Oolong Inc

This tea has a nice aroma. Very fruity. There is a somewhat juicy flavour. Not as strong as I usually find some fruit teas, and a good post-breakfast tea.

Thanks for the sample, Oolong Inc. :)

I was provided this sample by Oolong Inc. in exchange for a review. That being said, I would never be anything but honest.
The dry leaf smells nutty and warm. Brewing it has a predominantly roasted oolong scent, with a bit of a salty edge. The flavor is smooth with honey tones, and a really lovely roasted nut aftertaste. This is really quite excellent. It preserves both the qualities of gently roasted oolong while providing a nice darker nut roasted flavor. It reminds me of fresh-pressed soy milk flavor with some chestnut flavor thrown in. I could see myself craving this tea when it is cold outside (or 50 in the office, like it is at the moment!). It is so strange having these lightly honey-floral and nutty notes in one tea- it is clearly not a black tea nor is it identifiable as an oolong. The aftertaste reminds me a little of the taste in the air of a real coffee shop (not Starbucks) – not sweet, but not bitter either. Kinda like the smell of coffee breath. I know that doesn’t sound very tasty, but I assure you it is! And very comforting as well. The tea has a rather thin body but a good amount of sweetness to it.
I’m continually astounded at the price point of this tea for the quality. It is definitely something I will purchase in the future.

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.

Mmmm…. fruity. The tea has a scent of peaches, with some mangoes, and perhaps berries. It is a nice aroma. There really isn’t a dominate fruit flavour. Actually, it does taste like fruit punch. But more mild. Good with the scones.

Thanks for the sample, Oolong Inc.

Danger Floof powers activated! Thanks to the assistance of my dear Tea Barbarian my deathhawk (the official term for my style of mohawk) has been trimmed and re-dyed, it took three bottles of dye which is ridiculous! But it was the first time in a while that I bleached the roots and redid all the hair, and even though I have a mohawk I still have a ton of hair. Which brings me to the big problem, no amount of hair spray and backcombing will keep the ‘hawk up! I just have too much and too thick of hair, it looks more like a turquoise horse mane than a mohawk….oh god, I’m a My Little Pony.

Today’s tea comes from Oolong Inc and is their Taiwan Black Bean Oolong, a roasted Oolong blended with kuromame, or black soy beans that have been fried. It is a common health drink in various parts of Asia, and like other roasted grain/seed teas I love it . This is the first time I have had it blended with anything, and I have to admit, if I were to blend it with any type of tea a roasted oolong seems perfect. See these fried beans smell exactly like burnt beans, because they kinda are burnt beans, reminds me a bit of pot liquor from many iterations of pinto beans as a kid (one of my favorite parts of that meal) blending those notes with strong woody, toasted grain, and bamboo coal notes of the roasted oolong works rather well. That is if you like toasted grain and roasted teas, if not you might want to back away slowly.

I decided to gongfu this tea, because of course I did, and even though the leaves were fairly broken up and had a decent amount of stems it performed well in the gaiwan. The aroma of the wet leaves is very strong burnt beans and roasted grains, wet wood, and char, with a slight underlying sweetness of honey on toast. The liquid is sweet with notes of honey and grains with burnt beans, wet wood, char, and a bit of a bready undertone.

So, I will say this about this tea, its very tasty and has a decent amount of longevity lasting four steeps before giving up the ghost. It does not really change at all through the steeping, the taste stays the same, conveniently I like the taste so it is not all bad. It is thick and a bit sweet and a bit burnt, like someone took soy beans and fried them, which is pretty much what happened. Combining that taste with woodiness and char and a touch of lingering toast, this is definitely a good tea to drink on a chilly day.

The company asked me a few questions to address in my review, namely if the tea were found at Teavana or Republic of Tea how much would I pay for it…well, I wouldn’t. Not because of this tea, but because I have not bought anything from Republic of Tea in over five years and I have never shopped at Teavanna because I have never liked the teas of theirs I sampled. Next was how much would I pay for it if I found it in a supermarket and again I am not really sure, I never buy tea at a grocery store, I just don’t even look because they have not carried the kind of tea I liked…if I found it at a grocery store I would be dumbfounded I think. Their online price of $4.49 for 2oz is pretty fantastic so if I found it for those prices I would not hesitate. The next question is ‘Would a connoisseur like yourself steep a cup of our tea alone, after lunch in the office?’ I had to quote it because thanks for calling me a connoisseur! Yes I would drink this tea after lunch by myself, a lot of my tea-ing is solo, but if Ben were around I would give it to him to try because I like to share. The last question was how does it compare to teabags and K-cups, well for one no creating an astronomical amount of waste (I LOATHE K-cups) and teabags frequently are made from dust and fannings and taste not so good, and you rarely get more than one steep out of it.

