, accidentally lost track of time – maybe 4mins or so?
Just beginning to lose the caramel and sugar notes – more vegetal tasting.
Subsequent cups with milk and sugar still quite good though. Helps bring out the sweet caramel.
Not as punchy as the first 2 steepings.

4th Steeping: 1st cup, no additives:
Steeped 180 degrees F, 5mins 15secs
Becoming more bland but still nice.

I’ve been looking forward to trying this tea for quite some time.

It’s a little underwhelming to be honest. The leaves smell sugary; like catching a whiff of butterscotch candy. The flavors are light but prevalent. The oolong base is just ok. It could have used a little more oomph. I wish they would have used a slightly darker oolong. Sugar and caramel flavors on top of a light to medium roasted oolong would have been divine. I bet it would taste like a toasty crème brulee. Mmm.

This is a decent tea, but it didn’t knock my socks off. Maybe I played it up too much in my head. Big thanks to Ricky for letting me sample it! My wallet just gave a sigh of relief.

GM Sampler | Tea 4 of 31

Sugar Caramel Oolong | http://bit.ly/ds1ZuN
One Big Happy Family | http://bit.ly/bDtnNn

After the experience that was Honey Pear, I couldn’t end things on a bad note, so I decided that I’d dive into the basket and try something else. I almost didn’t try this one, because I was thinking that if another set of flavors that I typically liked bombed horribly again that I’d begin to build some real resentment against the sampler. But, feeling brave, I decided I’d try it anyway.

Slicing open the foil packet, I was greeted with the smell of maple candy. Maple candy always makes me giggle, because it makes me think of the Friends episode where Ross eats all the maple candy and he gets all crazy. [Hair dryer, no no no! But shampoos and conditioners, yes yes yes! – http://bit.ly/snFLh should you want to watch.] So, already I was off to a better start.

The wet leaves were oily and almost looked like leather. They smelled like oatmeal and burnt sugar, which was interesting, but at least somewhat in line with what I was expecting. I smelled the liquid and it smelled more like oolong and caramel, which was very comforting.

The tea was arright. It had more of a burnt sugar taste than a caramel taste to it, which was cool, but I like caramel so much that I was hoping for more. Not soul-crushing, but not elating. I’d push it more towards the good than the bad, but I don’t think that I’ll be ordering this one either.

After my delicious experience with the Coconut Pouchong, I had high hopes for this one.

The dry leaf smelled amazing. It reminded me of the crust of a creme brûlée, one of my favorite desserts. After brewing, the tea seemed less like toasty caramel and more like roasty oolong with a hint of caramel in the background. I wanted a stronger caramel flavor than I got and the oolong was a bit darker than I preferred, but it was still pretty good. There’s definitely a nectary sweetness and roast flavor. I wouldn’t necessarily want this again, but it was enjoyable.

Here’s the first part of a more scholarly (?) studied (?) dissertation at http://www.itsallabouttheleaf.com/1099/tea-review-golden-moon-sugar-caramel-oolong/

The name of this tea is somewhat misleading—it represents the ingredients accurately, but doesn’t convey its character well at all. With sugar and caramel as the leading adjectives, I expected a heavy, sweet tea with the flavor of Sugar Daddies that would be fine alongside a doughnut or work well as a dessert tea.

If that’s what you’re looking for, best move on.

But…

Golden Moon Sampler Tea #1:
Wewt! Got my Golden Moon sampler today, and just had to start trying stuff. I have to say this caught my eye as I was looking through all of the samples, but not in a good way. In fact I was highly skeptical of this combination, while also being worried that the result would be too sweet.
Naturally, when I closed my eyes and grabbed a sample (the only way to choose when faced with 31 different teas), the gods of fate decreed that this would be it. Really, I should have known. The tea itself looks very nice, giant curled up tea leaves and the smell is quite potent. I brewed it up and it’s not the disaster that I thought it would be. The caramel creates the illusion of sweetness without actually being sweet and the base oolong is noticeable in the undertone, although to me it seemed like the caramel rendered the oolong characterless, causing it to devolve into Standard Green Tea Taste™.

