Formosa Bai Hao (Oolong #40)

I keep thinking I’ve reviewed this tea and I keep being wrong! So here it finally is.
The bottom line for me is that I like this much better than Adagio’s other oolongs. That said, it is not anywhere near my top oolongs. I do like it enough to keep drinking it, but it is forgettable enough that I can’t remember I’ve tried it!

OPERATION: Finish Old Teas

Looks like I took a spoon out of my sample and never touched it. Think I know why now.

Steeped, has a great peanut nutty smell. Taste wise, it’s very smokey. A little too smokey for me, almost reminds me of black tea. The more I sip it, the more astringent it gets and tastes like munching on peanut shells. Totally what Charoma said in their review.

However, I didn’t follow Adagio’s steeping times, might be better as a quick steep over multiple steepings.

This is my first oolong, and I wasn’t sure what to expect. It’s very mellow. Soft and sweet. I’m getting just a bit of the fruity flavor, and the flavor of the tea is fairly delicate.

That being said, I don’t know that I paid as much attention as I should have to the steeping, as I was dealing with the fact that I just found out the doughnut I had been looking forward to eating had been… nibbled. Darn cat.

My new stash is in!!! (picked up off the front porch by my eye-rolling husband.) I was really excited to try this one, so I’m drinking it first. The leaves smell and look really nice, both dry and wet. The picture looks just like the dry leaves…but after steeping, several of the leaves unfurled to show whole 1-1.5 inch leaves. Pretty neat!

I’m not really picking up any of the peachy notes, but it doesn’t matter. #40 is very smooth and soft tasting with a tiny smoky aftertaste. It also brews up pretty dark. I don’t know how this tea and ali shan are in the same oolong category. I highly favor this type/style of oolong over the hand rolled, super dry tasting other oolongs. However, I wish I preferred the others considering this tea is $44 for a 6oz tin. Diggity damn! #40 might have to be my “special occasion” or “really bad day” tea.

I’ll just keep steeping this cup until I’m drinking clear, hot water…it’s THAT tasty.

The brewed tea smells exactly like the salted shell of a peanut. You know, like the kind you get in a bucket at some steakhouse restaurants.

The taste is even nuttier than the aroma. The smokiness is very slight and complemented perfectly by the nuttiness. The aftertaste is mouthwatering and tastes just like the aroma. The shells, not the peanuts themselves. So strange.

This doesn’t taste too much like an oolong to me. There’s no vegetal flavor. The liquor is a very dark brown. It’s quite smooth but the astringency becomes more pronounced the more you drink it.

It doesn’t taste sweet to me either. There’s definitely no peach notes. It pretty much just tastes like a salty peanut shell. So weird. Instead of quenching my thirst, it just makes me thirstier.

Not an oolong I would drink all the time. I’m interested to see how subsequent steepings turn out though.

The second steep (for 3 minutes again) still has an extremely mouthwatering aftertaste. The nuttiness is much less pronounced. The third steep (for 5 minutes) is very bland. Perhaps it needed longer to steep, but I don’t know how you could get 8 steeps out of this as other users have said.

I’m not really a fan of the peanut shell-like nuttiness, so that’s why this is getting a lower rating. If you like nutty teas, then go for this one!

Heaping tbsp for 16oz

Really pleased with this Bai Hao. Was not expecting it to be so good. Very smooth with a real honey flavor in the finish.

I’ll have to do a side by side comparison with Teavivre’s and Harney’s. Maybe tomorrow!

This is a good solid oolong with wonderful earthy flavors along with the hint of peach. It’s smooth, long lasting flavor is memorable without being too sticky. It has a good amount of astringency but not as much as a strong black tea. As with many other oolongs this one resteeps extremely well. I’m on my second steep now and the flavors are just getting more nuanced. From what I hear the 3rd and 4th steeps are the best so I look forward to that.

Rawr my tasting note got eaten :( shorter version then:
Smells and tastes like what it is – a good Formosa Oolong. Roasted, slightly fruity; coppery color. Ample leaf + short steep times = many steeps.
2nd at 195°F for 45 seconds is both a little more astringent and fruitier

Very floral aromas and slightly nutty and fruity flavors. The 3rd steep at 30 seconds a steep was the most flavorful by far. Once the leaves open up, you can really taste the peachiness described by Adagio. Super smooth and easy to drink for about 8 steeps.

I find it hardest to write about teas that I don’t like. How do I describe what tastes bad? This one is all about what I do not want in an oolong, Take the worst of black and green tea, mix it in a large kettle and toss it down the garbage disposal. What is funny is the straight Formosa from Adagio was quite good, whatever they did which caused them to add “bai hao” to it isn’t.

Tea, like life is a journey. The reason this site exists is if you don’t document your way, how can anyone learn from the experience? I’ve obviously gone off the deep end tonight. This note is for a tea I drank hours ago and want to make sure I don’t accidentally purchase again. So bear with me.

Satisfactory pseudo-scientific session with this tea tonight. Used a yixing teapot and set up four aroma-tasting cup pairs, into which I poured portions of the tea at different time intervals, noting the batch which tasted just about right to me. Ended up with: 1st round: 50 sec. 2nd round: 45 sec. 3rd round: 55 sec. Could probably have gone for a 4th infusion but was already feeling full.

