Bird Pick Tea & Herb

Backlogging: hubby and I had this tea together last night. He has never cared for green tea, but this one has won him over. I am ever grateful to Quiltguppy for introducing me to this one. Hubby wanted to get a special tea for my birthday and my daughter, who keeps meticulous records all year on things people like so she will be ready for gift giving, passed on the recommendation to him and he ordered it. I am so glad he did. It is truly excellent tea, so incredibly buttery, even more so than a DragonWell. It is completely lacking in dryness and astringency. This gets a triple WOW! from me.

We are doing yard work and it is about 80 degrees outside, so I made a couple of pots of this and let it cool to room temperature. I love that it doesn’t take on any astringency when cold. This is very refreshing for a day like this. I am drinking it as is, no sugar added. It still has rich, buttery flavor and beautiful color.

Pup update: here is what Mr Sam is up to while we work:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/24998856@N06/6990516913/in/photostream/

IN MY CUPBOARD! :)

A long time ago, I received a generous sample of this tea from QUILTGUPPY. It was amazing! I vowed that someday I would place an order with this company, but hadn’t gotten around to it.

For my birthday, hubby surprised me with a handmade gaiwan like the easy gaiwan and this tea, which came with several samples that I will be tasting soon. We decided to share it before tea time, which has been delayed to Friday this week.

He is new to greens and oolongs, but he liked how aromatic this tea is. He said it had an unusual flavor. I asked him if he might be tasting hot buttered corn on the cob and he said, “That’s it! It is butter!”

We went for four steeps on this. It was wonderful! So thankful for a thoughtful hubby!

Many thanks on this Thanksgiving Day to Quiltguppy! Now that my oldest daughter has started drinking green tea, I have managed to talk her into trying oolong and white as well. After our lunch, we began with this lovely green that is so very oolong in many ways. Sweet, buttery vegetable taste! She is enjoying it, oh joy, joy! One more tea drinker in the family!

This tea is courtesy of QUILTGUPPY! It is amazing. I wonder if the name means it is a green oolong as opposed to a roasted oolong, because it looks like oolong tea, smells like oolong tea, and has a flavor profile I would eхpect from oolong tea. This smells like butter, butter, butter…indeed, Bliss said like buttered popcorn including the salt and I can get that. The first infusion is very buttery, but there is a floral flavor in there as well. This is creamy and smooth, and if this is truly green, there is absolutely not a trace of the bitter edge green teas usually have. On the second infusion, the buttery note has taken a step back, and the flower has come forward. I will be drinking this all day. What a wonderful treat! Thank you, Quiltguppy!

As mentioned in the description, the first steeping or two has some astringency/drying feeling at the end of the sip.
But, by the 3rd/4th, the taste is a slightly-fruity sweetness (just subtle, not intense).

The aroma of the steeped leaves, which I remember also coming from other organic senchas (O-cha’s Warashina Supreme comes to mind), is a bit fruity and is probably my favorite part about the tea. Otherwise, this is a fairly standard, mass-produced, average sencha.

This is the perfect green tea. It has a light buttery aftertaste.

On the first brew, such a creamy flavor without being rich, heavy, or even unlike a green tea. Don’t burn it — it’s exquisite! Holds up well to two additional brews, although neither has the creaminess.

Oh this is good. Beautifully good. I must agree with the other tasting notes in that this tastes like a milk Oolong… or at least a very buttery green Oolong. It is sweet and creamy and buttery delicious.

Off to write a review of it for the SororiTea Sisters blog!

This is a great tea to have in the summer. I make it almost every other day. It quenches your thirst more than water and becomes very cold in the fridge.
No need to add any sweetener, this tea is very mild and my kids love it.
We also drink it hot at meals or whenever.
I usually boil water in a big pot and add barley to fill the surface, turn off the heat, then cover. I drain barley once it cools down.

