Tea Information:
Leaf Type: Oolong
Where to Buy: T-Oolong Tea
Tea Description:
This quality Alishan Charcoal Fire Heavy Roast Oolong is handpicked, handcrafted and produced from Alishan oolong tea. Use only the charcoal made of either Taiwan Longan wood or Taiwan Acacia wood to roast the tea (NOT by electric roasters), and follow old traditional method. This tea has an intense charcoal aroma and taste mixing with flavors of Alishan oolong. The aftertaste is enjoyable and long lasting. It tastes sweet, rich and complex, and stands up very well to multiple infusions.
Learn more about this tea here.
Taster’s Review:
I’ve had an occasional charcoal roasted Oolong, but I can’t recall having very many AliShan charcoal roasted Oolong teas! I know I’ve had at least one, but, I can’t recall many others. So, I’m very happy to have this opportunity to try this AliShan Charcoal Fire Heavy Roast Oolong Tea from T-Oolong Tea!
This is lovely!
To brew, I reached for my gaiwan. I measured a bamboo scoop of tea and put it into the gaiwan. I heated the water to 180°F and after performing a quick rinse (15 seconds), I started the first infusion, steeping it for 45 seconds. I added 15 seconds onto each subsequent infusions. Since this is a charcoal roasted AliShan, I opted not to use my designated AliShan Oolong Yixing mug and instead put the tea in one of my favorite tea cups. This tea cup holds two infusions perfectly, so I combined the first two infusions to make one cup. Then the third and fourth infusion combined made the second cup and so on.
With my first cup, the roasty-toasty flavors brought as smile to my face. It’s deliciously nutty and sweet. While an unroasted AliShan may taste floral and even a little ‘milky’ – this instead tastes nutty, creamy and sweet. I taste notes of the charcoal. It’s remarkably smooth with very little astringency and no bitterness.
My second cup was even more ‘roasty-toasty’ and I could pick up on more of the charcoal notes. Still deliciously nutty and sweet! The creaminess has subsided somewhat. This cup is less thick than the first, and there is a slight dryness to it. Still really nice.
The third cup was a little more mellow than the second cup. I’m starting to pick up on some light floral notes – like toasted orchid! It’s an interesting contrast of flavors. I think that this is the most interesting of the three cups. The cup is softer in texture. The charcoal notes are more pronounced. This cup isn’t as nutty as the first and second cups were but there are still some nutty tones. This is still roasty-toasty and really pleasant to sip.
I really enjoyed this tea.
Yunomi Tea Discoveries Club, February Review (Part 1)
As with last month’s review of the Yunomi Tea Discoveries Club (You can check out part 1 of that review here), I’ll be doing the review of this month’s package in two parts. This first article will feature the review of two teas and the second article, published tomorrow at the same time, will feature three teas.
This month, we received five teas featuring Hojicha Roasted Green teas as well as Japanese-made Oolong teas. Exciting! I haven’t tried a lot of Japanese Oolong teas – most of my Oolong experiences have been with Taiwanese Oolongs and to a slightly lesser extent, Chinese Oolongs. Japanese Oolong teas aren’t as common a tea to find – another reason that this Tea Discoveries Club from Yunomi is a GREAT deal!
The teas featured in this month’s package are: three Hojicha teas (Hojicha Roasted Green Tea, Autumn Hojicha Roasted Green Tea and Superior Hojicha Roasted Green Tea) and two Japanese Oolong teas (Oolong Tea and Black Oolong Tea). I’m so excited to try these! I love Hojicha and I love Oolong and am especially excited to try something rare like Japanese Oolong!
Also included in this month’s package is a pamphlet that offers steeping and tasting notes as well as some other interesting information including tea-related Japanese phrases and terms and the cutest little origami Crane!
So let’s jump right in and get started with the Hojicha Roasted Green Tea from NaturaliTea.
This Hojicha delivers all the flavors that you’d expect from a Hojicha. It’s got that wonderfully cozy, roasty-toasty flavor. It’s lightly sweet and nutty. It’s a very autumnal type of flavor – it evokes thoughts of autumn for me. I think of the cooler weather, the crispness in the air and the smell of smoke from the neighborhood chimneys. It’s the kind of flavor that you want to curl up to.
I like that this particular Hojicha is light. It doesn’t have a heavy flavor to it. It’s the kind of drink that you want after you’ve had a heavy meal. It’s soothing and gentle.
The second tea that I’ll be examining in this article is Organic Oolong Tea from Takeo Tea Farm. This is a tea that I explored previously in another review (read that review here).
