Coconut Milky Oolong

I got this in my box from Amanda and was excited to try it since the only other coconut ooloongs I’ve tried have been quite different—Bao Zhongs with coconut flavoring, while this is a milk oolong with natural coconut bits. I cold brewed this because cold coconut = delicious! However, it wasn’t exactly what I expected.

There’s no milk… or coconut. It tastes like a really, really nice green oolong with buttery, vegetal, and floral qualities. There’s a lot of depth and it’s really yummy, especially cold! But no coconut to speak of. In fact, there’s kind of a veggie quality going on, so coconut with this base would be kind of strange I think. There’s also not that creaminess I associate with milk oolongs. Buttery, yes, but none of that milk or cream quality. As a coconut milk oolong I rate this as like a 50 since it’s uhh not a coconut milk oolong. But as a green oolong it’s like an 85… so I’m just going to leave the rating off haha.

I know having actual fruit/nuts/etc in teas is nice and all, but I’ve found that some flavors (like coconut) go a lot farther with good flavoring. You just don’t get a whole ton of flavor out of dried coconut—in fact, most of the disappointing coconut teas I’ve tried have had only shredded coconut while the ones with real coconut flavor don’t actually have real coconut!

So. I picked up a sample of this one purely because of the picture, which showed what looked like a tieguanyin mixed with coconut. A departure from coconut pouchong!! So, not the standard coconut oolong (see previous tasting note on Coconut Oolong by Tsaa).

I can’t even describe how delicious the aroma out of the bag was. It smelled like a liquid White Rabbit candy. All milky and sweet and mmmmmmmm. I just had to open the bag and sniff it again to remind myself (yeah, now I’m craving sweets even more……)

Steeped up, it smells much like a milk oolong. And the flavour is definitely like a flavoured milk oolong. I’m really not getting any coconut, which is unfortunate, and I’m detecting a sour note from the artificial flavouring, but this tea is still pretty enjoyable, and I can taste the delicious base tea beneath the milkiness.

I do wish that this tea lived up to the amazing aroma I got from the bag, but I guess it was not meant to be :( I can live with the lack of coconuttiness, but would really prefer not to have that flavouring note lingering around. Still, a pretty decent tea. I might have to try throwing a bit of coconut oolong in my infuser next time. Or maybe infusing with coconut water? And I wonder what a bit of sweetening would do here… hmmmmmm……..

ETA: Cold, the next morning, I’m liking this a bit more. Artificial flavouring taste is lessened, and it still tastes like milky sweet candies. Not sad that I have a little pouch of this :)

ETA again: Re-steeped this with some of the leaves from Tsaa’s Coconut Oolong I had yesterday. Not bad! I’m picking out a bit of bitterness, which is either an oversteep (likely) or flavouring (possible), and I think there’s a bit of coconutty flavour that wasn’t there before. Hard to tell, though. I wonder if that’s the problem with the milky oolong in the first place – that the coconut is simply being drowned out by the strength of the milky flavouring. Either way, tasty enough. Might try a third infusion, but if so, only for 2 min. I don’t like this bitterness.

Mmmm. Smells like buttery coconut.
I don’t know if the flavor works for me. I taste the vegetal aspect of the oolong, like stewed fiddleheads and then the butteriness of both the coconut and the oolong, but the addition of sweetness of the coconut just seems kind of funny to me.