I GOT QUILTGUPPYS PACKAGE IN THE MAIL!!!!
So excited, can ya tell? :P
QG is so generous… so many different teas and ones that I’m giddy just thinking about trying. I cannot say enough thankyous, and I hope I can return the favour one day! (at this point I can try but would likely fall short by a mile!)
Anyhow, I was quite excited to see this one in the stash so of course I reached for it first!
A milky(silky) GREEN tea?! I’d never heard of such a thing!
Now that it’s brewed and I’m sipping away, I can definitely taste the lactose. It’s buttery sweetness makes me swoon *sighs
However, the milk part stops abruptly upon the swallow, which makes me crave more, so I take another sip and then crave more and… well you get the idea.
The first steep was odd, a little too vegetally green for my liking, but now that I am on the second steep, it tastes more oolongy. At first, it really did taste like a “green” tea, and I couldn’t see what anyone meant about this being more oolongish.
It’s definitely more on the green side, but then oolongs can lean towards black or green so that makes sense I suppose.
Overall, I prefer the darker oolongs, so I doubt there is any surprise that I prefer the true “milk oolong” but there are days where I crave a good green so you can be sure that I’ll be reaching for this until my sample runs out! I don’t make many pots of tea, it’s usually just one cup at a time in my tea master, so it’s sure to last me awhile :)
Well, I’m off to brew my third cup! anyone care to take bets on how far I’ll make it this time?
P.S. Overall I would rate this an 86, given my dislike for green in general, contrasted with the excellent quality and flavour and the fact that within the “green” world it ranks pretty high, (I’d say a 96) so I’ll leave it in the middle at 91. That’s fair I think!

I’m increasing the rating of this tea because this is the best cup that I’ve had so far. It’s buttery, milky and just slightly floral. What a tasty, gorgeous cup!

I’ve increased the rating for this tea. I’ve learned that it’s quite good as long as it’s steeped correctly. I think I will buy more of this when I’m out. Floral, buttery & clean.

I, like others, noticed that the leaves look almost identical to an oolong. In fact, I was really surprised when I popped open the bag that clearly says Silky GREEN. I’ve had quite a few cups of this one & initially brewed them around 190-195. At that temperature, I tasted an overwhelmingly large amount of pure floral flavor. To me, it was so floral that it was almost like soap or perfume. I was just about to give up on this tea before I tried it again at a lower temperature. There are still floral flavors, but I’m tasting much more of a buttery component. It’s not my favorite, but I like that I’ve found a good temperature for this tea. I wish it could be more buttery and less floral.

I have no idea why Bird Pick is trying to front that this is a green tea when judging from the taste, shape, and brewing parameters it’s obviously an oolong. I picked some of this up in store because someone I follow mentioned it and I loved the idea of a buttery green…but yo, this is a milk oolong. It’s not a super high grade one, but it’s a milk oolong if I’ve ever tasted one. It’s a green oolong, yes, in that it’s not roasted (or whatever they do to oolong sometimes to make me dislike it – oxidize it? pan-fry it? overdry it?), so maybe that’s what it meant. Bird Pick can be weird with their naming, as with their Beauty Slim tea, which they sell as a green and which you would think means weight-loss, when in fact it’s a ku ding and slim refers to the needle-like shape of the leaves.

That said: I am not mad at this! It’s a tasty tea, and a sick deal for the price. As mentioned above, this is clearly a milk oolong (or silk oolong), referring in this case to the way the leaves are processed as I don’t think there’s any flavoring added. This tastes a lot like David’s Tea Quangzhou Milk Oolong except not quite as creamy – a few rungs lower in quality, but still a totally epic deal since milk oolong can be ridiculously pricey. If you have a Bird Pick shop near you I’d suggest a visit, their prices are reasonable and there’s none of the two ounce minimum nonsense that Teavana forces down your throat.

Anyway, here was my actual experience with this tea: I brewed it at first at 170 degrees for two minutes, still thinking it was a green, and that did pretty much nothing for it, the leaves barely unfurled and I didn’t get a lot of flavor out of it. Upon realizing it was not in fact a green tea, I did a second steep with water a minute or so off boil, and gave her three minutes. This let the leaves really start to open up and I got a delicious cup off of it. A nice, creamy mouth feel, rich buttery flavor, just a quality milk oolong through and through. I did two more steeps after that, again both near boiling, three and a half minutes and then four, and these cups were great as well. The fifth steep was pretty weak, but still gave me a little something. Not exciting enough to drink on its own but I stirred a teaspoon of matcha into it and it was great, gave the matcha some added interest.

Anyway, I really recommend this tea! Tastes great, resteeps well, marvelous value for the price, sucks that Bird Pick have trolled us all by calling it a green!

I was captivated by the buttery sent of the leaves. This was the first loose tea i bought from bird pick. It isnt as strong as i would like, but definatly a really unique tea that i have enjoyed every cup of.

4tsps for 3 cups of water. The leaves have a faint smell that I associate with Lipton tea. I could smell the lychee but I couldn’t get past the Lipton smell.

The liquor is golden amber with a little bitter taste. I couldn’t really taste the lychee after it was brewed and my tongue felt like it was coated after drinking it.

Now this will be funny. I am being very picky when I am reviewing and I did like this tea and would have it again. At first I thought this tea would replace my lychee from “T” shoppe, but I decided ‘life is too short not to drink your favorite tea’.