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

Received this and two other delicious-sounding teas this morning from Oolong Inc. (samples provided free for review). Rose is one of my favorite flavors and the directions on the website indicated that this would be a good office steeper, so here I am, Western brewing this beautiful melange.
It’s been a while since I had a flavored green tea, lately it’s been all fresh Spring greens, all the time, so this is a good change of pace!
The dry leaves smell heavily of stately rose and nectarine. I can’t really get a sense for leaf quality behind those two aromas, but they look like mostly whole unrolled leaves.
My office smells like a bubble tea shop-all fruity and fresh as this tea brews. Again, the nectarine, though it has some yellow peach notes now that it’s wet, and those dried rose petals that you put in potpourri, not quite as strong as rose oil, but not quite as sweet as candied petals.
Oh man, this is yummy! It reminds me a ton of the white peach and rose water sorbet I made last summer! Oh la la! I could see this becoming my go-to rose tea! And it is so reasonably priced! The steep was around four minutes long, and I can taste that in the slight metallic undertones of the base tea, but the rose and white nectarine (finally figured it out!) flavors are punch and leave a long-lasting aftertaste.
Seriously, with some sweetener, this would be an amazing popsicle, and I could see this iced as the hit of the picnic. While the base green tea is definitely nothing to write home about, it serves admirably as the toast to this jam. Generally, I prefer when floral scents accent the natural flavors of high quality teas, but this is a great flavored tea at a price that you might expect it to be not-so-stellar and I’m definitely going to add a quantity of this to my collection.

Many thanks to Oolong Inc. for letting me sample this! Wow, never expected to find beans in my tea! I was very surprised with how the bean flavor came through. It was hearty and earthy and savory, and lent a kind of gravitas to the oolong. Even though I’ve eaten black beans all my life, I don’t think I would have identified this as ‘bean’ flavor in a blind test. It didn’t taste smoky to me, though perhaps it’s because when I think of smoky tea, I’m recalling the knock-out smokiness of a lapsang souchong. The tea has a lot of staying power and was still going strong after 3 steepings. I probably wouldn’t have picked this out for myself, because I tend to go for green oolongs, but I really enjoyed it!

They also had these questions which I’m answering here:
1. If my tea were found on Teavana or Republic of Tea, how much would you pay for it?
This is a little tricky to answer, just because the pricing on Teavana and Republic of Tea has very little to do with the quality of the tea and everything to do with the brands. The base price for loose leaf oolong on their websites seems to be about $13, but may be higher if they feel they can make a case for it being a hard-to-come-by tea. So I guess $13, or maybe a bit more if you feel the tea is in limited supply. That said, I wouldn’t actually buy oolong from Teavana or Republic of Tea, their quality isn’t that great.

2. If my tea were sold in supermarkets, how much would you pay for it?
Hmmm, context is a big factor here. I think the most I’ve ever seen tea go for in the supermarket is $8, so I wouldn’t price it higher than that. But people who buy their tea in supermarkets seem to expect everything to come in a tea bag.

3. Would a connoiseur like yourself steep a cup of our tea alone, after lunch in the office?
Of course! I have no problem drinking tea alone (more for me!) and I always have some tea after lunch.

4. What are its advantages over tea bags and K cups?
A rolled oolong doesn’t have enough room to expand in a tea bag, much less a K cup, so it wouldn’t be very flavorful if the tea was stuffed in those.

Many thanks to Oolong Inc. for letting me sample this! From the name and the smell, I was expecting some version of a milk oolong, but the description is accurate: this tea smells like butter, but tastes sweet. I’ve had sweet green oolongs before, but they always had floral notes to them — this is the first one I’ve encountered that is sweet but not flowery. The slight mineral taste balances out the sweetness of the tea. Overall, a nice light afternoon cup.

They also had these questions which I’m answering here:
1. If my tea were found on Teavana or Republic of Tea, how much would you pay for it?
This is a little tricky to answer, just because the pricing on Teavana and Republic of Tea has very little to do with the quality of the tea and everything to do with the brands. The base price for loose leaf oolong on their websites seems to be about $13, but may be higher if they feel they can make a case for it being a hard-to-come-by tea. So I guess $13, or maybe a bit more if you feel the tea is in limited supply. That said, I wouldn’t actually buy oolong from Teavana or Republic of Tea, their quality isn’t that great.

2. If my tea were sold in supermarkets, how much would you pay for it?
Hmmm, context is a big factor here. I think the most I’ve ever seen tea go for in the supermarket is $8, so I wouldn’t price it higher than that. But people who buy their tea in supermarkets seem to expect everything to come in a tea bag.

3. Would a connoiseur like yourself steep a cup of our tea alone, after lunch in the office?
Of course! I have no problem drinking tea alone (more for me!) and I always have some tea after lunch.

4. What are its advantages over tea bags and K cups?
A rolled oolong doesn’t have enough room to expand in a tea bag, much less a K cup, so it wouldn’t be very flavorful if the tea was stuffed in those.