Dry, this tea looks a lot like a black tea. It reminds me of a black tea with its dark, slender leaves. If I were given the dry leaves ‘blindly’ (without knowing that it was an Oolong) I would not have guessed it was an Oolong by the appearance of the dry leaf.
The tea brews up dark too. The only real “Oolong-like” indication I started to recognize is after the rinse and first infusion, I noticed how much the leaves had expanded and it was very “Oolong-esque.” (Oolong teas tend to expand quite a bit during the brewing process!)
Now the flavor … this does taste like an Oolong. It reminds me a lot of a darker Oolong, like perhaps a Formosa Oolong or a Oriental Beauty Oolong. It has that deep, fruity flavor and the really lovely, full texture of an Oolong. It’s sweet and really quite pleasant.
It has an almost ‘wine-like’ quality to it too, much more so than teas that I often call ‘wine-like.’ I can really taste a fermented grape flavor here. The tea has a very rich, full and satisfying flavor. This is truly a unique Oolong tea – one that should be experienced to be understood fully. (In other words – try this tea as soon as you can!)
My first cup (infusions 1 and 2) was probably the most intensely flavored cup of the three that I enjoyed. I found that with my second cup, the flavors were beginning to mellow slightly. The tea was still very strongly flavored and I still got a very distinct fermented grape-like flavor to the cup. But the flavors in the cups that would follow were a little less focused. (Still quite enjoyable though – it’s well worth the effort to keep on steeping!)
With the third cup, I started to notice that the fruit notes were becoming sweeter. It wasn’t as ‘fermented’ a taste as I noticed in the first two cups. Floral notes began to emerge as did a sweet note that evoked thoughts of honey. A really lovely cup!
I can’t wait to explore the other three teas! Read about them in tomorrow’s article!
Mr. He’s 1st Picking Laoshan Black Tea from Verdant Tea
Tea Information:
Leaf Type: Black
Where to Buy: Verdant Tea
Tea Description:
Laoshan Black is our most popular tea, and its success has encouraged Mr He of Laoshan Village to keep refining his process to make it better every year. This year, Mr. He has taken leaves normally used for his delicate and subtle early spring green tea and allowed them to roast in the sun for three days before hand processing in small one to two pound batches, yielding this incredible rich, subtle Laoshan Black experience.
Learn more about this tea here.
Taster’s Review:
The aroma of the dry leaf knocks my socks off. OK, so I wasn’t wearing socks, but if I was, they’d be blown off. My feet felt the absence of the socks and felt the strong gust of wind that was there to blow the socks off the feet, but, because there was no socks, my feet just got a nice cool breeze for a few minutes, and given that it’s kind of hot outside, I’m glad that the gust wasn’t warm air.
Wow … so that was a lot “windier” than I expected to be to describe a scent that I can’t remember experiencing with a black tea in the past. It smells like chocolate. Like dark chocolate with a nice roast on those cacao beans. Nice. The chocoholic in me is happy.
This is a very special tea. And since it is so special, I decided to consult the suggested brewing parameters on the Verdant Tea website for how to best brew this tea. Now, this isn’t something I do often. I don’t usually check to see how the company suggests I brew a tea, mostly because I’ve been brewing tea for a long time. I eyeball my measurements using my bamboo scoop (the bamboo scoop that I own looks sort of like this one).
I have kind of a set “temperature” guide in my head: for most black teas, I use boiling water. If I’m brewing Assam, I drop the temperature to 205°F. If I’m brewing Darjeeling, I drop the temperature to 195°F. If I’m brewing herbal teas, including rooibos, honeybush, yerba mate and guayusa, I also set the temperature for 195°F. Most pu-erh teas get 190°F. If’ I’m brewing Green or Oolong teas, I use 175 – 185°F. If I’m brewing a white or yellow tea, I use 170°F. I don’t often stray from this mental temperature guide often. Steep times are also follow a mental steep-time guide.
But because this is a tea that is of very limited quantities, and not one that I want to experiment a lot with because I don’t have a large quantity of this tea to experiment with, nor do I have the resources to secure myself a large quantity of the tea … because of these reasons, I decided to consult with the people who have had more experience with this tea than I. I decided to go with the gongfu brew style (hey, what the heck!) and I now have sitting before me my first cup of this tea – the combined results of the first and second infusions, following an extremely quick 1 second rinse.
Ow! Cup is hot. I’m using my little Chinese teacup with no handle and made of very thin porcelain, so there’s not a lot to insulate and protect my fingers from the heat of the boiling water used to infuse this tea.
