Coconut Pouchong

Serious edit!!!
THANK YOU AZZ FOR THIS WONDERFUL SAMPLE. Please forgive that slip. In a rush to get through some notes I spaced the most important part. Then after that I grabbed some teas without researching what I was drinking and made three in a row I had already done notes on. Better luck today.

I’m going to try to do several short notes to catch up on all the samples I’ve recieved from several of you generuos tea lovers out there.

Golden pale color. Smell fantasticly of coconuts. The drink first only hints of coconut, but rather plays with my palate with notes of vanilla and maybe nutmeg. The coconut slowly makes it’s presence known, but he brings a floral friend with him. The creamy smooth mouthfeel is probably the most prominent feature. This stuff is good. I could drink it all day, but I suspect I won’t get too many steepings in that the second has already lost some of the crisper notes. It’s still good, just not as grabbing as the first infusion.
tunes-Dave Mathews&Tim Reynolds=Typical Situation/Ants Marching/Warehouse/Jimi Thing

Tea of the afternoon…….

Since I love coconut and was drawn in by all the reviews of this one, I broke down ordered it from a vendor other than Golden Moon that was running a free shipping special. It definitely was not a hardship, because I had to buy $5 worth of British chocolate to go along with it to reach my minimum. Yes, you can start feeling sorry for me, now.

As for the tea…..yum. Sweet and creamy, light and smooth. I could get used to this…..

Mug method with about 185 water for 3 minutes. I did very lightly sweeten this just to bring the coconut out a little.

As a reward for going though many teas today, I’m having another one!

Well, at least I hope it is a reward since I’ve never had a coconut pouchong and don’t have the best luck with flavored oolongs (unless it is jasmine). But it smells like toasted coconut, not like raw coconut, so I know we are going in the right direction.

Small sampler so I am doing a small cup. And I’m sniffing the bag as I’m waiting for the tea to brew. Coconut – creamy, rich, toasted coconut. I hope I’ll like this but honestly, not expecting to.

Oooh, now that it is all brewed up, I smell the pouchong. It almost seems stronger than the coconut and surprisingly the coconut matches really well with the sweet scent of the pouchong. I love pouchong. I need to order some. I have none. :( (Wait, I have some in my Steepster cabinet – maybe I still have a little in my pantry… I thought I was out but if I do have some, happy days!)

Oh wow. That’s good. Just like the scent, the coconut doesn’t overpower the pouchong but rather they blend wonderfully together. It’s sweet but not sugary. The coconut is soft but distinctly coconut. And the pouchong is there and yummy in the way that pouchong always seems to be for me. The flavors mesh so well that it doesn’t seem like a flavored oolong – it seems like an oolong with strong coconut notes. The coconut is the first thing I taste (and smell) but it blends seamlessly into the pouchong and then I get a pouchong taste at the end, but then the flavor left in my mouth is mostly coconut but with a hint of green buttery pouchong.

It doesn’t make me want to chew the tea like some straight pouchongs do, but it’s really quite lovely. Big fan.

This was a sample from Kittenna. Thank you so much for passing it along!

Okay, oolong – it’s been a while since I’ve played with the greener counterparts. Normally I’m a huge fan of darker (e.g. dan cong) varieties, but I love coconut so much I will pretty much try it in everything. I’ve never had pouchong but it seems to look like a Ti Kwan Yin so I’m guessing this will yield a vegetal, buttery flavor. Looking forward to it!

The dry leaf smell is just, WOW. It smells like toasted coconut, like macaroons. These are not new descriptors (they are in a lot of the other tasting notes) but I’m still surprised to smell them myself. And it makes me realize that of all the other coconut blends I’ve tried, none has had this exact toasted coconut smell. I didn’t know what I was missing. Seriously. This gets 90 of its possible 100 points just for the smell alone.

The whole sample was 3 tsp. so I put it in my Breville with 500 ml. water at the below parameters. I won’t be adding any sugar or milk to this because I just can’t seem to make myself do that to any green-ish teas. But the smell emanating from the Breville isn’t worrying me – I’m pretty sure no additives will be needed.

I was right – I still get the amazing toasted coconut smell once steeped. The taste is the same as it smells! Except with an added bonus of buttery oolong to round out the mouthfeel. This is simple and complex, sweet and savory at once.

