Milk Oolong

Tea of the afternoon……

And day #3 of 24. This came from QuiltGuppy. I am trying to branch out into oolongs and greens as I am normally a die-hard black tea drinker, and she was gracious enough to send me a generous sample of this tea in a swap. Thank you, QG!

This is surprising. I get a light floral, creamy aroma. It kind of smells like butter. And the taste is also kind of creamy and buttery. The liquor has a thick taste….thicker than just water for sure. Very pleasant and refreshing. I can drink this one straight up….no additions.

15 oz mug, 185 water, 2 1/2 tsp tea, 3 minutes.

(I am holding off on a rating as I am certainly no oolong expert……)

I’m excited to be trying this sample that I purchased from American Tea Room, which offers nicely priced small samplers so that one need not dive deeply into the unknown and the pocketbook.

The aroma of the dry leaf is hard to pin down—floral and sweet is about as far as I can say. The brewed tea is a nice yellow. The taste is naturally creamy and sweet (I added no milk or sweetenter, by the way). This has more vegetal overtones than other oolongs I have sampled, but they are nuanced. In a blind tasting I might say that this is a green tea.

Overall, I anticipate extra steepings. There’s something I cannot quite capture here, but it is something amiable.

I bought this one almost a year ago when I first started getting into tea because it was super highly reviewed over on Teaviews and someone called it like a “condensed milk” oolong. Well I had no idea what that meant and made some expecting something VERY different and was highly disappointed. After that I steered clear of oolongs.

I decided to revisit this tea now that I know a little more about tea and my expectations were much more in line.

I’m really glad I did. This tea is crazy good. I’m not going to get into my steeping play by play, but each additional one (4 in total) yielded a super buttery, creamy, almost roasty, treat. I would compare the butter flavor to that of snyder’s butter pretzels. And that’s a good thing. I could drink this all day. Especially when I’m craving a butter. The price tag is a bit stiff, but considering how much tea you get out of one or two teaspoons, it’s worth it (I tell myself….)

Anyway, yum.

I can’t believe I’m almost done with my 3.5 oz of this!! I just got it a couple days ago! It’s almost addicting. :)

It’s true, though. This tea is very good. And I feel really good while drinking it.

It’s very milky tasting, soothing and smooth. And there’s this intriguingly rich, round, buttery-green leaf flavor in the background.

I’m getting more milk than cream or candy. Steamed whole milk that’s almost silky tasting. Underlaid with something very “green” and crisp. Like butter-laced chlorophyll.

This is yummy and refreshing—not “heavy” feeling at all. Perfect for this sweltering, summer day. Perfect for any day actually.

I would have loved to have detected more “sugary”, condensed milk-like flavors (like White Rabbit candy in other reviews) but as it is, it’s delicious. I like it a lot.

This tea will be a staple in my cupboard.

Wow. This is fabulous. I am in love with this tea. It is SO tasty!
It’s creamy with a touch of peach like sweetness and behind that, a hint of tartness the way a peach would deliver. It has a very refreshing finish, which I did not find in the Tea Lux sample.
This is complex and stands alone without any sugar added… it has all the things I love in a tea!!
My only woe is that it irritates my throat a bit, but not nearly as much as some greens or whites do every now and then so I really don’t mind.
Thankyou QuiltGuppy, you are my tea hero!!
I wonder what the second steep will be like…

My cousin gave me sample of this tea and I’m pretty happy with it. It’s a very sweet smelling tea that has a buttery taste and a subtle sweetness to it. I did three steepings of this tea and by the third, the tea definitely transformed so it lingers on my tongue longer. I need to buy some more…

I think this must have come to me from QuiltGuppy. Not that I can remember for certain, but it was in one of those little pouches that I asked her to get a package of for me.

I’ve had one milk oolong before, from Nothing But Tea, and I was a bit torn about it. I liked the flavour but I thought it smelled like heated dairy. This one has a bit of that as well, but not the cloyingly sweet hot yoghurt that I remember from the other one. There’s more tea coming through here. Sweet and green. This pleases me.

The flavour is… thick. So so thick and almost creamy. It tastes exactly like it smells. A bit like warm dairy but also very clearly of a green oolong. It’s slightly nutty at the beginning of the sip and then the milky bits just take over, almost to the point of covering all other flavours. And the weird thing about that is that it’s more a feeling, not really a taste of anything. It’s like trying to taste something through a soft duvet. At the end of the sip I get an apple-y aftertaste, but it’s not super strong and doesn’t seem to want to show up on all sips. Just here and there.

It’s very nice. I think I prefer it non-milked, though.

I’m graduating in a few weeks so I thought it was due time to visit the American Tea Room in next-door Beverly Hills. I got the Afternoon Tea service and ordered a pot of milk oolong without hesitation. I’ve been dying to try a cup of this since reading about it on the Steepster discussion boards.

My thoughts? Delicious and smooth. I’ve only tried the Jin Xuan tea sampler from Tea from Taiwan, so my milk oolong palate is still developing. But this was so good that I paid the $16 to take an ounce of it home. (An impulse purchase on a poor college budget). Hopefully I’ll be able to brew it just as well at home.

This tea is simply outstanding. I know I’ve said it before, but there’s something about it that just pulls me in. It’s a savory tea, creamy, milky, and a little buttery that just oozes comfort. It’s hands-down one of my favorites.

I received a one-shot sample of this from a Twitter friends. I was very curious about it after a couple of false alarms on my Milk Oolong search. Sure, the others had some detectable creaminess to them but nothing awe-inspiring. This smelled like buttered popcorn right from the get-go on dry leaf alone. After the brew-up, that feeling still stayed. I wouldn’t have thought that I’d like a “butter” taste to my tea (aside from a slight buttery-floral note), but I was wrong. I welcomed the cornucopia of creaminess. A surprisingly and superior cup.

Full Review: http://www.teaviews.com/2010/11/21/review-american-tea-room-milk-oolong-2/