Very mellow tasting. These infusions were 15 seconds and 20 seconds, which went a little longer than the suggested 2 – 3 seconds as suggested in the brewing parameters by Verdant. But there is still a lot of flavor to the mellow taste.
The chocolate notes are THERE and I’m loving that. The tasting notes on the Verdant website also suggest notes of cherry and almond, and I do get a slight roasted nut flavor there that is almond-y. A lovely combination of flavors with the prolific chocolate notes. I taste hints of the sweet cherry notes. This first cup is sweet and lovely.
The next two infusions proved to continue with the chocolate-y notes. I love the roasted flavor to this cup and how that enhances the chocolate-y notes. I’m starting to pick up on honey-like flavors and a slight caramel-y note, like a honey caramel. Nice. I love that while this is tea is loaded with sweet notes, it doesn’t taste too sweet. It’s smooth and well-rounded.
Later infusions, I noticed the chocolate notes beginning to wane, replaced with a stronger nutty tone. Imagine toasted nuts that have been drizzled with honey.
The brewing parameters suggest 15 infusions, and I might very well have gotten that many out of this measurement of leaves, but, I was quite satisfied with the eight infusions that I brewed. By the fourth and final cup, while I was still enjoying the tea but I found myself missing the chocolate-y notes of the earlier infusions.
Then I found myself wondering how the flavors would differ if I were to experiment with this tea using the “Western” approach to brewing. So, I decided to do just that!
I think that I actually prefer the western method of brewing for this particular tea. The flavor is richer and more robust from the very first cup. Still deliciously chocolate-y and tasting of roasted almonds with hints of cherry, but the flavor has more muchness to it when I brew it using the teapot rather than the gaiwan.
And brewing this way, I can still get three flavorful infusions out of this tea. The first: chocolate-y, rich with notes of toasted almond and sweet cherry. The second: a little lighter on the chocolate notes, but, still very pleasantly chocolate-y, with more enhanced nutty notes and a touch of honey. And with the third, I was able to actually taste some notes of sarsaparilla.
This tea is awesome! It makes me want to dance the futterwacken!
Soba Cha Deep Roast Buckwheat Tisane from Steepster
Tisane Information:
Leaf Type: Buckwheat Tea
Where to Buy: Steepster Select
Tisane Description:
Soba cha (roasted buckwheat berries) is a caffeine free tisane drank in noodle shops in Japan. With an intoxicating aroma and slightly sweet, nutty brew, this is sure to become a favorite. GLUTEN FREE!
Taster’s Review:
Mmm! I’m pretty sure that I’ve tried Soba Cha before, although, I’m not sure when. This Soba Cha Deep Roast Buckwheat Tisane from Steepster reminds me a lot of drinking Genmai … (the toasted rice part). It has that roasty-toasty quality of Genmai rice, but, this has more of a malty … or perhaps a barley like flavor. It reminds me a lot of a freshly baked, whole multi-grain bread.
The flavor is sweet with notes of honey and nutty tones. There is a caramel-ish sort of flavor to this as well and that melds nicely with the honey. Then there is the grain-y sort of flavor that is so reminiscent of “breakfast” to me. Whole multi-grain toast with a pat of butter on it and honey drizzled over it. Yeah … that’s what I taste with this.
On Steepster I saw a suggestion of adding some maple syrup to this, and I think that would make a stunning addition to this. It’s quite good served straight up (I prefer this hot, it seems to lose something to the flavor as it cools), but, if I were going to add something, I think I would add the maple. It would give this a real “breakfast-y” sort of appeal.
A really yummy, naturally caffeine free alternative!
Mountain Roasted Green Tea from Shan Valley
Tea Information:
Leaf Type: Green
Where to Buy: Shan Valley
Tea Description:
Mountain Roasted tea is our premium tea harvested year round and roasted to perfection. It has a nice roasted taste and smell blended in with the more subtle fresh flavor of the tea.
Learn more about this tea here.
Taster’s Review:
When I first opened the pouch of Mountain Roasted Green Tea from Shan Valley, I wasn’t too sure what to expect. I’ve tried many roasted Oolong teas, however, my experience with roasted green teas is much more limited.
But this tastes more like a roasted green Oolong than it does a typical green tea to me. In the place of the usual or expected vegetative tones of a green tea, I taste a delicious nutty quality.
The texture of this tea is really nice – like velvet! It tastes very smooth, and feels very smooth to the palate as I sip. As the name suggests, it has a delicious roasty-toasty taste to it, with hints of smoke that mingle with distant floral notes. It is sweet and nutty, and there are some creamy butter-like notes to the cup as well.
A really delicious, unexpected green tea. I like it!