Lychee Oolong

Soooo…last night I bought myself a BIG early birthday present….and it isn’t even tea related! http://www.scrangie.com/2012/10/official-announcement-for-opis-holiday.html All of them. Every single one. I had forgotten how much I love James Bond movies. I think I got through around 1/3 of the older ones once but sadly Netflix Instant is horribly lacking. Out of the new ones I’ve only seen Casino Royale, aka how I found my girl crush. I CAN’T WAIT FOR THEM TO GET HERE.

I actually completely forgot I made this tea and started writing the progress report for my group. And it sucks. So I feel bad but whatever but the entire thing has just been an entire whatever. Thankfully this tea doesn’t really care if you let it cool off because it is still tasty.

This brews up really light but the flavor is so good. It’s a very strong lychee flavor, and I can’t taste any oolong because I feel its floral notes got bumped right into the lychee! I’m going to give it another steep while I try to clean up my place a bit…hopefully find a place to put all these teas!

Thanks again Stacy for this sample tea!

Last night I was so bad! I had such a sugar craving that I put cherry jam in my tea! It was verry good!
Naughty me!
This little sample packet from Butiki caught my eye this evening and I had a hunch that it would be luxurious and exotic enough to satisfy my sweet tooth!

After a 4 minute steep, I poured the pale yellow liquor into a tasting bowl and inhaled.
Ummmm, fruit like warm pears…..and smelled like paperwhites.
The flavor was sparkling and pearlike also, with plenty of floral sweetness and cream to make the taste fat in my mouth. The fat flavor rolled around over and over. It just would not quit until the tannin kicked in like a door stop!
I sweetened my cup a bit. I did like the dripping nectar, gooey flavor of Lychee fruit. It made me think of Kauai.
Most people go to Hawaii and lounge on the beach, drink, go to clubs.
I go to the beach, snorkle then find a local Farmers Market. I buy exotic fruit, veggies and seafood…go back to the condo and cook! Kauai was Lychee, Pineapple and Rambutan! Nice and juicy fruit! Yummy fruit ready to eat right away. No cold storage fruit from the store. Heavy with natural sugar fruit!

This Lychee Oolong takes you on a vacation! It’s so ripe with flavor and so juicy!

http://youtu.be/mlCiDEXuxxA You can’t get much more retro than Don Ho and Tiny Bubbles 1967

I think I found one way to wean myself off of sugar yet continue drinking tea. Just buy a whole bunch of tea form Stacy. Just drink butiki oolongs until I no longer feel the need for sugar, or as much sugar.

You really don’t need sugar in this one, and if I say that, you better believe it. I’m usually the kind of girl you ask “you want tea (or coffee) with your sugar?” Or… “Let me just sprinkle some coffee on your sugar bowl there”. I used to get tease like that a lot. I still do. Really, I don’t have a sweet tooth. I do not eat any desserts, almost ever, with the exception of ice cream. I have no idea where the need to sugar everything to death comes from. And it’s gotten so bad where if I don’t add any sugar, well, stuff is just flavourless. Like when you decide to no longer salt your food (assuming you cook from scratch, otherwise you take in added salt from everywhere) and find it bland.

This tea, and I’m on the second steep, doesn’t benefit from sugar almost at all. Weird, right? Sugar just makes it sweet, really, but doesn’t contribute to the flavour an awful lot.

1 tsp for 8 oz, 180 F results in a clear pale yellow liquid, quite fragrant. There are floral notes in there, to me it smells faintly of jasmine. I hope I don’t end up calling every floral note jasmine, but this smells like jasmine just a wee bit in the back. Really really long aftertaste. The fruit just stays with you. You can have minutes go buy between sips (if you can manage that!) and still have the fruit with you.

I find the second steep stronger even though i didn’t increase the steep time (thank goodness?) and I think there is a bit less fruit and more … other stuff. I mean, this stuff is not juice, it’s tea. So don’t be expecting a lychee martini base or anything.

I’m only beginning my oolong experience but I’m glad to have a good starting point.

Between this oolong and the peach oolong, there must be something wrong with my taste buds. I LOVED EVER SO MUCH the strawberry oolong, but these lychee and peach flavourings give me a headache for some reason. The oolong quality is quite good, but it just isn’t working out for me. I have a sample’s worth of both Peach and Lychee Oolong that might need to find a new home.