Since I used the entire sample on this batch, I’m probably going to put it through its paces today and get some resteeps going. I am curious to see how the flavor changes and how many steepings I can eke out of the leaves. Even if it’s just one, though, it has been SO worth it.

This ones going on my shopping list for sure. And if anyone knows of any other teas with this kind of coconut flavoring, I am all ears!

ETA: The second steep (at 6 minutes) retains most of the coconut (yay!) and loses alot of the brightness from the oolong (maybe that was what people thought of as floral?). In general this cup is heavier and less buttery. I’m surprised at how strong the coconut still is really. I’m sure I could actually get at least one more steep out of it, even. Will have to give it a try!

This is great stuff! There’s a freshness and authenticity to the fragrance. When I first opened the packet, all I could smell was coconut. “Where’s the tea?,” I thought. And this was odd, because if you look at the dry tea, all you see is leaves—it’s not like it’s a pile of coconut flakes or anything. After a few breaths, I could smell the fragrance of the tea itself start to creep in. What was interesting about the fragrance was how it changed when I steeped the tea: suddenly, the coconut disappeared and all I could smell was tea. Like I did with the dry leaves, I gave it a few moments and slowly the coconut began to creep in and mix with the tea. I was kind of fascinated by these aromatic acrobatics.

I’ve never had coconut cream pie. I’ve also never had any of the teas that attempt to recreate that flavour. But when I took a sip of this blend, I immediately thought of some sort of creamy, coconut treat. The tea has…substance to it, as if I’d added milk to it. As I was with the fragrance, I was fascinated by the tea itself. It’s really something, isn’t it, that we can combine a tea blend with water and end up with a light amber liquid that tastes…creamy! I don’t mean to make this sound like a science experiment, I just can’t get over this creaminess-without-cream effect.

Okay, so texture and consistency aside, this blend tastes great. It’s flavourful and balanced. It’s light in spite of the smooth, creamy consistency. I found myself sipping this one slowly to make the brew last longer, a clear indication that I need to add this to my shopping list. What I’d like to do, in the future, is try some different preparation methods: first, I’d like to try it iced; second, I’d like to blend it with a chocolatey tea—I love Mounds candy bars; and third, I’d like to make it kind of like chai, with (soy) milk instead of water.

Tea amount: 1 sample packet (I didn’t measure it out, sorry.)
Water amount: 16oz./~475mL
Additives: ~1 level tbsp Demerara sugar

So this is it.

The last tea to try in the Golden Moon sampler.

Back when I started rating teas on Steepster, and when I started my loose leaf journey, one of the first things I noticed was the Golden Moon sampler. I began to sound the alarm around Steepster, probably annoying the hell out of a bunch of people in the process, but I really was pushing this thing on people. Because you know what? The sampler is a tea education in a box. It’s the perfect way to convert your friends to tea. It can show you everything that tea has to offer. Because Golden Moon is a damn fine company.

And Golden Moon is also a company that does flavored teas really, really well.

So I’m saving their award-winning baby for last, the pinnacle of their tea artisanship.

And you know what? This tea is amazing. This tea is just… man.

Okay, let’s start with the basics though, before I start babbling on about the taste. First off, when you open the packet, all you can smell is rich, delicious coconut. Toasted coconut. The inside of a Mars bar. It’s extremely distinct. You cannot mistake this for anything else other than coconut. I’m serious.

Yay for my first loose leaf pouchong! The leaves look more akin to a green than an oolong, and since pouchong falls somewhere in the gap between green and oolong, it’s understandable. They’re very full and dark and lush. So I steeped it up, and the resulting infusion was a pale lemon chiffon color. Very pretty.

Did I mention how much I love the color that oolongs steep up to? Okay, I’ll mention it now. Oolongs have such an appealing color palette.

Anyway, the infusion pretty much smells just as delicious as the dry leaves. Except now add butter. I’m serious. You can smell the buttery pouchong shining through.

Is there a first thing as love at first sip? Because I think this might be it.

Oh my. The pouchong is the first flavor that hits your tongue, smooth and ridiculously sweet and full of buttered goodness. And then the coconut comes, authentic and delicious and real. It doesn’t overpower the taste of the pouchong, but rests happily next to it, all cuddled up inside of it, until the two tastes merge so well that it creates a newer, better, wonderful taste.