I’m on the second steeping now, and the oolong and caramel appear to have switched places with the oolong taking center stage and the caramel creeping in at the end. I will freely admit that much of my oolong experience comes from drinking it iced while living in Japan, so perhaps it is my own expectations that are skewed with regards to this, but I still find the base tea to be somewhat lacking in character.

Still, it’s pleasant enough to drink, although I doubt I’ll be getting more.

I chose this tea to be my reward for staying on track with this Couch to 5k program, whee. I wanted something sweet. I may have to go and paw through the other samples for more sweet teas after this. As for this one?

Fruity!

Seriously, where am I getting that from? Of all of the things that I expected when I lifted my steeped cup of light, yellow-amber, canary-colored tea up to my nose, fruit was seriously not on the list. And yet, that’s sort of what it smells like, to me — like someone caramelized some sugar and added it to some kind of fruit. My cup is still pretty hot. Maybe that’s going to lessen as I sit here and sip on it. I’m not even sure how to describe what kind of fruit I’m smelling. The more I sit and sniff, the more I think it’s reminding me of the bananas-in-bananas-foster smell…which I guess makes sense, given all of the ingredients in a bananas foster and the sauce…all of that hot sugar. In fact, now that I’ve said that, ‘bananas foster’ is definitely sticking around.

It’s not a very punchy flavor in the cup. Not nearly the strength of the coconut pouchong. I don’t know if I’m pleased or disappointed by that. I’m also not sure that I know enough about oolongs yet to properly evaluate the one they used here; all I know is that it isn’t the kind of oolong that makes me salivate from the rich, nutty, buttery smell. This is merely an echo of that flavor profile, a ghostly reference to those stronger qualities, lacking the brothy fullness in the mouth.

There is a temperature somewhere between ‘just shy of boiling’ and ‘tepid’ when the cup is hot but no longer needs as much caution in the sipping, and I’m starting to believe that this magical temperature window is where amazing things happen to the flavor of certain teas. Since hitting that mark, the tea seems to better represent the scent it throws off. It’s still not nearly as intense, but it’s stronger. Somehow I feel as though a little bit of sweetener in here to bring the sweetness you can smell up to the level of the sweetness your tongue gets might help to round out and smooth the flavor. It doesn’t need the sugar, but it might make the sweet-tooth itch the cup aims to scratch a little bit easier to satisfy.

Not a bad tea. Pretty drinkable. Not sure I can see myself craving it, though, so I probably won’t buy any, but it was interesting to try.

I received this a long time ago from someone, who I am pretty sure I still owe tea till.
I had it store in less than optimal conditions.
I wasn’t getting much caramel, or much sweetness to this, however it was AMAZING. So good, possibly the best oolong to date. I can only imagine how good it would be if it was fresh.

Pretty good, but not getting any real strong flavors that I’d expect. The sugar and caramel are more on the nose, not so much in the tea. But still enjoyable.

It’s after lunch and I’m in the mood for something sweet – this one sounded like it would hit the spot and did not disappoint. Gorgeous sweet, caramel aroma. Mouth-watering, in fact!
These leaves really popped open during the steep, and continued exuding their yummy smell. The recommended steeping time was 2-3 minutes, and I know I like my flavored teas strong, so I went with three. This gave me a medium-brown liquor with a medium amount of oolong and caramel flavor. Really well balanced, but I think for my personal taste I’d probably steep it longer. There’s a sweet taste to it, but I couldn’t help but wonder how this would be with cream and sugar, despite the fact that I usually drink oolongs straight.
Very nice! Now it’s like a melted butterscotch candy, much richer and really almost decadent. Dare I still call this tea, or am I only drinking it as a dessert substitute?