Official what Oolong are You Drinking Right Now?

[Bok]

IMO that is a good test of inferior (Vietnamese?) material. If boiling water makes it extremely bitter, you've been conned. Drank some 'gaoshan' at a tea shop in Muzha the time before I went with ethan. They brought a portable butane stove to the table and I filled up the 90s Yixing they provided. Well, at 95 C, I was getting some extremely bitter tea and my girlfriend really wasn't enjoying it.

I took that tea to Saigon a month later and it was brewed much cooler, and it was very enjoyable. I bet that was Vietnamese material that I took right on back to Vietnam!

From my experience the Vietnamese stuff tastes more grassy.
Bitter does not necessarily mean it is not from Taiwan, just lower quality.

[jayinhk]

More grassy could mean higher nitrogen soil content, so heavily fertilized for greater yield. The grassy taste is chlorophyll. Higher nitrogen leads to more chlorophyll.

[ethan]

That's good information about effect of extreme chemical fertilization.

Perhaps the organic dayuling that I liked & bought, pleases me because it is not overly stimulated to have too much chlorophyl, not because it is "better" for being grown higher etc.

[jayinhk]

Could be, but organic gardening means all kinds of microbial activity you don't get with chemical fertilizer, and generally happier plants, even if yields are lower!

[jayinhk]

I should add that it's possible to overfertilize with organic fertilizer too. Chicken manure is HOT and should be composted or used very sparingly if top dressed with since it contains large amounts of urea. Human urine is a great source of nitrogen, but should be diluted sufficiently or it will burn the heck out of plants. Properly balanced organic fertilization can rival and perhaps even surpass the health and yields of chemical fertilizers because of humic acids and the like and beneficial soil bacteria that are killed by agrochemical use.

Drinking Banyan Shuixian (medium roast) from JKTeaShop tonight in my 65 ml Factory 1 hongni SP from EOT. This stuff isn't very good IMO. The first infusion was quite interesting, but the flavor dropped off very quickly and the fourth infusion was very disappointing. Two good infusions with good flavor, but I hoped for more.

[ethan]

Back in the USA & to preparation w/ teaware & kitchen that I know well.

Dark-roasted Tie Guan Yin from Dr Chen in Tainan, Taiwan tastes better now that I can prepare comfortably. My older sister loves this tea; my younger sister likes it a bit. Mentioning one last time how pleased & surprised I am w/ great flavor & aroma from quick infusions (15 - 30 seconds) of about 1 gram or less per 50 ml of water.

[Frisbeehead]

Back in the USA & to preparation w/ teaware & kitchen that I know well.

Dark-roasted Tie Guan Yin from Dr Chen in Tainan, Taiwan tastes better now that I can prepare comfortably. My older sister loves this tea; my younger sister likes it a bit. Mentioning one last time how pleased & surprised I am w/ great flavor & aroma from quick infusions (15 - 30 seconds) of about 1 gram or less per 50 ml of water.

Hey ethan, I actually tried the Dr. Chen's roasted tieguanyin that you sent me a couple days ago. When I opened it, I noticed that it was indeed roasted pretty dark. It smelled great and had a chocolatey and tiny bit floral aroma to it. I brewed it in my new 85ml hongni, with a little bit less tea than usual (5g) and using semi-short steeps (15s,15s,30s,etc...). It came out great, and you're right in that it had a great full-bodied flavor and good aroma.

I'll be experimenting with this tea for sure, maybe in some different teapots and definitely with some different brewing parameters. This is actually probably the most well-roasted oolong (not counting yancha) that I have tried thus far, as most of the other ones I've tried (traditional dong ding, muzha tieguanyin, etc) have had a medium roast level. Dr. Chen's tieguanyin was not overly roasted though, and it wasn't overpowering or anything. I'll have to try it in a gaiwan and compare it.

All in all, it's an enjoyable tea and I'm happy I got some.

[Midwinter_Sun]

Drinking Sea Dyke Oolong. It is packaged in a cardboard canister and I randomly found and bought it at an Indian supermarket in Singapore! Brewing in my new Chaozhou pot. This pot is 250ml or so, so far too big for personal use. Using it to grandpa brew and I really like the results. It's thicker walled, too, so ideal for this kind of brewing.

I am actually very much enjoying the Sea Dyke oolong grandpa style.
Up to 8 brews for me.

[ethan]

Yesterday & today, I have enjoyed Imperial Pearl from Mountain Tea. About 1/2 year ago I was disappointed w/ this tea feeling it was not as good as it was a couple of years back. Now it is very good. I suppose it needed some time. Tart fruit flavors work w/ the taste of semi-oxidized tea (I am guessing about 60%). This will be a regular for me.

[Frisbeehead]

Enjoying some of EoT's 2012 zhu lian dan cong (half handmade) in my hongni clay pot. The tea is a yancha not a phoenix dan cong.

