What Oolong Are You Drinking

Semi-oxidized tea
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Baisao
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Fri Jul 08, 2022 7:02 pm

Ethan Kurland wrote:
Fri Jul 08, 2022 10:49 am
LeoFox wrote:
Fri Jul 08, 2022 9:59 am
This guy seems to drink tea with different kinds of food a lot. I think he sometimes works as a tea-food pairing person for restaurants

I don't agree with any of his pairings though. :lol:
How many of us would agree that we don't want the cost of eating at a restaurant increased because someone worked at that restaurant as a tea-food pairing advisor?
Some people are willing to pay for personality alone
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Bok
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Fri Jul 08, 2022 9:54 pm

Baisao wrote:
Fri Jul 08, 2022 7:02 pm
Ethan Kurland wrote:
Fri Jul 08, 2022 10:49 am
LeoFox wrote:
Fri Jul 08, 2022 9:59 am
This guy seems to drink tea with different kinds of food a lot. I think he sometimes works as a tea-food pairing person for restaurants

I don't agree with any of his pairings though. :lol:
How many of us would agree that we don't want the cost of eating at a restaurant increased because someone worked at that restaurant as a tea-food pairing advisor?
Some people are willing to pay for personality alone
Image
Image
The guy in question does not make a living selling tea though. I can also say that speaking with him behind the scenes he’s a nice guy and more down to earth than what his online persona might suggest. Some people just like to do things in style ;)
Andrew S
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Location: Sydney, Australia

Sat Jul 09, 2022 3:50 am

Daxue Jiadao's 2019 Wuyi heritage sanyangfeng laocong tieluohan yesterday, and still brewing it today for some bonus rounds. It took me a while to get around to trying this.

Bright, pure, with a nice strong feeling, and an overall sensation of being vibrant and refreshing. I'll leave it to others to describe any particular flavours.

This is my favourite of their line-up so far (after the queshe, at its best), but perhaps that was to be expected. I like its style, the quality, and the potent feeling that it gives me.

It also has a plain old deliciousness to it, which sometimes feels like an under-rated quality in tea, as in other areas.

Andrew
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Bok
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Sat Jul 09, 2022 5:21 am

Andrew S wrote:
Sat Jul 09, 2022 3:50 am
Daxue Jiadao's 2019 Wuyi heritage sanyangfeng laocong tieluohan yesterday, and still brewing it today for some bonus rounds. It took me a while to get around to trying this.

Bright, pure, with a nice strong feeling, and an overall sensation of being vibrant and refreshing. I'll leave it to others to describe any particular flavours.

This is my favourite of their line-up so far (after the queshe, at its best), but perhaps that was to be expected. I like its style, the quality, and the potent feeling that it gives me.

It also has a plain old deliciousness to it, which sometimes feels like an under-rated quality in tea, as in other areas.

Andrew
That Laocong TLH is quite something I remember.
DailyTX
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Sat Jul 09, 2022 9:48 pm

Brewing a 2022 shui xian white tea from The Steep Room. Very pleasant tea with floral and sweetness. It reminds me of dancong fragrant with Yancha body. Yummy!
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debunix
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Sun Jul 10, 2022 12:26 am

From the description it sounds quite marvelous
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LeoFox
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Sun Jul 10, 2022 8:41 am

Enjoying some more lishan casually just using gdb and cup
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debunix
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Sun Jul 10, 2022 10:28 am

Another step on the quest for a successor to Norbu's Red Alishan this week: I ordered some Imperial Pearl from Mountain Tea, a company whose varied offerings featured in a tasting on TeaChat some years ago. Unfortunately, that tasting thread and many contributor's tasting notes were lost in the purges by the sponsors of the site and disruption of community we found there. I did, however, save some notes of my own tasting here. In that tasting, I was a little disappointed in the Imperial Pearl, but I went back to it later and noted
I came back to the Imperial Pearl later, and it was quite lovely. It just did not fit the same brewing parameters that fitted the other teas from this tasting: there is a quality of a very ripe, almost fermented fruit, that is very pleasant to me with shorter and more dilute infusions but dominated unpleasantly with longer/more concentrated infusions. When brewed more dilute, this has also been an excellent tea for bulk brewing, holding a pleasant flavor and thick mouthfeel through a long day in the thermos.
This morning I am infusing for pleasure, not for formal notes, and it is delicious. Yesterday I enjoyed some hot-start cool-infused tea from a water bottle--not all-day hot in the thermos, but started with a bit of boiling water and then added to a bottle of cold water, and drunk hours later on a hot summer day. It stool up to that very well.

At some point I will do a head-too-head vs Norbu's, but for right now, it does a very fine job of pleasing my taste buds in a way that matches much of my sense-memory of Norbu's Red Alishan, with a bit more of the spice notes that I love in the Norbu version than in the silky-smooth Alishan Black from Floating Leaves Tea (which I've written about several times recently in this and other topics). I think they're both quite fine teas, but the Alishan Black is made from Jin Xuan cultivar, and I suspect that the cultivar just doesn't make as much of the compounds I perceive as 'spicy'.