I was hoping to find this in loose leaf, but for some reason Bird Pick only carries this flavor in bagged form. The scent is what got me – dry it’s a sweet, milky caramel, no green at all in there. The bags are odd little things, silky pyramid pouches with strings too short for all but the smallest cups, so you have to clip the string to the cup or it gets dragged in by the weight of the bag. The tea within looks like ground spinach, a very lovely green color. No visible caramel bits, so I think this one is just infused.

I’m still learning my way around sencha, so I was pretty conservative with the steeping parameters on this one. The first time I made it I definitely gave it my standard three minutes for a green and boy did I end up with a cup of sweet spinach water. Blech. Cut the steep down this time and it’s better.

A whiff of caramel on the nose when I raise up the cup, but mostly this one’s all sencha. The first hot sips give me sencha all the way. As it cools down the caramel starts to come out, but only a hint of it, an extra sweetness that lingers in the mouth. Cooler still and the caramel finally begins to dominate, which is good since I don’t think sweet caramel and spinach-y sencha are the most natural pairing. Still, not a bad cup!

I just can’t get into this tea. I tend to like greener oolongs, but this one isn’t bad for a darker type, the flowery flavor definitely sets it apart. Unfortunately it’s not a flowery flavor I particularly like. Extra points added for the fact that I managed to get through an entire tin of this, including multiple steeps for each serving – so it can’t be that bad. It reminds me a bit of the teas you get at Chinese restaurants, and I think this flavor does better suit Chinese food, at least the fried/not-spicy kind you get at American buffets. Unfortunately I don’t eat like that very often, so I can’t say this tea was ever a great fit for my kitchen.

If you like more roasted/oxidized oolongs or floral flavors this will be right up your alley!

I purchased this vanilla sencha, as well as Bird Pick’s caramel and honeydew senchas, and then 52Teas Banana Peach green, which has a sencha base…then I found out I’m pretty sure I don’t like sencha. Ack. This was the first I tried, and I’ve been fiddling with it since, trying to understand this particular green and make it work for me instead of against me.

The trouble is, no matter which variety I make, the sencha always pushes through and tastes, whether subtly or intensely, like I’m drinking ground-up spinach. Eurgh. I mean, I love spinach! But like, in salads, or on sandwiches. Not in a cup overlaid with a dessert-y taste.

The best I’ve managed to do with this one in particular is keep the steep super-short. So far the lowest I’ve gone is about a minute and a half, but I might reduce that further. This is also a pretty weird vanilla, I think, which doesn’t help – it’s a particularly creamy sort of vanilla flavoring, which normally I’d be over the moon about but I just don’t think it suits this variety of green. I’m going to keep fiddling with it, but any tips on how to best brew sencha would be appreciated!

Making my way through the last of this, I just put two teaspoons of it straight into my two serving teapot, leaving the strainer out entirely so the leaves could properly get their steep on. This was a good call! I think this is one of the best cups I’ve gotten out of this, the leaves had plenty of room to fully unfurl and bump up against each other. It’s very pretty in the pot and rather pleasant to watch it steep, kind of like watching goldfish swim. Calming, you know?

I don’t think I’ll be repurchasing this one as I’ve since discovered other oolongs I find more spectacular, but I’ve enjoyed having this one in my cupboard and in my cup.

This is such a smooth tea! It’s pretty much exactly what I think of when I think of oolong – lightly floral, good through about four steeps, a nice unchallenging tea that does what it’s supposed to. The leaves are curled so tightly that I use my biggest tea strainer so they can really unfurl fully, which I’d recommend if only so you can marvel over how huge these tea leaves are after several cups.

I bought this not realizing it was a ku ding tea, which I’ve been put off by in the past. This one’s not bad, though, milder than what I’ve tried before. It’s still pretty bitter, but a three minute steep and a little while to cool off will make it tolerable. Use only two twigs at a time, and I wouldn’t recommend resteeping. Drink it fast and between two sweeter cups and it’s a nice way to clear your head.

Sara’s tealog entry about this tea tipped me off to the fact that this isn’t a tea at all. It seems to be the leaves of a plant called kuding with is a species of Ilex (holly). And yet on the website it’s listed as a green tea and there’s no indication in the description of the tea of it being anything other than one. ⌐_⌐

I followed Sara’s advice and only used two ‘sticks’ and while it still tastes bitter (kuding is supposed to taste bitter) it isn’t as wretchedly horrible as my first ‘experiment’ and I’m actually noticing that it has a nice, sweet aftertaste. Taking the nature of this tea into account (and the fact I’m not massively overdosing) I’ve decided to up the rating a bit. I’m still pissed at the company for being so obscure though. *grumble *