Red Blossom Tea Company
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Absolutely wonderful.
That is what I have to say about this tea.
The leaves are beautiful. Long and twisted, downy in spots. They brew a very pale tea with a heavier scent than its taste. It smells almost like sweetgrass. The flavor develops beautifully as the tea cools. It starts out like a very light pi lo chun. I don’t really know how to describe that flavor but its definitely akin to that class of teas. It tastes like a light chinese green, I guess. I don’t pick up on many other notes until it starts to cool and then it comes alive. This tea doesn’t relax me like a pi lo chun does. Instead, it refreshes. The flavor is delicate but lively. It has a faint grassy note but not like japanese teas. It’s more like sweetgrass. This tea is just so revitalizing. I couldn’t stop smiling while I drank it.
Preparation
Another one of my recently acquired teas from Red Blossom and I have mixed feelings about this.
Following Red Blossom’s instructions to brew this for a minute yielded a cup of something that didn’t taste much different than hot water. There was a whisper of flavor but… that was about it. The next steep was for two minutes and this cup was a little more flavorful. The tea is delicate and sweet and tastes kind of like a weak dragonwell or pi lo chun. I’m not sure what bamboo tastes like but I don’t think I’m getting that flavor from this tea despite Red Blossom’s claims.
It’s a nice tea but nothing special. Maybe it’s just not my taste or maybe my palette isn’t sensitive enough to pick up the subtleties of this particular chinese green. I like my teas flavorful and complex. This is simple and subtle. It’s a tea I could gulp down not one I can savor. I much prefer dragonwell and pi lo chun over this.
Preparation
Joy of joys! My order from Red Blossom Tea Co. arrived today. My first shipment of new tea since joining Steepster… almost makes me a little misty-eyed.
New teas: Silk Oolong Formosa, Organic White Monkey, Pi Lo Chun, Ming Qian Lu Jian, Jing Xuan, Silver Needle. Plus I got a very pretty little gaiwan and samples of Phoenix Eye Jasmine and Jade Kuan Yin. Yay!
I was very excited to try this tea. Steepster was how I discovered silk/milk oolongs and the idea was wonderfully new and exciting to me. I think I fell in love with milk oolongs before I even tried one. So it’s fair to say that I had very high expectations for this Silk Oolong Formosa.
The dry leaf smells like caramel or maybe those White Rabbit chinese milk candies (love those!). It smells sweet and creamy – like no tea I’ve smelled before.
The first steep: 2 teaspoons, 6oz water at 195, 2 minutes. The rinsed leaves smell like peach ice cream. That was the first thought that came to mind. Fresh fruit and cream. Such a wonderful aroma. I can’t wait to taste this. The liquor from this first steeping had a light cream flavor but that was kind of… it. I steeped it for another minute and it developed a somewhat thicker mouth feel. The tastes I got were all over the map. At times it had no creaminess, at times I got a very lovely milk flavor at the back of my mouth. For the most part it tasted like a fine tung ting oolong with nice fruity notes. Not bad but also not what I built this tea up into. I can’t really blame the tea for that. The second steep (195, 4 minutes) tasted like a nice oolong. Sometimes like a nice oolong with a little milk added. This tea, on both steeps, leaves a nice, sweet, fruity taste behind. Occasionally there’s a caramel taste.
It’s a very nice oolong. It’s exciting to drink since you never really know what taste you’ll get. I’m definitely a fan. The description leads me to believe that this is an oolong scented to taste like a jing xuan which, based on my research, has the milk flavor naturally. Although the information about milk oolongs on the web is sparse and varied… what I’ve gathered is that jing xuan teas are the “real deal” and then there are milk scented teas. So I’m excited to try the jing xuan.
ETA: Also! Do you rinse the leaves between steeps? I didn’t do that but I’m wondering what the general consensus is…
Preparation
I do at the beginning but not in between steeps. I guess I never thought to.
I think you can do it in between steeps to sort of wake the leaves up if they’ve gotten cold or something, but I’ve never done it or really heard much about it so the fact that I think it exists is pretty much all I’ve got.
never thought to rinse between steeps. maybe it’s just a personal preference? congrats on all of the new teas. looking forward to reading all about them.
Your research is correct! The silk oolong is a flavored tea. It is steeped in milk and then roasted to give it that “creamy” flavor that mimics the natural thickness of the oolongs grown at higher elevations like the Jing Xuan. I recommend having a comparison tasting side by side to really taste the difference between them! And no need to rinse the leaves between steeps.
