Honeybee

MandyB is soooo good to me! Thanks for this one, too, girlie!

This is a neat cup! It’s roasty, toasty, buttery, slippery, Sweet like honey, nutty, it’s just NEAT. I am not sure how I get all of these individual components to this Oolong in my sip but I am glad I do.

I say Ooooo…
YOU say LONG…

Ooooo…

I got a bag of Honeybee in a swap I did with Carolyn because she suspected I’d like it [and she was right]. It brews into a beautiful, deep gold, honeyed hue, but the taste is extremely light.

For me, the majority of the taste for this resides at the back of the tongue, and a bit at the sides. At the front, I get some light floral notes that are much less obvious when the tea is hot, but at the back…mmm…

When the tea is VERY hot [like right when it becomes drinkable], it’s difficult for me to get much of a taste out of this tea at all, so on my second cup I let it cool down a bit more before I got started and I found it to be much more enjoyable that way. The honey taste is definitely evident for me in the aftertaste, and if I inhale through my nose while the tea is still in my mouth I can taste it near my throat.

Again, it’s a very light tea. While part of me likes that, I also find myself wanting just a liiiittle bit more from it. I need to work to get the flavor, and while that’s fine when I’m concentrating on the tea, I feel like this is going to be a tea that I can only enjoy when I’m concentrating on it. I’ll play around with a longer steep time to see if that makes it a little bit stronger, but in the meantime this is a good tea. Thanks, Carolyn!

Time for my daily Oolong! No… I don’t have Oolong every SINGLE day, but I do try to. It is my favorite tea, after all!

This is the first time I’m tasting this Oolong from The Simple Leaf, but I was so incredibly impressed with “Dawn” that I have high expectations. Also, it is an Oolong from Nepal, and I have had a couple of Oolongs from Nepal and have loved them. So… yeah… I expect big taste from this cup of Oolong.

And it delivers! Not my favorite Oolong, but it is really good. Distinct notes of honey in the aroma and the taste. Pleasant mouthfeel – not as thick and buttery as a greener Oolong would be, but, very smooth and silky. It also possesses a woodsy character and a fruit-like quality to it. It is quite a bit lighter in flavor than other Oolongs, so I think the next time I brew this tea I’ll steep a little longer.

Smells like a slightly toasted Nilgiri but fortunately it doesn’t have the raw taste I associate with Nilgiris. Instead, this tastes like roasted nori sheets – a little fishy, a little soy sauce-y, fairly vegetal and crisp. It’s quite tasty and makes me crave rice with nori sheets.

Hmm, second steep isn’t nearly as nifty. The smell still brings to mind a Nilgiri and the taste has migrated from toasted nori sheets to a mix of wakame seaweed and Nilgiri rawness. I definitely prefer the first steep.
^2.5g/5oz

My job keeps me even more busy than my classes did! It looks like during the summer I’ll only have time to log tea on my days off. This was a tea that the lovely Takgoti sent to me. Once again, I’m using my tiny oolong teapot from Samovar for this tasting.

I rinsed the leaves, then got down to some serious oolong business.

The tea is a medium brown color. It smells sugary sweet. The one taste that stands out the most is (obviously) honey, and this is a pretty light tea. It also tastes slightly doughy, yeasty, or “bakey”. It’s a good combination!

This is the second tea I’ve had from The Simple Leaf. I love Dawn, and I like this. Thanks, Takgoti!

First of all I’m not an Oolong expert by any means. That being said this tea is very good. I really can’t explain any of the flavors although I get a touch of honey and fruit. The tea has a sweetness to it. The smells are alien to me but the tea is smooth, mellow and tasty. It tastes nothing like Formosa Oolong by Harney and Sons. It taste much lighter with a light mouthfeel. The flavors seem to come through the cooler the tea becomes.

An interesting tea. I’m not sure how I feel about it. Now that I’m thinking about it, I’m not sure that I’ve had any other Nepalese tea.

It’s certainly an unusual flavor. It seems to be caught somewhere between a lighter, greener oolong and a darker, more chestnutty oolong. The result is…a bit nutty and a bit floral, all at the same time, but only very loosely. That’s the best way I can explain it — the tea’s flavors are loose. It gets sweet or tart toward the end, and after the sip.

I’m sitting here wondering if I’m crazy, because the combination of flavors results in something that seems to be like…floral, but also something a bit like…coffee. Which is not to say that the tea tastes like coffee at first sip, but while I’m wading through the melange of flavors here, or even the scents from the tepid cup, I keep thinking that there’s something about it that reminds me of it…as though it were barely there, and I had accidentally steeped a very mild, florally fruity oolong in a cup in which I had had coffee at some point (I don’t even own coffee, so that is assuredly impossible).