As always, when I have a victim— uh, family member around, I try to get them to taste with me. Teenage brother’s comment was that it was good, “like iced tea, but hot”. I think it must be the fruity taste, which doesn’t register as ‘peach!’ to me, but just a hint of some fruit. I like it that way. Using aroma cups was also a treat, because the smell hits you, like when you open a can of powdered tea mix and some of the powder gets into your nose… Ahaha. Sorry for the pedestrian references. I grew up in a household of cola and chips, not tea and biscuits. :P

Usually I try to do the ‘observe spent leaves’ step, just out of obedience to routine, but my reaction is often “Ookay, wet leaves. Moving on.” But this was one of the few times I oooh-ed a bit at what I saw. Before steeping, the dry leaves look like a confused mix of brown, green and white. But after steeping the leaves were a beautiful glossy dark red, with some dark green. Looked very much like autumn.

Last side note is that after sipping quite a bit, I felt a fuzzy, powdery layer on my tongue. Maybe tea dust? because I didn’t use a strainer, nor did I rinse. Guess I’ll try that next time.

This is a good tea. No doubt about that. I have yet to drink many different oolongs, so I will withhold any judgements.

I do get the smokiness, but I don’t get the peach described in Adagio’s tasting notes. As others have mentioned, the flavor becomes much more apparent after a longer steep. I drank it at 5, 6 and 7 minutes. 6 seemed to bring out the flavor where 7 was too long.

Hrm. A bit light for my taste. May work with this a bit more.

Looking over the leaves of this tea alone I can tell that it is a higher quality tea as compared to the other cheaper Formosa Oolong offered by Adagio. It has a much lighter and smoother taste to it which includes some more floral flavor notes. Although to be quite honest I prefer the cheaper variety for its simple more earthy flavor.

A good, but pretty standard oolong. It does brew quite a dark cup of tea. It tastes more nutty than fruity and had a musty overtone. Decent, but nothing to write home about.

A very good, dark oolong. Has the subtlety i like in an oolong. I may have steeped this one for too long, though…

My first impression was that this was more a mellower Adagio Formosa #8—reminiscent of Dian Hong, a bit earthy. But as it cooled down and the more I drank of it, the more I picked up on the sweet peach note to it—very honey-like. I didn’t taste the nutty note some report, and given reviews I wonder if that nutty rather than peachy note is the result of putting less tea in than the two teaspoons per cup called for. This one is on the black side of Oolong, and after this I understand better those that say Darjeelings are Oolong-like, because that’s what this reminded me of, a really, really good spring darjeeling. The oxidation is supposedly at 70 percent—among the highest for an oolong—this is a very dark oolong, the directions on the package call for it to be steeped in boiling water (although I used water at a slightly lower temperature) and it steeped up a coppery color reminiscent of darjeeling—not anything like Iron Goddess or Pouchong. Hard to believe all three are Oolongs. Lovely lingering aftertaste.

I loved this tea: my favorite among the Oolongs I’ve tried. There’s only one thing that’s keeping me from making this tea a regular—that in fact makes it unlikely I’ll buy this tea again, or not for a long time. Price. Here’s the price per cup of the Oolong’s I’ve tried so far:

Iron Goddess of Mercy (TeaSource) 12 cents per cup
Formosa Oolong #8 (Adagio) 12 cents per cup
Tung Ting (Teasource) 13 cents per cup
Jade Oolong #18 (Adagio) 17 cents per cup
Pouchong (Adagio) 24 cents per cup
Big Red Robe (TeaSource) 28 cents per cup
Formosa Bai Hao #40 (Adagio) 42 cents per cup. (If you buy it in the largest size of 16 ounces—otherwise it’s even pricier per cup. The two-ounce size comes to 76 cents a cup.)

Yeah… I just can’t justify spending almost 20 dollars for 2 ounces of tea. I’m not that far gone in my addiction. If I want a darjeeling-like tea, well I can have delicious darjeelings at less than half the price, and for oolongs it makes more sense then to make Big Red Robe and Pouchong my go-to oolongs with occasional visits from Formosa Oolong #8. This is lovely—but not quite worth the price to me.

This is definitely a really pleasant tea. Though I keep seeing it described as a fruity tea, my experience was definitely predominantly with nuttier flavors. I’d never had a tea before that struck me as nutty, and this was a pleasantly surprising change of pace. The leaves themselves are pretty to look at; they’re all different shapes, but still somewhat uniform, and they’re a lovely mix of brown, black, and white-ish. The liquor is somewhat darker and more orange than the greener beaded taiwan oolongs, and gives the impression of being heavier, but is generally a refreshing but cozy pot of tea.
It also, compared to other teas, seems rather forgiving as to steeping time. I had just added the hot water for one tasting, when something made it necessary for me to leave for a bit, and I returned to oversteeped tea. Considering how long it had sat (maybe five to ten minutes, instead of 45 seconds to one minute), it was still quite drinkable.
A novel and pleasant tea for the money, and I plan to get more in the future, as I have depleted my sample packet.

This is a great oolong, soft and peachy. I’m excited to try steep #2 and beyond.

Smell in the pouch: Sweet and smoky.

Smell in the cup: I know this is going to sound inappropriate as all hell, but it smells like the air at an ACDC concert. I was not expecting that at all.

Taste: Very smoky, not getting any real sweet at all. There has got to be a problem with either the water temperature or the steeping time here. It tastes better than the smell might suggest, but I can’t get over how it smells.