I love it when flavored tea does that. When neither the tea nor the flavoring overwhelms the other, and there’s this wonderful balance that makes you just sigh with happiness when you drink it.

That sigh is this tea.

Much love for Golden Moon, and yay for all of the people that have taken this remarkable tasting journey with me! Let’s convert some more people to the Tea Box to End All Tea Boxes, and have fun drinking tea! Because if tea tastes as good as this, I’m a full-on crazy convert to this wonderful beverage.

I liked it but I didn’t love it. The coconut taste was good, but prefer my beloved Organic Black with Coconut. I think the sort of floral green paired with the coconut didn’t do it for me. If I already didn’t have a coconut tea I was crazy for, maybe I’d like this better.

GM Sampler | Tea 5 of 31

Coconut Pouchong | http://bit.ly/9WQQq0
[Eventually to Become]The Full Spread | http://bit.ly/bDtnNn

This was the tea that finished off my GM day back in January, and this was the best one of the bunch. If you had told me that I would hate the pear tea and love the coconut tea in this sampler, I would have laughed at you for five minutes. Maybe more. Because coconut and I don’t see eye to eye all of the time and, as we have established, I love pear.

The tea in the packet smelled, unsurprisingly, like coconut. Macaroons, the formerly named Samoa cookies from the Girl Scouts, suntan oil…all these things popped into my head. Wet, the leaves smelled vegetal with a hint of coconut. It reminded me of beansprouts, which I thought was weird, but they ARE tea leaves, so whatever.

Sipping the tea, it had a hint of that vegetal flavor, but it was much lighter. Mainly, what I was getting out of it was a buttery quality. Oh, it was good. Buttery with whiffs of coconut flavor and a cookie-like finish. It reminded me, undeniably, of coconut macaroons. Really freaking good coconut macaroons.

There were some other things going on in the tea, but all I could think of was coconut macaroons. That is what has stuck, and that is why I will be ordering this tea.

I never would have called that one.

COCONUT MACAROONS!

This is so delicious. First, let me just say that I am not a fan of coconut. In fact, as I’ve mentioned before, the smell of coconut tends to to make me queasy, due to a bad experience as a teenager with coconut rum. Anyway, I wasn’t sure how I was going to feel about this tea—on the one hand, it’s award winning. On the other, I hate coconut. Well, this tea definitely has changed my mind about coconut, because it’s absolutely scrumptious (ha, I love that word).

The dry leaves are dark green and long and thin, and smell like coconut milk, cream, and maybe the lightest toasty scent. I can’t smell any tea at all. After steeping, the scent of the infusion is the same as the dry leaf, with a hint of pouchong. Surprisingly, the flavor is actually a very nice, even balance of pouchong and coconut, and they meld together seamlessly. The flavor doesn’t just sit on top of the pouchong, but seems to be intertwined with it. The ratio of flavoring to tea was nicely done, so it doesn’t feel like I’m drinking just coconut flavoring with a hint of tea, or tea with a hint of coconut. And oh, the flavor is delicious. There’s a custard note to the infusion as well, and at times it feels like I’m sipping coconut milk, not tea.

I only have a sample of this, so I’m going to have to get my hands on some more. I can see myself drinking this a lot!

I’m on a lockdown until I have liberated at least five tins, I’ve decided. Or emptied one of the 52teas pouches as they are large enough to count equal to a tin, and also got through at least 10 of the smaller samples.

Starting now. So this is the first sample, nine to go. It was another one from the Doulton tea present. A prize-winner even. I have to say I’m a little sceptical. The 52teas coconut cream pie is really the only coconut tea that I really like. Often I find coconut becomes rather cloying and unpleasant. So yes, I have to admit that choosing this one now was a question of getting it over with… (Sorry, Doulton )

I smelled the leaves before brewing and they were definitely coconut-y, but there was also so,ething else. so,mething kind of more like hazelnut-y. That’s kind of interesting. After steeping it does smell of coconut, but mostly it smells like a green type oolong.

