What-Cha

2Apr- dry leaf smells of light hay, has a more black tea appearance
I gave it a 5s rinse. Wet leaf smells sharp? A little citrus. I steeped this 5 times in a 150ml gaiwan at 195F.
Taste was soft, but I didn’t get much out of this one. There was a bit of fruit in one of the longer steeps. I might try the rest of my sample westren to see if anything is different.

Very nice black tea, without the sometimes too overwhelming astringency and taste profile of a black tea. Smooth drink with the right amount of flavor!

First time I drank a silver needle tea, and it didn’t disappoint. Very beautiful tea leave needles, with a sweet smell. Also after steeping there is definitely some sweet corn-like flavor (exactly like the package promised!). I could detect some hay as well.

This brews up as a very light liquid. This certainly is a grassy tea but in a tasty way.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BDs6RE2Jng6LTAYtOtcexkGxRVQv6lnH9jbfBI0/?taken-by=kkpeltzer

It’s an unflavored, pure leaf tea, but somehow this Silver Oolong tastes like the juiciest Bai Mu Dan white was met with lemon-grapefruit essential oils, all whipped into a light-as-air chiffon. The citrus flavor is vivid and soft, and is joined by the depth and aroma of zest. It’s a sophisticated, lightly sweet lemon drop candy, with all of the essence and none of the acidic bite of fresh lemon juice.

The Silver Oolong is unique among any tea I’ve tasted, while at the same time bringing to mind similar flavors in other teas. Winter White Earl Grey, a Mu Dan white tea and bergamot blend by Harney & Sons, could seem like an attempt to blend what Silver Oolong creates with pure leaf. The resemblance is in the Winter White’s base tea as well as the bergamot, since the Silver Oolong’s citrus flavor seems more like Meyer lemon or grapefruit than tangerine. However, even in the smoothest blends (in which I would include the Winter White Earl Grey), I find bergamot oil to be harsh, a form of bitterness that I have taken in for the experience but have not found pleasant. In contrast, the Silver Oolong captures the essence of citrus without delving into the bitterness of bergamot oil.

I brewed this tea in a sort of hybrid style in a 150mil ruyao easy gaiwan. It was the last of the bag, which ended up being less leaf than would be recommended for the gaiwan. So, I chose steep times that bridged gongfu and Western (around 30 sec, 1 min for later steeps), and this brewing a good number of flavorful cups. This tea had lots of staying power. Even as the sweet fruitiness faded and the deeper flavors became more apparent, every cup of Silver Oolong was still sweeter, juicier, and gentler than any bergamot tea I’ve tasted.

Another tea that the Silver Oolong brought to mind was the Cannon Ball Green Tea. It was a fun realization that both teas are produced by Nepal’s Greenland Organic Farm. I’ve tasted only a cup or two of the Cannon Ball Green, not enough for a detailed comparison, but plenty to recall that it too captured citrus blossoms in a tea leaf.

Got lots of steeps out of this one compared to India blacks, but not as many as from a Yunnan. Didn’t keep close count though. Pleasing, with predominantly woodsy and malty tones. Light toffee and cacao notes with some astringence. Even oversteeped this did not get bitter.

This is quite an interesting tea. I personally haven’t had any quite like it before. The leaves are really cool looking with green in the middle and a substantial amount of reddish oxidation on the edges. Liquor is the color one would expect from such a leaf – a bit of an amber color between the pale yellow of green oolongs and the reddish color of black tea – looks a bit like apple juice. Incidentally, apple is the main aroma I get from the wet leaves.

This tea has some fun flavors to it as well. Early steeps are crisp and fruity, the main taste I get is apples as well, though with some soft maltiness underneath. Later in the session, as the crisp higher notes fade, the tea is more malty with some slight vegetal notes and deep fruity flavor. I think I got some berry flavor (cherries or blackberries), but I’m not sure what fruit this exactly tastes like. Can get decently astringent if pressed or brewed at higher temps. Pretty unique tea and the first one I’ve ever tasted from Africa. Cool offering from What-Cha. Fun to drink.

This is going on my wishlist. Brothy, sweet and spring greens with an almost minty finish. I drank up my sample at work over a few days and experienced a nice lift from this tea.

I didn’t get a whole lot of smokiness from this tea. Maybe a bit, but it wasn’t anywhere near overwhelming. Mostly I got sometimes sweet woody flavors during my session with this one. The body was not particularly strong, but that was alright. Very little bitterness but a bit of mouth-drying once I got to some longer steeps, nothing too unpleasant. Beautiful large and vibrant green leaves after steeping. The dry leaves look correspondingly burly. I’ve been consistently impressed by almost all the Vietnamese teas I’ve had from What-Cha and this one isn’t an exception.

I usually shy away from unflavored black teas. This one isn’t your typical black tea. It’s calmer, if you will. There is some astringency but it’s not unpleasant. I also had sweetener ready to go but didn’t have to add it! I think I now know what “malty” is thanks to this tea. It is also quite smooth. Thanks for exposing me to this LiquidProust

The vendor describes this one as “Young sheng puerh like” but I can’t agree with that.

There is a hint of sweetness and something perfumey in the aroma. Probably because of the relatively high brewing temp, I get a bit of astringent mouthcoating making it like this.

I would prefer to use less leaf just loose in the cup, but I find that this tea oversteeps and turns bitter when I try that.