Shortbread.
That’s what I tasted on the first two steeps. Delicious, warm, buttery, with fruity notes and that distinct cookie flavor, shortbread.
I should mention that I’m now on steep five of this.
I know that I’m really digging an oolong if I get this far with it. Even though I know that oolongs are generally meant to unfold over steeps, if it’s really not gelling with me after steep two, I have a lot of trouble forging ahead [and often don’t]. Clearly, that’s not a problem with this one.
Auggy [thanks Auggy for this, by the way] and LENA F. mentioned tropical, candied, Juicy Fruit-ish flavors from this, and I didn’t really get that strongly until at or around steep three. The buttery component had become significantly weaker during the second steep, though I could still taste the shortbread, but by steep three it became notably more tropical in character. It shed its tartan and bagpipe and threw on a hat made of fruit and a coconut bikini.
Here in steep five, it’s light and fruity. I’m probably going to stop at this cup because it’s become significantly weaker for me. Similar to when you drop some fruit into water and let it sit for a while. It’s still enjoyable at this point, but in another cup I suspect the flavor will have dissipated beyond the point of notability.
This isn’t as complex as other oolongs I’ve had, and it is very, very different from other formosa oolongs that I’ve tried, but I imagine that I’ll want to have it around for, at the very least, those first three steeps.
Preparation
This sounds like awesomeness in a cup. :) I’m terrified of multiple steepings, but I’m going to give it a shot tomorrow with my Gunpowder from Adagio! Oolongs, greens, whites, and pu-erh can use multiple steepings, correct?
Your summaries are awesomesauce, by the way. I just pictured a burly Scottish man in a kilt wearing a coconut bra. WIN.
If it weren’t so late, I’d make me some. So much love for this.
@teaplz: A lot of blacks can get another steep or two out of them. Flavored teas seem to lose the most out of a second steep, but I’ll do most Keemun or Yunnan teas 3 times. I think I did the Assam I had twice and it turned out nice, too. So pretty much everything can take multiple steeps. The big question is how much you like what they give you in them. :)
@teaplz Aww, don’t be scurred! I’m going to say that it really depends on the tea. For me, multiple steepings tend to go better with oolongs and pu-erhs. In fact, they almost always result in the cup evolving and are well-worth it to explore. [Some oolongs can have a much more vegetal taste on the first go round than on subsequent ones.] Some Japanese greens are meant to undergo a lot of steeps at different time intervals to unlock the flavors.
Pretty much anything else has the capability of taking more than one steep, but in my experience it’s wholly dependent on the quality of the tea. Some flavored blacks, for example, can become rather tasteless even on steep two because they use a low quality tea and the flavoring comes out in the first steep. The best way to learn from tea to tea is to experiment!
@Auggy We are of one mind.
Oh no! I threw out my Yunnan Jig leaves today. D: Do you just gradually increase the time of the steep? And should you keep the water temperature the same for subsequent steeps?
I guess I always figured that blacks would get more astringent/bitter on a second steep. Guess I’m wrong, then!
I’m pretty much borderline terrified when I make ANY cup of tea. I just keep thinking “Oh no oh no oh no this is going to go WRONG what if my water temperature isn’t exact and my timing exact what if there’s too much leaf or too little leaf oh gawd.” That’s pretty much the mini panic attack every time I make tea. With bagged tea I’m pretty insane as well.
@teaplz Tea is pretty forgiving, but you’d best believe that we’ve ALL ruined plenty of cups along the way. One of the best feelings I get is when I revisit a tea, tweak some things, and all of a sudden it’s like I’m drinking something completely different.
For the most part I usually keep time and temperature the same. If I notice that something is starting to taste weak, I might let it sit for a while longer to see if it brings more flavor out, but more often than not the tea is just sputtering out. One of the best things about Steepster is that I can go back and look at old logs to see what I did and try something new the next time round.
Letting go of “The Fear” is very difficult, but I think/hope that once you’ve played around with things a bit more it will begin to lose its hold on you. We tend to dissect things and get so specific on here that I can definitely see it sounding intimidating, but seriously, brewing a cup of tea isn’t rocket science. So long as the tea is ultimately enjoyable to you, you’ve won anyway!
