Tangerine Black Tea

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I was excited about this tea – I love tangerine, and I could really see it working well on a black tea base. In practice, I ended up liking the steeped tea a lot less. I drank this one iced, and I just found that overall the tangerine was a little too tangy, and a little too generic citrus to really nail that flavour for me. I feel like if I had to blindly guess what the citrus flavour was I would have settled more in the “Meyer lemon” range of citrus fruits. The black base was also really full bodied and somewhat “choppy”/unrefined feeling. For how strong of a presence it was, I really didn’t like it.

All in all, that just made for a tea that was drinkable but not great. I think all in all, this is just going to wind up being a forgettable experience. There’s just nothing noteworthy here.

Well, the dance with new medication begins. This is an allergy medication geared towards helping my asthma since I am unable to take any steroids, it certainly seems I can breathe a lot easier, not nearly as much work to take a deep breath. The side effects are mostly serious drowsiness which I hope eases up, if not well, clearly I will need to just drink more tea. Now I wait for the cardiologist to set up an appointment and the bloodwork to come back. And then I get to see a new Rheumatologist to see if they can do something for my Fibromyalgia or find out of it is something else. Finger’s crossed something can be done this time that doesn’t cause really horrid side effects!!

With this grogginess in mind, I knew exactly what I wanted to write about! Oolong Inc’s Taiwan Tangerine Black Tea, but instead of my usually gongfu brewing, I decided to cold steep this one using the new cold steeper I got at TJ Maxx for like $4. I am not sure if that was its original purpose, but it works perfectly for it. Now just to be clear, I did gongfu this tea and got several steeps out of it, but I knew from the moment I sniffed the leaves I wanted it cold steeped. The aroma of the leaves is very strong tangerine, pretty much all I can smell is tangerine, like someone took the peels and squeezed all the oil out and sprinkled it on black tea. There is a bit of a malty undertone and a honey sweetness, but the real star of the show is the powerhouse of tangerine.

So I let the leaves steep overnight and was greeted with a lovely amber colored brew the next morning. The aroma is still very tangerine heavy, but it now smells like someone cut a tangerine and juiced it rather than using oil from the peel. Alongside the tangerine is malt and honey with a woodsy undertone. The mouthfeel was smooth and just a little bit tingly, combine that with it being cold it was immensely refreshing and enlivening, but citrus is great for waking me up. It is pleasantly sweet and malty, with honey notes and of course tangerine notes, luckily they are not overpowering, nice and subtle and just the right amount of sweet. If you want the stronger tangerine notes they are definitely more present in the hot version.

For blog and photos: http://ramblingbutterflythoughts.blogspot.com/2016/05/oolong-inc-taiwan-tangerine-black-tea.html

I was surprised at how strongly the dry leaf smells like tangerine. The brewed scent is nice though, subtly citrus. There is a somewhat tangy citrus flavour.

Thanks for the sample, Oolong Inc.