Threw myself off with this tea… I linked Fujian with my past experiences and thought this would be dark and cocoa. This ended up being a medium brew with a fruit nectar taste and texture to it. Leaf ends up going from a dark brown/black to an olive leaf with veins that show up when the color starts to pop. Aftertaste is present, adds a little viscosity to the saliva. Back of the throat is feeling dry while the mouth is not. Kind of an odd after feeling that I am not enjoying, but I will have to retry it at another time to see if the back of my throat stays dry again because that’s pretty odd.

Getting into this one tonight. I actually brought it out and rinsed it and sit it a while.
I grabbed about 10 grams off the cake. It has a bit of compression and came off in chunks and that was the rinse and wait basis.
The first 3 brews were very light on aroma and taste. My guess was the compression still opening up. The tea does have a nice golden color to it. Steeps 4-5 bring out the Bada Shan side of it. There is more in the way of a light floral aroma to it and there is the touch of bitterness cutting through the floral. Steeps 6,7,8 start to kick in nicely. The tea becomes stronger with a tobacco in there with the bitterness.
Pushing it a bit harder it comes across a bit tannic and the bitterness and tobacco kind of overpower the rest. I will brew the rest with shorter steeps. Dropping back for brews 9,10,11 the brew calms down and some hint of maybe lemon and saltiness emerge.
The tea as it cools down has a sweet sugary undertone. I let it sit and cool a touch on steep 11. I think this tea will go a few more as it still carries along fairly well.

Dry leaf smells flowery-lilac? Half of cake to gaiwan. 1st steep at 15s – lightly roasted. Wet leaf smells sweet and flowery, honey. Rasting honey, creamy, light roast. Further steeps adding 15s to each one. Continued to get flowery sweetness with creamy mouthfeel. I ended up getting 11 steeps out of the tea. Soft, but distinct in flavor. I could continue with the leaf for longer if desired.

I finished the other half of the cake this morning and I have to say I had a nice repeat of this session. Floral, creamy, sweet and light roast. Very happy with the purchase of this tea.

I’ve always been a fan of What-Cha and the description of the tea on What-Cha’s website made it sound really yummy. The description said ‘butter’, but when I received the tea ‘nutty’ was on the package.

Anyways, I brewed this tea in my vessel gong-fu style and I first noticed a nutty-creamy taste. It had a cocoa powder after taste that indicated a medium roast. As I brewed this tea it became more pungent and kept packing on a more powerful punch. In it’s medium steeps it started go quickly from smooth to bitter and rough. In its later steeps the nutty flavors started to get more sharp and pungent.

Overall, this wasn’t one of my favorite oolongs. I feel like other people might enjoy it for the fact it carries such a strong punch. I believe this would be a good oolong to introduce a coffee drinker who is ready to make the transition into tea.

Delicious. The other reviewers have already given reviews/tasting notes more eloquent than mine, so I’ll keep mine short. It’s a great tea, no bitter or astringent tastes at all even when I let it steep for forever in an effort to wring the last little bit out of the leaves, and smells and tastes like cocoa. It’ll be going on my “must buy” list for the future.

A little goes a long way!

So, I got this Tie Guan Yin because I wanted to see how well it matched another Tie Guan Yin I’d had previously. I actually think What-Cha’s Ding Dong Oolong matches what I was looking for better, but not because THIS tea is bad.

The tea comes rolled into little dry balls. I made the mistake of adding too many to my teapot, and when I came back to look at it—leaves, leaves everywhere! Almost spilling out of my diffuser. The little balls had rehydrated into HUGE tea leaves. I felt a bit put-out I’d used too much, but I recovered the leaves and will use them for a second pot later…I’ll just use fewer of them. (Still surprised how big they are…two or three teaspoons of dry ended up being split between FIVE small teacups when I took them out to save for later.)

Anyway, the tea itself has a wonderful floral aroma. I steeped a little longer than I intended to…I was aiming for 2 minutes, I think it ended up 3 or 4. Didn’t harm the tea, it had no bad notes and no bitterness, just ended up stronger than I’d intended.

It’s a good tea. I use sugar with my tea, so I don’t know what it’s like without it, but it definitely matches the description—vegetal with sour finish. Not an unpleasant sour. And the floral smell/taste is great. It’s a bright, cheerful tea, if I can say that. :)

The leaf on this one is really distinctive. I know that silver needle tea is supposed to be long, thin, and needle-like, but these look like tea leaves on steroids! The buds are easily 1-1.5 inches long and covered in a fine fuzz.

Dry, they smelled like sweet hay, with notes of lychee. Wet, they smelled a bit smoky but still sweet and hay-like.

I decided to go gentle on the tea and used water heated only to 70°C. However, that wasn’t really the right choice; I got notes of hay, peaches, and maybe a little strawberry and fruit leather, but the tea was in general so mild and unassuming that I kept on going “I can’t really taste anything! I can’t really taste anything!”

The tea was pale not only in taste but also in colour. All of the steeps were generally a pale wheat/straw colour. Gentle, but not that striking.

I brewed the same variety of tea a few days later using water just off the boil, but that was pretty similar. A little hay, a little smoke. Maybe a deeper, richer scent. Oh, and the colour of the tea was a bit darker too, sort of a deeper straw shading into orange. But still, the flavour was kinda hiding around in the background rather than dancing on centre stage on my tongue.

I will need to play around with this a bit more to see how to get the best flavour out of it. More leaf? Longer steep times? Different gaiwan? So many variables.

Full review at http://booksandtea.ca/2016/03/comparing-two-types-of-silver-needle-white-tea/

A very nice, kind of sweet tea, with a flavor profile that starts with strong notes of hazelnut, and after several steeps is more like a roasted green tea . And all variations in between.