I think I'm done seeking new Alishan Red successors, and that I will continue to enjoy some lovely discoveries along the way--especially the remarkable Alishan Black. I've got quite a lot of these teas and it will take quite a while to get through them, even with the ever larger office tea crew helping out.

I'm at Camp this week, and temps will be well into the 90s every day, and I didn't even bring a thermos for hot tea. But it will be a fine tea week nonetheless alternating Alishan Black, Imperial Pearl, and Spring Alishan (green) from Floating Leaves. And I'll be very glad to get back to morning sencha and Wuyi oolongs and fine sheng puerh when I get home.
blkgreymon
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Fri Jul 15, 2022 7:11 pm

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My photography needs improvement.

Fushoushan from Mr. Kurland. The flavor profile is similar to a Jin Xuan I had but this tea is way more sweet and buttery especially with the first two infusions. With my third, fourth and fifth infusion, a more vegetal and floral note replaced the sweet and buttery taste. Really enjoyed it and can't wait to try the other samples.
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debunix
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Fri Jul 15, 2022 9:04 pm

Lovely plate, pot, leaves: It looks very tasty to me, and I see no problem with the photography making it look so enticing.
Ethan Kurland
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Sat Jul 16, 2022 12:49 am

debunix wrote:
Fri Jul 15, 2022 9:04 pm
Lovely plate, pot, leaves: It looks very tasty to me, and I see no problem with the photography making it look so enticing.
+1
blkgreymon, I like how that pot looks & its shape. I've been steeping in a white, porcelain bowl which allows me to watch the pearls open a bit during the first infusion, a lot more open by the end of the second or early in the third, fully by the end of the fourth. Watching the leaves unfold is also a way to time the steeping. I like the white bowl, but your pot is much prettier.
Last edited by Ethan Kurland on Sat Jul 16, 2022 9:09 am, edited 1 time in total.
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teatray
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Sat Jul 16, 2022 8:44 am

2020 100 years Lao Cong Shui Xian by Zhang Hui Chun from Essence of Tea.

Exploring some yancha recently (never had any before). Getting a taste for them, but it's not as immediate and natural as it happened with Taiwanese oolongs earlier this year. This one is the second yancha from EoT/Zhang Hui Chan I'm trying and it feels pleasant, clean, and with a nice aftertaste. Maybe the best I had?

Earlier, I also tasted a small selection from Daxue Jiedao. One tea stood out and grabbed my mind, their Shiru, which had a very intriguing mouthfeel (I think what's called "minerality"(?), to a very pleasant extreme). The others (some cheaper, some more expensive) perhaps weren't my type but maybe also served to help me acquire the taste and discover my brewing preferences, so any comparison at this stage of discovering isn't going to be that useful.

Have a few more EoT offerings to try and an incoming order from Jing Tea Shop. Then I have to decide whether to explore further. So far, the answer is yes-ish, but not a priority at all, esp. at these price points. The educational value is worth it to me so far, but not necessarily the drink in the cup. Perhaps that will change.
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debunix
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Sat Jul 16, 2022 10:57 am

A good session with a fine yancha is marvelous, and quite distinct from other types of oolongs. I think of them as more austere than a user-friendly tail-wagging eager-to-please tea like the Taiwanese red oolongs I've been focused on recently, or the lush high mountain light roast 'green' oolongs. But after a lot of the Taiwanese teas, as I worked my way through a group of teas I'd been exploring for that heir to the Alishan Red from Norbu, Jing Tea Shop's Fruity Rou Gui was such a refreshing change. I love variety in my tea.
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teatray
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Sat Jul 16, 2022 11:18 am

debunix wrote:
Sat Jul 16, 2022 10:57 am
A good session with a fine yancha is marvelous, and quite distinct from other types of oolongs. I think of them as more austere than a user-friendly tail-wagging eager-to-please tea like the Taiwanese red oolongs I've been focused on recently, or the lush high mountain light roast 'green' oolongs. But after a lot of the Taiwanese teas, as I worked my way through a group of teas I'd been exploring for that heir to the Alishan Red from Norbu, Jing Tea Shop's Fruity Rou Gui was such a refreshing change. I love variety in my tea.
Haha, what a good description. Maybe the proprietor of Lazy Cat Tea named it so for a reason, no tail-wagging here. Got that Fruity Rou Gui in my J.T.S. order, hopeful for that one.
blkgreymon
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Sat Jul 16, 2022 11:46 am

Thanks all!

Holy cow I just peeped the price of that yancha. It looks amazing in your photos teatray but I am not ready to commit to that price point yet hahaha.
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