I’ve been waiting a while to review this because this was the more tricky oolong to brew out of all the ones I had from What-Cha, and I swear the leaves got weaker over time. Feel free to correct me, Alistair.
I cut the cake in half the first time starting off gong fu with steeps of 45 sec and up. I got something that was certainly similar to a Dong Ding with a banana walnut thing going into each steep. I thought it was interesting that the other two reviews mentioned coconut and cherry. I definitely got the coconut in the smooth texture, and a little bit of cherry in the aftertaste, but those flavors were not the pronounced to me. The tea was on the light side, but it had a pronounced light orange color and yielded about six cups.
I kept on experimenting with it, and the results were not what I expected. I brewed a whole cake in a Gaiwan and then in a much larger pot, and both times, the tea tasted and smelled far different from how I had it before. I got a drying walnut skin mouth feel and a weird charred up banana in the aftertaste-but even then, the brew felt more like water with a slight difference.
I tried a third of the cake, and the brew was weak with little water gong fu and even western in the gaiwan. As for tumblering it, I only got a weird subtle plantain taste amidst texture water.Sometimes, I felt like I was drinking warm milk. After all this, I decided that the only ways this tea works is through Alistair’s instructions of 1/2 cake for 1-2 minutes or 1/2 cake western just under boiling in an 8 ounce cup for two minutes. I get the subtle fruit flavors I like that way, but again, the fruit notes along with any previous florals have slowly dissipated. The flavors also dissipate quickly as it cools down.
Though I was extremely critical of this tea (I do not think I’ve given to a 80 to What-Cha’s oolongs EVER), it was a good oolong anyway. The roast allowed for the tea to not have the vegetal spinach taste that so many green oolongs are apt to, and it did have some very unique subtle fruit notes that you can find in a few other oolongs.
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It can be a bit of a challenge to get the brewing just right and the best brewing parameters are largely down to one’s own preference.
Going heavy on the leaf (one wehole cake) and using a small gaiwan or long western brew with a quick rinse first, can amp up the fruity roasted notes giving more of a dong ding like taste. Shorter steeps with less leaf, lean more towards the light floral, more akin to a high mountain Taiwanese oolong.
Part of the brewing difficulty is the variability of the cake size (variation can be as much as 2.5g) coupled with the compressed nature of the leaves, means it’s very hard to keep brewing parameters fixed.
2.5 grams of difference? Dang.
It can be a bit of a challenge to get the brewing just right and the best brewing parameters are largely down to one’s own preference.
Going heavy on the leaf (one wehole cake) and using a small gaiwan or long western brew with a quick rinse first, can amp up the fruity roasted notes giving more of a dong ding like taste. Shorter steeps with less leaf, lean more towards the light floral, more akin to a high mountain Taiwanese oolong.
Part of the brewing difficulty is the variability of the cake size (variation can be as much as 2.5g) coupled with the compressed nature of the leaves, means it’s very hard to keep brewing parameters fixed.
2.5 grams of difference? Dang.