It’s drinkable because it’s very mellow, but I don’t think it’s the kind of tea I need to have in my cupboard. Maybe I’ll try it over ice next time, though.

I don’t know how to describe this…it’s like roasty flowers, but in a good way. I’m not getting honey from this, sadly. Or maybe it’s just that I’ve had other teas that tasted a lot more like honey than this one without meaning to. But anyway, even though I can’t quite pick out the individual flavors in this, but it’s good. Finish the whole cup off in less than a minute good. Keeping my mind off the huge stack of readings I have to do by tomorrow good.

Oh wait. Shoot. Did I just lose The Game?

Wow! I kept looking for honey and flavorings in the ingredients … there’s just a gentle oolong flavor up front and an afterglow when you swallow that would make Pooh Bear giggle. Nothing but really, really, really good tea!

Yum!! I had this tea hot with vanilla soy ceamer for breakfast. It has a nice sweet flavor that asserts itself well with the creamer. BUT—I liked it even better iced! You can get a lot of infusions out of this tea, I made the third one iced and it was quite good. It has a cooling kind of aftertaste that suites iced tea well.

Definitely a keeper!

Another tea from my “drink it up” pile. I wish I could taste the honey in this more. It always tastes like plain old roasted oolong to me, with some very light floral and honey notes.

I decided to skip the last untried Tea Desire tea I’d purchased and try this one. I didn’t want anything black for the late evening.

It smells very deeply vegetal, like that bagged ti guan yin I have.

Luckily it doesn’t taste anything like that. It’s light, but dark, not green, more closer to a very milk black. But not a Darjeeling black. I’m not tasting anything significant right now, but it’s still quite hot.

But I like the bright honey colour. I hope I see some semblance of the name in the taste when it cools a bit more. However, enjoyable so far. I think this is my kind of oolong. Not green, but definitely far enough away from black for a difference in taste.

When I breath out I’m getting that sort of Ceylon black taste that reminds me of honey (not in the taste, just in the Black Tea And Honey = The Perfect Match mind-set I grew up with as a kid). With that is a bit of Black-style astringency. But there’s also the sort of oolong taste I remember from Jade Teapot’s ti guan yin. Hard to explain.

There is almost a touch of bitterness as well. I spent some time trying to decide if I should go with two minutes or three, because the package reads three, but looking over the tasting notes many did two minutes instead. Perhaps next time I will try a lower temperature as well. Their samples are pretty hefty, I have a lot to experiment with.

I’m not getting any touch of the honey factor, but when I take large gulps I get a sweetness, and overall it has an appealing smoothness. Also getting more of a nutness. It’s odd, it smells vegetal but doesn’t taste it. I think someone said woodsy, and I can see that too, somehow, even though I don’t know what ‘woodsy’ should taste like. Deep, I guess.

The second steep has a sharper taste, less dryness.

The leaves are large, wiry, and quite dark for an oolong. The dry leaves have a slight leather fragrance along with their sweet tea smell. It brews up into a honey-gold liquor with the fragrance of honey. The honey taste is subdued in the tea itself Overall this is a very mild tea. I may try steeping it longer next time.

I wanted to like this tea. I really did. But it’s just not oolong enough for me. This is too mild, and even when steeped extra strong tastes a little like it’s watered down to me. The aromas are nice, and I taste some of the sweet. But this just isn’t gonna be one of my all-time favorite oolongs. Sigh.

Honey-like sweetness, mild and smooth. Faint notes of honeysuckle and toast.

A pleasure to drink!

I miss you The Simple Leaf!

This isn’t the first time I’ve enjoyed this tea. I have a tendancy to enjoy this one while out at sea… which I will being doing with may more of my teas in the future. Sigh.
This is a lovely tea full of fruity floral notes and a wonderful kiss of honey.
We don’t tend to have many fancy honey onboard but we do pack a basket full of honey bears and this tea requires none of the like. It again is pleasant and while it has a softness of character it doesn’t like to be neglected in the cup longer than 30 minutes. Then the tartness of the tanins kick in but by then you should be well on the way to sipping and putting aside your nightly powerpoints. :)
A fine tea to enjoy with company! I would buy this one again… along with Dawn.

Light, sweet taste, kind of flowery finish. No bitter at all, very smooth. Sweet aftertaste that lasts.