Organic Miyazaki Oolong Tea Koubi Shiage

After trying Chinese Da Hong Pao, I’d say it’s basically similar taste.

ah a nice afternoontea before the dinnerguests arrive. Today im making Pulled beef with tortilla bread and guacamole. :) smells wonderful!

The tea leaf smells somewhat like da hong pao, although much greener and less charred smell. The flavour is less intense and more spicy.
I tried western style this time and the result was better than gong fu.
Very little astringancy and shockful cinnamon falvour, there is also a hint of cardamon with a spicy feel and a hint of burnt leaf/smoke.
A very pleasant tea!

From LP Oolong group buy:
I started with 3.8 g in a 100ml gaiwan, but quickly added the rest (7g total).
195F
15s – fruit, soft, not a whole lot of taste
15s – stronger, woodier, added rest of tea to this steep, as it cools there is a chocolate flavor – influenced by reading the tea note
20s – mineral, drying, my tongue is tingly?, not a lot of taste, there is a sweeter note that emerges as it cools

I’m going to stop this session and move onto another tea. Sipdown

Tea: Koubi Shiage, Miyazaki Oolong. From the LPT International Oolong buy.

Prep: 60cc gaiwan, 5g. 10s, 10s, 20s, 30s, etc..
Sessions with this tea: 2

Lots of chopped up leaf in this sample. Somebody else added a “freshly baked bread” note and I gotta say that’s mostly what I get. Not a dark bread and not sourdough, but like a soft wheaty loaf. It has a subtle corny sweetness, some hint of roast note but is mostly on the greener side. I spaced out my sessions a few months apart to see if the leaf calmed down any, which it seems to be better at my second session. The roast steeps out after 3 steeps, leaving behind the soft sweetness. The mouthfeel is on the thin side, but is still smooth. Mild body caffeine feeling.

Unfortunately because of how chopped this is, it steeps out very quickly. I was pushing these by the 5th infusion. This is an interesting oolong and is nice to have some oolong from another production area other than china and taiwan. The flavors are quite balanced, and the roast is well done. I honestly haven’t tried to look at the pricing so I will not comment on whether or not I think its worthwhile to buy a larger quantity.

It’s got a nice roast the tea tastes really clean not too much complexity on the first steep but still quite refreshing and nice.
It’s got an interesting smell, quite green and lots of top notes with a little sourness but with a lovely roasted quality with its body.
I’m the actual tea there is only a slight slight sourness that I would blame more on the quality of the water then the tea. The top notes that I smell on the tea are much different then the. The after taste is all delicious roast.
Pushed this tea pretty hard on this steep and the next one. No bitterness or astringency. Not a lot of complexity either but still very refreshing. Its got quite a nice fruity quality to it that is quite refreshing.

Traveling around Japan with my tastebuds again. Checking out their oolongs! Thanks to Liquid Proust for the awesome group buy.

Maybe it’s the power of suggestion, but the tea just seems very much like a sencha. Not in flavor, of course, but in production. It reaches out to the tea drinker with a very composed, articulate flavor profile whose primary flavors have a controlled development and whose background flavors come very neatly up to the front in the finish and aftertaste. Maybe I just picture the Japanese way of doing things while drinking this tea – very neat, very orderly, and quality-assured. In any event, this tea lives up to those expectations.

Overall, a delicious tea. A nice, chocolately sweetness is present throughout, but it is not cloyingly sweet. Very restrained, controlled, and composed. Also, if you are not a huge fan of roastiness or overt nuttiness, this is a good choice.

Price is good – about $7 for 50g. Has a bit more longevity than the other Japanese oolong (Kagoshima) that I tried. Excellent purchase.
*
Dry leaf: peanut shell, milk chocolate, cocoa powder, chocolate fudge. In preheated vessel – more peanut shell and roasted nut, some dry chocolate notes and red fruit.

Smell: roasted nut, peanut shell, notes of Mexican chocolate and dry baking spice, some hints of red currant

Taste: dry nuttiness, roast almonds, peanut shell, some dry baking spice notes, sticky rice sweetness and savoriness, hints of molasses and chocolate fudge. Aftertaste of dark syrup sweetness and red fruit. Returning chocolate fudge aftertaste (not heavy, but a strong hint of this flavor.)

Sipdown. I gotta say most of the oolongs in this sampler were a little closer to black than oolong for me personally. Most of them were the way I prefer my blacks and half of them the way I prefer darker oolongs, but still, darker than I expected the sampler being.

Ending this one off, it was one of my favorites along with the Wild Orchid, the unroasted Yushan, and the other Japanese Oolong. I know that this tea was hit or miss for a lot of people, but I personally liked it because of how nutty and chocolaty it was in terms of its roast. It satisfied my coffee cravings for a few hours and paired surprisingly well with aged Gouda and buttery crackers producing some rosy and roasty results. I also found myself not wanting to grab a chocolate bar for a while.

I am glad that I can count this as a dark tea, and another I’ve finished off. Apparently, putting one two teas in your cabinet and drinking them both in a day is an effective way to sip down.

I thought I would carry on my habit lately of drinking some greens – so i’m trying this gift from Haveteawilltravel in the oolong group buy. Thanks!

OK. Lots of broken twigs! grandpa-style minefield – unless you like twigs going up your nose :D I followed others recommendations of just under 80c. I did also hear you can hit it with boiling and get a really wonderful chocolate hit but as this was a sampler I didnt want to mess it up.

Taste-wise, its nice savoury – nuts, chocolate with just a hint of fruity aroma. At one point it reminded me of food, and I couldn’t work out what it was. Then I realised toasted rice, and so probably something related from the leaf or toasting method in Genmaicha had made me think of toasted rice in this.

Before this sencha & genmaicha were my only japanese teas ive tried. I enjoyed this, albeit being maybe a tad not to my tastes. Its certainly piqued my interest to try some more japanese greens at some point.

And thanks to LiquidProust for doing his organising of these group buys.

A disappointment to me! Before trying this tea, I had the Organic Miyazaki Oolong Tea Baisen from Yuuki-Cha, which I loved and might be the best tea I ever had. So I was very excited to open up my bag of Koubi Shiage. The leaves of this tea look pretty nice to me, however they are accompanied by a relatively large fraction of stalks.

This tea is somewhat cheaper than the Baisen (8$ vs. 10$ per 50g), but tastes not much like it at all. I tried different temperatures and leaf amounts, but the quality stayed similar. This tea has little or no real ‘oolong’ taste, and little else to make it interesting either, and on me leaves the impression of just any average black tea, however with some oolong smell.