Blue Beauty

Had a few steeps of this last night, and I totally forgot how much I love this one. I was just trying to sipdown on some older tea I had to make room for a few bags I have yet to open, BUT as soon as I tasted this one again I decided that I’d need to order more. Smooth, sweet, and so yummy!

The dry leaves actually seem grayish-blue in color and are very tightly rolled – they almost look like pebbles! Once brewed they expand slowly. The smell of the brew isn’t much, I’ll admit. It’s all in the taste!
It’s a smooth green-ish oolong (it doesn’t have a huge vegetal presence), with hay notes and DELICIOUS licorice aspects at the end of the sip! Goodness, how I love the aftertaste of this one.

Glad to say this is still one of my favorites and hasn’t diminished over my months of tea tasting. Hooray!

On a personal note, I only have two finals left before I am graduated and free from college! Super excited, but super nervous about real grown-up life starting. Gotta find me a real job and say “Good-bye” to Ruby Tuesday. ;)

Good luck on finals for all those in school, and Congrats to all the graduating seniors out there!

I fell in love with a mystery Oolong on a trip to Guilin while I was studying in Hong Kong. After returning to the USA, I searched all my local tea stores to find an equivalent. Years passed.
While visiting relatives in Minnesota, I stopped by Tea Source and found the exact tea I fell in love with years earlier!
This tea has the most incredible, lingering aftertaste. Do not steep too long, but DO use it for several infusions. The second is definitely the best! I generally save this one for special occasions.

Lucky 13th day of Sara’s Old Tea Advent Calendar.

Oh, I like this first steep. I gave it a little wash, and it opened up nicely in the two-minute steep. I taste honey and malt and a little vegetal note. Oh, there’s some citrus too! I’ll comment as I do more steeps.

Summer Vacation! Today is my last day of doing Chinese teas on my Summer Vacation monthly theme, and starting tomorrow I’ll be moving onto another country… Japan! I still have quite a stockpile of things I’ve bought from Yunomi and have yet to try, and I’m also a big fan of the flavored blends from Japanese company Lupicia so a few of those may make an appearance. I still have yet to try some of the teas my BFF from San Jose brought me back for my birthday when he went to Japan last March, which I really need to rectify…

Tonight, though, I have brewed up a Chinese oolong which I was craving… I think the migraine I’ve had all day had something to do with it. I forget what this stuff is called from other places, but it’s a green oolong from Fujian where the leaf is sprinkled with ginseng and licorice root before its folded into the tiny pellets. Normally I hate ginseng so I originally tried this with a sampler from a site that sources from TeaSource, and oddly enough, fell in love with it, because it didn’t have that strong medicinal taste that I had experienced before from ginseng tea. The oolong base and sweet licorice just balance it the right way. I knew I had to add it to my collection after that.

The smell of this tea really soothes me, though I think I’d have a hard time trying to describe the aroma properly. It comes off very sweet, silky, with a slightly minty/mineral quality, and the oolong base has that roasted/nutty quality, and when they all come together it has almost this dessert-like quality to the warm aroma. The flavor of the tea has that roasted nuts taste of a Se Chung, but it is followed by this really sweet aftertaste, so the final impression comes off like honey-roasted nuts. And there is just something quite soothing and settling about it. Despite having ginseng and licorice root, neither effect the flavor in a significant way; I don’t like the taste of ginseng and don’t notice it, and I love licorice root (yes, I’m one of those rare people) and don’t notice it, either; there is a natural sweetness to the tea, but it isn’t even the sort of heady “sticky sweetness” you normally taste with licorice root, but a soft, smooth, rather subdued sweetness.

I’m rather liking honey-roasted nuts in a cup. Especially when my head feels like butt.

I absolutely adore this tea. I can see why it was the customer choice oolong for 2014. This tea resteeps incredibly well. I often prefer the 2nd or 3rd steeping over the first.

Cooking TTB #13

Once again, I tried a tea without knowing what it was supposed to taste like and was left saying, “Seriously…what the heck?”

Now, if I was held at gunpoint and forced to give an answer to what this tea tastes like, I would have said a hot bath. I am well aware of the fact that I should not have tasted a hot bath before in order to even be able to compare a tea to a hot bath, but I’ll be damned if I could compare it to any other thing in this world. (For the record, I am now attributing said bath-like taste to the ginseng) It’s like when you eat something that tastes like horse (like pork chops—forgive me if you like pork chops)…only you’ve never eaten horse and what you really mean is that it tastes the way horses smell when they’re hanging out in a barn after racing….no? Am I the only person who totally associates smells with tastes? Those two senses sort of run on connected systems, so…I can’t be the only one.

Anyway, this tasted the way a hot bath smells when you don’t put any soap in and the water is all steamy. Yeah. So, this tea and I will probably never meet again, and that’s okay by me. But, I can appreciate its ability to give me a very strange sensory experience.

Cooking TTB #14

This is such an interesting oolong! The leaves really do have a blueish cast and they are rolled into tight little pellets that look kind of like pebbles. The flavor is also unlike other oolongs that I’ve tried…no vegetal flavor or silky mouth feel. Instead it’s heavy on the ginseng with a lingering sweet licorice aftertaste. The re-steep was very similar. I’m glad I got to try this, but it’s not something I would reach for again.

The ginseng and licorice don’t taste at all like ginseng and licorice, because they meld together to create something entirely new that is very pleasant. It has an aftertaste that leaves the mouth feeling smooth and cleansed.
I brewed this in my YiXing pot that I have seasoned with Blue Beauty Oolong. The cumulative taste has made it a wonderful choice for an YiXing pot.

From the Cooking TTB.

I’m glad I got a chance to try this, but this is not for me. On the first steep, the ginseng sweetness is a bit cloying, in the way that licorice often is, and masks the taste of the oolong. On the second steep of these leaves, the balance of flavours is better, but the oolong is very woody tasting. Probably my least favourite flavour profile for oolongs.

Ah well. I’m sure someone else will enjoy the rest of this sample more than me.