GABA Tea

I think this tea is very good :) i don’t understand the bad reviews.

http://toadsteablog.blogspot.com/

Another random Oolong sampler from Tea from Taiwan. My husband is away all day at work and then poker tonight so I’m all on my own…roll on my Criminal Minds marathon. Dr Reid ;)

The packaging for Tea From Taiwans Oolongs is always cute and shiny. Plus the foil backs make for good freshness. This particular Oolong is dark and medium brown with a green tinge. It has a dark, slight smoky and floral scent. Similar to a few of the mature Oolong’s that I have tried before but on the lighter end of being mature.

Using my Gongfu for 1 minute – first steep this tea is yellow/brown in colour and has a light wood and floral scent. Very woodsy really…like being in a carpenters shop.

Flavour is sweet and wooden, medium strength with a green, floral after taste. The sweetness is honey like but is made darker by the dominant wooden taste. It’s starting to remind me of pencil shavings.. that dark, dusky, wooden scent that they have…very similar to this Oolong.

Steep 2 – 2 minutes – Remaining amber in colour with the same wooden scent. It’s perhaps a little thicker now with more sweetness than previously.

I really don’t know how I stand with this tea…drinking wood shavings is not my ideal Oolong but at the same time it’s not disgusting. I suppose I can say it’s not something I would buy again. I can see why this has such mixed reviews. Sorry but I think this one is just not for me.

Okay, I’ve had this sample for over a year. I’ve been afraid to try it. The other notes on this tea have been terribly discouraging. But I just have to do this once and for all.

The leaves are balled up but pretty dark. I find that the dark oolongs tend to be long and twisty and the green ones are balled up like tiny wads of spit balls. (Maybe I should have used a better example…) But these are dark and balled up. It’s a crazy upside down world.

First, the the smell of the brewed tea is like roasted brussels sprouts. It also tastes like brussels sprouts only it’s weird at first because of that honeyed fruity flavor on the front of the tongue. This also reminds me a bit of chrysanthemum tea. The flavors in this tea clash for sure, but I don’t hate it like I feared. I wouldn’t say I liked it either though.

Will have to try a few more steeps. You never know an oolong unless you infuse it a few times. But first, I’ll take my pups out for a walk before the sun goes down. They didn’t go out much in the winter cause they are so tiny that they’d get too cold, even with coats. They are loving this warmer weather. :)

EDIT: Okay, no resteep because I’m an idiot. Took the cup and infuser basket into the kitchen area so that I could pour the hot water over the leaves. Except when I got to the kitchen, I dumped the leaves and started washing out the tea ware. Half way through scrubbing the infuser basket my brain went, “….wait…wasn’t I supposed to do another steep with those leaves? …those leaves that are sitting in the garbage can? …I suck.” I’ve got enough leaf to try again, but that will have to wait for another time. It’s time to move on to herbals and other decaf/noncaf teas.

I’ll add my vote to the “this smells… interesting” camp. To me, it is kind of like fish rolled in graham crackers. Not like… old fish and not fishy in the way that pu erh can be, just like I walked into a fish market. Pu erh makes me feel like I’m on Canal Street in New York when they hose the sidewalks down from the fish cleaning. This is more like a costal fish market in Massachusetts. … plus graham crackers.
The color is absolutely gorgeous – the closest to gold I have ever gotten in a cup of tea.

The taste is rather baffling to me because I can’t identify the flavors. Very very very velvety and smooth, fairly buttery with the vegetal notes hiding behind something that isn’t quite orchid flavor. This has some green characteristics in terms of the astringency and the nature of the vegetal flavors.

I really like this and I do consider myself a tea snob. I am so picky I am really almost down to just a few teas that I think are great, and yet I really like this. So are we tea snobs that like this, or tea snobs that hate it? Or perhaps this is just a really divisive tea!

At any rate, I had a splitting sinus headache, so this was just perfect for today. I don’t know how tranquilized I feel but I am really sensitive to everything, so I’ll have to update this if I feel any significant effects!

This is a tea I just had to try based on all the crappy reviews people wrote about it. ;-)

Now I can’t figure out if Steepster is just full of really snooty people or I am just not snooty enough? lol…

This is really not that bad. I kind of liked it… hee hee. Is it the power of suggestion? I really do feel more relaxed. I steeped this in the Ti xing teapot with around 180 water. I used 3 infusions of one minute each. This does not really taste like a typical oolong. I swear my tastebuds are tingling. It reminds me a little of a sheng. It also reminds me a little bit of Lipton tea. It does have a bit of an aftertaste that is kind of sharp and pungent, I assume this is part of what people are reacting to negatively here. Oh well. I kind of doubt I will get more but I might. It does give me a sort of pleasant goofy feeling.

I’m not sure how I feel about this tea and the whole GABA thing, but this was included in the Tea from Taiwan samplers I got forever ago (yay for vacuum sealing!), so I’ll drink it. Well, maybe I’ll drink it. Cause this tea smells weird. Like honey-covered soybeans. Or boiled vegetables. It’s freakin’ weird. Especially since the dry leaf smelled buttery. But this? Not buttery. Weird.

Uhm, okay. So it kind of tastes like honey-covered soybeans too. Or maybe decaying leaves. That’s just not cool. The front of the sip has the honey so at the beginning of the sip I think, “Oh, that’s not bad, maybe I’m getting used to it.” Then the soybean comes in and I think, “Eew, maybe I should pour this out.”

Yeah. This one does not get a resteep.
8g/16oz

I wanted to like this tea. I really did. But I didn’t. It was very sweet and very wierd. I can see the honey and soybean that people mentioned before. I kept sniffing and sipping and going “BLEA” and then thinking that it couldn’t be that bad, and trying again. Won’t be getting this one.

Nice oolong appearance, sour caramel and ginger notes, nitrogen undertones. This tea is strange, it has some chemicals note, but maybe it’s good for my health… :)

Read more here: http://www.teablr.com/2012/12/gaba-oolong-from-teafromtaiwan-shop/

Brewed much darker than any of my other oolong samples. Smells like a black tea…Darjeeling…has a very nice bouquet actually. Tastes like a very lightly steeped black tea. Not much else to describe about it. I won’t be purchasing it again, but it isn’t bad…worth a try I guess if you think the GABA stuff is good for you.

Wow on this tea. It tastes like…. I can’t place it. I almost want to say the water in the Le Sueur peas, that and rhubarb. So weird.
Dropped the rating more. The more I drink it, the more I think of urine. Pouring it out.