Look what I rediscovered!
Lemon-y fresh. Although for some reason the freshness is somewhat absent today. It’s just lemon oolong today. No pizzazz!
What the H happened to my pizzazz? Give it back!
I changed the steeping parameters around a bit. 25% more leaf, 25% shorter steep. And I think therein lies the problem. I’ll try the new steeping time again and then add some more leaf for the second steep.
What I’ve actually got coming through is the oolong first and foremost. A sweet oolong, rather grassy and very green tasting. Not as green as the Dong Ding which didn’t even taste oolong-y but something along those lines. i can’t get it any closer than that.
The lemon is more sort of hovering above everything, being there and giving freshness and flavour, but somehow keeping a little to itself. It’s a bit like there’s a middle layer of sharpness missing here.
Of course this is written towards the bottom of the cup and the tea has cooled off rather a lot by now. It may have been there when it was newly brewed, but I wasn’t really paying attention to it then, being busy with the archeological dig that was my lack of filing system. (Would you know! There were letter trays underneath all that paper!)
So did the leaf modification help with the second steep?
The answer here is yes.
This is the real good thing. The tea isn’t so tea-y and the lemon is much more sparkly fresh. And a sweet-y-sour-y sharpness on the tongue, all juicy and lemon-y fresh.
It makes me want to eat strawberries. Om nom nom nom!
Attention Wombatgirl
I’m having our lemon oolong today.
Mmmmmm! :)
Another tin emptied. This is the second steep actually, and since I’m feeling a little cranky and non-social at present, my brain decided that sweets were needed. Which then led to the thought that this might be quite nice with a little liquid honey in it. Make it sort of a lemon curd flavoured tea instead.
Alas, we have no liquid honey, or any other sorts of honey in the house. Instead of then using a little cane sugar like a normal person, Muggins here decided to give maple syrup a try instead.
Well, Muggins here should not be allowed to start inventing while preparing tea. It’s not working. Not one bit. Oh it’s perfectly drinkable, but the lemon flavour is completely broken and the whole thing has turned into something fairly generic and boring tasting.
Who could have thought one teaspoon of maple syrup could have such a large effect?
Even worse, it has made me want pancakes. Maybe I’ll get some batter mix one of these days and see if the boyfriend wants to share with me. We are on holiday, after all.
Ooooooh it’s been a long time since I had any of this!
It seems a good choice for today. Something refreshing and pick-me-up-y. It’s coming in on a day where I’ve been drinking a good tea at work and been unable to get anything really good out of it, and I’ll tell you why because it has to do with why I’m having lemon oolong now.
My boss made tea for us today and asked me to guess which one it was. When faced with this challenge, what do you think my problem was?
a) tasting it the first time when it was still so hot you can’t taste anything.
b) having it out of a travel mug that held pu-erh the same morning.
c) having it out of a travel mug that is rather due for a cleaning.
d) all of the above.
If you guessed d, have a virtual cookie. Of course me having all these excuses just made her laugh at me. Oh well. She had made me a chingwo and I think I asked her three times if she was sure it wasn’t something fruity.
The rest of the day it just tasted wrong because my brain kept insisted on it having something fruity in it. I was that certain before I gave her my first guess. No fruit, though. It just goes to show how difficult blind tasting actually is. When we drink tea here we can relatively easily tell the different types and regions apart because we know what we’re having and what we can expect from that area. It all gets a lot more difficult when we’re forced to analyse the aroma and flavour all the way from the bottom up to figure out what we’re having. Even when it’s something relatively well known.
And THAT is why I’m having the lemon oolong now. This one is obvious. You can’t sneak this one around anybody, not even in a pu-erh tainted dirty travel mug at well above boiling.
It’s fruity lemony and fresh, with deep green vegetative notes of the oolong. Oolong with lemon rather than lemon on oolong. Nicely spring-y, this one. Now that I have my Standard Panel figured out, maybe the next project should be my perfect seasonal teas? I nominate lemon oolong for spring tea.
I made it all the way through the flower-y soap water, although I changed my mind about a new rating, but I still think I deserve the reward/compensation that I had lined up.
For one thing, to remove the aforementioned from my tongue’s memory, for another thing to be able to cross one more sample off the Lockdown List of DOOM but mostly to see if it really was that good.
I remember it as almost otherworld-y nommy. But can anything really be that awesome?
Can it?
The answer is a resounding YES!
It’s so nice and fresh. Perky even. And it’s every bit as yummy as the infamous raspberry oolong, which is pretty much the standard I hold all flavoured oolong up to. Well. All flavoured dark type oolong. This might very well be the green type oolong standard.
It’s my perfect lemon tea.
