“Coffee and tea mixed together?! Yuck!” That’s what I got every time one of my coworkers asked what I was drinking. While the mix of this tea is oolong and coffee beans, and it smells like coffee and tea mixed together, it doesn’t taste at all like that.
The dominating flavor is toasty to the extreme—different kinds of toastiness from toasted wheat to toasted coffee. There’s an undercurrent of caramel that I think is coming from the coffee. Let me tell you that I have never been able to taste anything from coffee, but perhaps stripping it of the bitterness allowed the undercurrents to shine through. There’s also a soily, dirty kind of earthiness that reminds me of the smell of fresh-ground beans.
For the base, it tasted almost identical to the Beautiful Taiwan Golden Lily, that creamy, earthy, mushroomy kind of umami flavor that worked well with the notes from the coffee.
As it cools, it reminds me a bit of roasted peanut butter without sugar.
Wet soilier on the second steep.
Flavors: Caramel, Coffee, Mushrooms, Roasted, Roasted Nuts, Wet Earth