What a surprise to taste this! The coconut is definitely there, but it’s not the cloying super-sweetness that I have com,e to expect. It’s primarily the pouchong flavour here, and then the coconut is sort of lurking around the edges. I would never have guessed this but coconut and pouchong suit each other very nicely!

I’m shocked!

So I finally caved and got the Golden Moon sampler. Yay! Today was exceptionally long, so I’m rewarding myself with a second cup of “real” tea. Which means, I’m embarking on a project that so many Steepsterites have taken on before me: tasting all the teas in the sampler.

I had heard such good things about the Coconut Pouchong that I went ahead and ordered a canister of that as well, so I started the sampler off with that since I knew I’d have easy access to it again in the near future. And it was the right call.

The dried leaves smelled nearly buttery, but with a hint of coconut. The leaves were lovely to watch unfurl in the water, when the smell of coconut began to fill the room. The wet leaves smelled much less of coconut, but the flavor stayed with the tea, as well as a hint of the butteriness that was so clear in the leaves’ dry state. Delicious.

So now, even though I’m hungry, I’m putting off dinner to finish this cup. It’s just too good to have with food and I want to actually pay attention to the drink. :)

You can see it here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/lauren_pressley/4346895667/

I decided to follow Steepster’s advice in pairing this with chocolate and it is quite yummy. The chocolate that I chose was a raw dark chocolate, and this was a good and bad choice … good in that I noticed much more of the depth of flavors and complexity of the raw chocolate, and the chocolate really enhances the coconut flavors nicely. Bad because the pairing also emphasized the lack of roasted flavor of the cacao and I found myself wanting that richness more with this pairing than I would have if I ate the chocolate alone.

A very yummy pouchong… this is definitely one of my faves from Golden Moon.

Backlog by several hours.
I am raising the rating – this is a good coconut tea. Lovely base pouchong.
Lasted many steepings and kept me sane during stress.

Waaaoooow!! Love this!!! Thank you to Amy Oh for sharing! :)
This is superb. Sweet and toasty, with a perfect amount of coconut. I’m on the second infusion now, which is, as usual for an oolong, better than the first.
I find this very similar to my Spice Exchange Coconut Oolong. I’d like to do a side by side to see how they compare. Going by memory, I think the first steeping of this is a bit toastier whereas the STE version is more “fresh” coconut, but negligibly so. This second steep seems less toasty, and a bit more like what I imagine coconut spun sugar would be like. Very sweet and satisfying.
It says that this is a green/oolong but to be honest I can’t really see any green here. It’s got the teensiest hint of scratchiness in my throat when hot, but that’s disappeared now that it’s cooled some. I’ll probably see more of that, and perhaps the green aspect, in later steeps.
I’m very much looking forward to seeing what comes out in a third and fourth steep. Thank you again Amy! xx

EDIT:
Well I made it to six steeps! and I was right, the coconut waned while the green perked up. It was quite lovely!

Golden Moon Sampler No. 5 of 31, selected at random.

Wow, back to back selection of the teas Ewa said she was dreading. [Twilight Zone Music]

I’m also dreading this one, not because I don’t like coconut, but because when I looked up Pouchong I learned that it is between a green tea and an oolong. I’ve only had one flavored oolong which was good, but I’ve never met a flavored green tea that I really really liked, with the exception of the Samovar Moorish Mint. I really wanted to like this one. It seems as though it has many fans, so I was hopeful as I started out.

The dry leaves are medium length, twisty, a dark to medium green with yellow highlights and smell like toasted coconut. It’s like someone put a maccaroon in this tea! (I heart maccaroons, so now I’m even more hopeful.) There is also a pronounced floral note. I looked at the ingredients to make sure there wasn’t a flower scent in there as well, but if there is it isn’t listed.

My first steep didn’t go particularly well. I decided to make this in a small teapot, and I thought I’d use just the amount of water that I’ve been using in my tastings of these samples — but that amount of water wasn’t sufficient to cover the leaves. So I had to add a bit more. I am concerned that it was too much. The liquor was a very pale yellowish color, almost colorless, and the aroma and flavor were buttery with a hint of coconut but not a great deal of depth to the flavor.

For the second steep, I used a Finum filter and steeped in the glass. This definitely made a difference in strength. The color was deeper; still pale, but very definitely yellow. The aroma was milky/buttery, floral and toasty/maccaroony.