The hongni clay works out very well with this tea. I will have to try other yanchas in it, but I am thinking they will all work out well. I may have to make this my primary yancha teapot, where my zini was my main yancha pot before. I'll do a side by side one of these days to see which reigns champion

The zhu lian dan cong has a good roast level, not too overpowering. It is slightly astringent, and has that signature Wuyi mineral taste, albeit more subtle than others I've tasted. The hongni clay really brings out the body of this tea, especially compared to my other yancha experiences; it is not as thin as many others I have tried have been. To my eyes (or tongue, in this case), this is what a good Wuyi yancha should be like: it has a prominent roasted character without being overpowering or too smoky, the tastes of the leaf itself can still be detected, the common yancha qualities such as the mineral flavor and the robust cinnamon aroma and flavor are present enough to make it "yancha" without being the sole character of the tea, and obviously the flavor should leave a long-lasting aftertaste with mild astringency.

In no way is the above paragraph a characterization of what I think all yancha "should" taste like. Rather it's a description of the qualities I tend to look for in yancha. This will change with time for me no doubt, since the taste profiles I appreciate are always changing/evolving with the more tea I try.

Anyway so I think I will be using this hongni clay pot for yancha much more often now. It really emphasizes the qualities I like in yancha, and adds a nice "roundness" to the texture which I did not get with my zini (or a gaiwan). This pot works great with other roasted oolongs I have tried in it as well, like roasted tieguanyin and roasted dong ding.

[BW85]

Yesterday & today, I have enjoyed Imperial Pearl from Mountain Tea. About 1/2 year ago I was disappointed w/ this tea feeling it was not as good as it was a couple of years back. Now it is very good. I suppose it needed some time. Tart fruit flavors work w/ the taste of semi-oxidized tea (I am guessing about 60%). This will be a regular for me.

I believe on their wholesale site the list the oxidation as 85%

[Balthazar]

I've been drinking TeaHome's "Legend of Tung Ting" for the last two days. I'm a big fan of Dong Ding teas, but I haven't bought one for years (!) as I haven't been able to find anything I fancy for an acceptable price. I tried my luck with this one after the positive teadb-review, and I have to say I'm very happy for it. It's a tea with very nice looking leaves, and it can be brewed many, many times. Taste/aroma/body-wise this is an excellent daily drinker, not fantastic but I'd be surprised if you can do better for the same price.

I'll probably pick up some more of this, and possibly try some of their other offerings. I'll probably try to make an order from the Taiwanese page, it seems prices are a bit lower there than if you buy through their Ebay shop. As I understand it, TeaHome's quality is somewhat inconsistent from year to year?

[debunix]

My ever-dependable brick-and-mortar store, Wing Hop Fung in Los Angeles' Chinatown, is closing. I happened to stop by yesterday--having run out of a few key teas I get there--and found 'moving sale' prices. They do have another shop in the metro area, and they are redirecting people there, but this was *my* shop, a short drive away and easy to fit into weekend errands, and one or two of the women working in the tea area know me as a regular customer and now I worry about their jobs and futures.

One of the teas I needed to pick up was my everyday, dependable, first and forever Sea Dyke red label Ti Kuan Yin. And: none to be found, little surprise given the barrenness of many of the shelves. Sigh. So....I found boxes of TKY at a slightly lower price, no idea from the label if they were high or low roast, but cheap enough that they would not be a terrible loss if undrinkable, and bought two.

Today, still working on the first packet of this new stuff. It is very heavily roasted, so heavy that it is all about the roast. Virtually no tea taste yet. Tiny tight-rolled black balls of roast. I'm going to drink these to the end, to find out if it does ever get to the sweet and spicy that I so enjoy in the Sea Dyke, but meanwhile, am crossing my fingers that the one US seller I found on eBay will send me the genuine stuff, because this certainly is no fit substitute, even brewed up in my Petr Novak treebark pot-no raspberry scent to the pot and spout. It does look quite lovely with the dark red-brown liquor in a new cup by Inge Nielsen, but it just doesn't taste as lovely as it looks.

[ethan]

Organic dayuling from Dr Chen in Tainan, Taiwan.

I forgot to try a method of debunk of just wetting leaves, letting them sit for 30 minutes, then giving an extremely short infusion.

I failed to have the courage to once more imitate Mrs. Chen's way, use of a porcelain bowl stirred w/ a porcelain spoon sometimes leaving some tea as a reserve to mix w/ hot water added to the bowl's leaves in following infusions.

I just used a bit more leaf than Western style & slightly shorter time--anyway, the first infusion was WOW!
I played around w/ time & temperature through several infusions. All were good. Some were slightly bitter; one had a touch of sweetness; some had me thinking of a word I don't use, "unami". I don't know what word works. There is a good feeling in my mouth besides aftertaste & a nice feeling in my guts.

This is a great tea. I don't like green oolong most of the time. Getting close to ten infusions, I have a thinner, less flavorful beverage but still a good one.

I want to take the kitchen table when my sister is not home & have a serious tea session w/ this dayuling. It deserves full attention.

[jayinhk]

That DYL sounds lovely, and giving it more attention would probably pay off!

I'm drinking Vietnamese gaoshan-style oolong. 2014 harvest, but it has retained quite a bit of aroma. Not as sweet and fruity/floral as Vietnamese green oolong usually is; this stuff is more vegetal. Perhaps it's changed over time. This is from a 200g vacuum sealed pack that I opened before I flew to Vietnam. This is my first time drinking it, and I'm using a 100ml modern zhuni 'beauty' pot. I quite like the results, although 90C seems to be a safer temperature to brew it at to keep it pleasant as it can get pretty strong and bitter at higher temperature.

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