Awww, don’t panic! There are very few teas that you will ruin by fudging a little on the time, the leaf or the temp. (Japanese greens tend to be the most picky in my experience). And just because you CAN resteep does mean you have to. I almost never resteep my morning tea because I just don’t have time.
I think the general rule is to increase both steep time and water temp, however I’m lazy and rarely change the water temp. I sort of guesstimate the next steep time depending on the tea type and how the first cup was, but typically end up with something like 3:00, 4:00, 5:30, 7:00, 9:30, 13:00, 17:00, 22:00… But that’s my own personal set up that I find works best for me (and usually with oolongs – blacks never seem to last THAT long). Again, that’s just me. You probably might want to increase your steep times more since you seem to prefer bolder tastes.
If you play around with it enough, you’ll be able to start getting a feel for how things will react best for you.
“The Fear?”: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-wGMlSuX_c
I think the panic comes from really cheap bagged teas. And that PG Tips really scarred me. I kept thinking to myself, HOW DID YOU GET SO BITTER IN TWO MINUTES?! And Earl Grey! Earl Grey perpetually seems to screw me. It’s like it doesn’t want to be made correctly, for some reason. :(
I do really like bolder tasting blacks. But I do like mild tea as well! I don’t think I’ve had a good one yet, though. Even though I like my tea somewhat strong, here’s a little secret: I loathe coffee. I actually can’t stand the taste of it. Aren’t I weird. But I like expresso (with no milk added in) better. Which means I can stand to sip it a little without wanting to gag.
Maybe if you do a little dance with some cute butlers, you would be more relaxed prior to tea brewing. Hehe.
Oh, I should have shared earlier… I made my hubby PG Tips this morning in honor of you. :D
I like this oolong and I’m usually not a fan of hand rolled leaves. This tea is super sweet smelling. I caught myself thinking about cotton candy…but by the time I identified the smell, it faded out. My nose spent a lot of time in my cup. There are several fruity notes in this tea. It could almost be a flavored oolong. Tasty cup!
Preparation
I’ve served this tea to a lot of people by now and everybody asks for it again. The flavor changes quite a bit with temperature and time so you need to find your own sweet spot. I like it a bit stronger so I use a longer time then Red Blossom recommends.
Preparation
Not entirely sure if this is the exact Dragonwell I’m drinking. I do know it is from Red Blossom.
I went to @VegaatLangton and asked for this tea without the water. The Batista looked at me funny then laughed. “You just want the tea bag? Do you want a cup?” She laughed again. The reason I asked for just the tea is because they sell this very tasty loose leaf tea from Red Blossom, but they only have one hot water source and it comes from the coffee machine. The hot water it produces is scorching hot, even above boiling temp. It would burn the delicate green tea and destroy it’s flavors. I gave her 2 bucks and took the handmade tea bag and went back to work.
I emptied the leaves from the bag into my infuser. It’s the perfect amount. I thought about keeping it in the tea bag, but there wasn’t much room for the leaves to take flight in. I’m on my second steep this morning and the flavors are much more than I would ever get if I had just ordered a cup of tea from this hole in the wall coffee shop.
The brews are lightly colored, but strongly grassy. Definitely has remembrance to a warm humid summer day, looking out on corn fields, while watching grasshoppers and gnats take over the golden sky as the sun sets in middle America.
I think this is what I’m drinking… Not sure. I was falling asleep at my desk at work, so I decided to hit up the new coffee shop that opened up in a garage around the corner. I had my mind set on a soy latte, assuming they wouldn’t have any tea that met my standard. Well, behold they have loose leaf tea’s from Red Blossom in Chinatown! Far superior tea any coffee house usually carries. So I grabbed the Oolong, but I forgot to catch what kind of Oolong it was. From the look and taste of it I THINK this was it. It’s super tasty! And now I am more awake then I have been all day. I am so glad I didn’t get a coffee. Long live tea!
I’ve really been impressed by their teas – I only wish I had something nearby that served it!
Oolongs are by far my favorite teas, but I’m not sure about flavors added to my tea. Did you have this straight up?
I never put anything in my tea, expect for the occasional green tea soy latte (unsweetened). Oolongs are a fav of mine as well.
Smiling tea ftw, for sure. We all need at least one smiling tea in our lives.
Smiling tea, that sounds like you’ve stumbled across a celebration tea. :)