Actually, I’ll just cold steep what I have left of both and see if that makes it easier to drink. To be continued…

Lychee! Lychee! Sample sipdown from my last order.

So, I had a mystery tea at my neighbor’s house the other week (just a black tea in a glass jar – no label. Did find the bag it came in using my nose, but there was no English on the bag, so I was still in the dark) that was different from anything I’d ever had. Fruity, sweet, and so delicious! I have a mandarin lychee green tea that had a similar aspect, so I figured the mystery tea was a lychee tea. Just to see if I was right, I decided to get a sample of this oolong and compare (because like a good neighbor, I took some of the mystery tea back home with me).

Just from the smell, it’s obvious I was correct in calling that mystery tea a lychee tea! Yum! So sweet and tropical! It also has some nice floral notes.

Taste-wise this one is really nice. The floral and lychee aspects mesh together in a fantastic way! I’ve never actually had a lychee fruit in real life, but if it’s anything like this tea – YUM! Very refreshing…reminds me of summer.

This tea smells lovely, and brews up promising. The liquor is golden yellow. Upon sipping the tea, one is greeted with a very pleasing, sweet, fruity flavor. However, the aftertaste — sharp and artificial-tasting — is a deal-breaker for me. It leaves a lingering stickiness/taste in the back of my throat, and I have to use another tea to get rid of the taste.

I’m sorry Butiki Teas; I really wanted to love this but it was not to be.

Lychee!! I love lychee! The aroma of this tea is intoxicating. As the dark green leaves unfurled, the scent hit me in the face once again! I knew it was love. The liquor is a nice bright yellow color. The wet leaves are pretty and medium large sized. A little goes a long way. Upon tasting it, I tasted the lychee Ive been missing this whole time. It is very sweet and juicy and has a nice green, earthy and floral tone as I sip more and more. I steeped this about 4 times, and the lychee flavor became lighter and the florals became stronger.. :)

Very excellent blend! I am very pleased and impressed.

Mmm nice floral lychee notes with an oolong base. Nice change from the straight oolongs I have but would probably only stock a small amount for when I’m craving a scented tea.

This really does taste like lychee. I honestly didn’t think that it would, as that must be a really hard flavour to re-create.

I get a bit of a tea taste, but the lychee definitely takes over. It tastes pretty good, but I don’t think it’s one I’ll wake up craving in the morning. On the other hand, if you like lychee, this is the tea for you.

I found that the Lychee agree’s with the Oolong which is mild and in the background. I liked the aroma, and found the flavor didn’t drop off the map on the second steep. Good tea…even though I’m not as found of blended/ flavored teas. I get such a kick out of using just leaf & hot water seeing how amazing the tea by itself can be.

Having tried Butiki’s Lychee Oolong, I had to make sure that I didn’t immediately seek to compare this tea to Naivetea’s Lychee. I did enjoy this version of Lychee Oolong. The lychee flavor was sweet, strong and worked very well with the type of the oolong used as the base for this blend. It is a great tea and definitely worth trying.

This was the second sample I tried from Butiki teas. (Thanks again!) I have always loved and craved lychee fruits and lychee flavored items. So I’ve been searching for a lychee tea that I would like. And this one just takes the cake. It’s very light and smooth. The smell of the un steeped leaves is pretty subtle, but when steeped the lychee flavor (and aroma!) are very strong. I would love to have just a cupboard filled with this tea.

Once steeped, this tea has a yummy, fruity aroma. I was worried that the lychee aspect of the tea would extend only as far the scent because “flat scented water” has been my experience with flavored greens. However, this actually does taste like lychee! Like a combination of lychee juice and tea. There’s even a wonderful natural sweetness that lingers on my tongue long after every sip.

As for the oolong base, I wouldn’t recognize it as oolong in a blind sipping. It’s less prominent than I had expected. Even so, I think the subtle oolong base added depth (pardon my vagueness… I can’t really explain it) to the tea. All the elements in here harmonize perfectly with one another to create a relaxing and refreshing tea experience. It’s really delicious. I’m so in love with it.

I’ve just resteeped my sample. The flavor taste just as strong as it had in my first steeping. Yay!