The first, too-watery tasting made the buttery note primary, and a little on the weak side. But the second is much more satisfactory. Yes! I can taste coconut! It’s a mild, mellow flavor, but it is there. And now I’m kicking myself for not getting this right on the first steep as I can only imagine it should have been a far more accessible flavor the first time through.

I’m thinking I have to order more of this and keep working at it until I find the steeping sweet spot. If and when I do, I expect this will be extraordinary and deserve additional points.

I must thank Auggy, the wonderful “swapstress” for this generous sample. At first I was enthralled by the strong, true coconut aroma. I really don’t think I had had a flavored pouchong before so I carefully followed the instructions.

As others have written, this has a delightful buttery and biscuit-y quality. The coconut mingles delightfully with the pouchong like two sophisticates bantering intellectually at a cocktail party. Or tea party, I should say.

Another big thanks to Ricky for sending me that surprise package of tea! This one smells very creamy and toasty, and maybe even buttery. I didn’t add anything to my cup.

Up front, there isn’t much coconut flavor. It’s very subtle, which is perfect, since the coconut would have been too much if it was overwhelming. This is a wonderfully smooth tea, perhaps the smoothest I’ve ever had. It has a full mouth feel – it’s very buttery and creamy. Toasty, too. What I like about the coconut is that it doesn’t taste artificial at all; it’s more like I’m drinking coconut milk that’s infused with toasted coconut.

What I like best about this is that I let my mother taste it, and she promptly sat down and ordered more – using her credit card! Score! Thanks again, Ricky!

I’ve been holding off on buying this because I absolutely hate paying to ship a sample sized item. Then they had a free shipping thing and I went ahead and ordered a couple of samples from them. Next time I order from them, I’m getting a pouch of this. It’s fantastic!

I don’t think I’ve ever had pouchong unflavored, which is a shame because I happen to love green oolongs and I love how the base tea tastes in this. So buttery and green and slightly vegetal. Totally yum. And the flavor is absolutely coconut milk. Like someone toasted the coconut a bit before getting the milk from it. So luscious and decadent. I think this is the best coconut flavored tea I’ve ever had, and I"ve had lots! It’s so creamy! How do they do it? It’s also sweet. It makes me think of a coconut macaroon. And at the end, something a little like lemon rind.

I love the way the flavors blend with the tea base. I love the mouth feel. So tasty! There are few teas that I want to stock up on once I’ve had a taste of it, which is why I like to swap or get samples. This one, however, I will certainly be happy to make room for this to stay permanently.

I am tempted to go out and get some green curry right now to eat with a resteeping of this tea because I bet it would be AMAZING.

I can so clearly taste the coconut milk in here and it is so good. This is the first time I’ve ever had a pouchong but I can taste how good of a tea it is too. Floral, buttery goodness with the most delicious coconut flavor, I do not want to stop drinking this ever (except that there are 5 other Golden Moon teas to try so maybe later).

This is the best tasting coconut tea I’ve ever had, and I really like coconut in tea. I am definitely buying more of this in the future, because this little tin is going to be lucky if it makes it another month around me.

I’m pretty much dying at the heavenly scent emanating from my cup right now. The tea smells amazing, a very authentic coconut smell, both dry and steeped. It reminds me of fresh coconut.

The taste is very coconutty, almost a dry, nearly-toasted sort of flavour. I can taste just a hint of oolong at the end of the sip. I would like it to be more present.

This is definitely as coconutty, if not moreso, than I was hoping/expecting. I like it, but I think I’d have to be in the mood for it. If I ever make a Golden Moon Tea order, I suspect this will be on it. I really want to add a couple chunks of candied pineapple and a bit of sweetener to this to try and make a pina colada oolong tea. I think it would be delicious…

ETA: Er, I got a bit excited and forgot to send a huge thank you to LiberTEAS for this sample, which I had been dying to try ever since I heard about it!!

ETA again: Second infusion was good too, oolongy aftertaste, and less coconut, but still toasted. I sampled a leaf out of curiousity, and there was still toasty coconut flavour in it, so I suspect I could have gotten a nice third cup, but left work at that time to retrieve my car (which I had forgotten entirely at the shop all day!)