2201 Tasting Notes
This milk tea was in the mini-fridge in my hotel room, which I’ve never had problems with before, but this one must have gotten too close to the freezer box because it was frozen almost completely when I took it out for lunch today. I love a good taro milk tea slush, but trying to drink it out of a bottle is impossible! It’s slowly thawing, so I’m now getting a nice mix of slush and liquid, but I kinda just want to drink it, heh. I guess it’s delayed gratification for my last taro milk tea!
The day has come… my last day in Beijing! I guess that’s not totally true since I will have an afternoon here after I return from Mongolia and before I leave for the States, but tomorrow morning, very early, I am leaving for Ulaanbaatar for about a week. I kind of doubt my hostel room will have a hot water pot like my hotel here did, so I don’t know how much tea I will be drinking in the next week. So I may be very scarce around here for a little while! After my last bottle of milk tea at lunch, that is. :D
This is the fourth and final flavor of bottled milk tea from Wahaha. I’ve had it once before but didn’t review it then. As far as I can tell this isn’t a jasmine green milk tea, but rather a black milk tea with added jasmine flavor.
The jasmine is distinct but not overwhelming here, like most of the other flavors I’ve tried. It even tastes a bit “green” in spite of itself. It’s a kind of fresh jasmine flavor that I’ve encountered a lot in jasmine greens here in China, which is to say it’s slightly different from jasmine greens I’ve had in the States in a way I can’t really describe. It is very tasty, though. I can’t say I’d grab this one over the plain or osmanthus flavors, but I like them all about the same (but not the taro, of course. Taro wins everything).
Oh taro milk tea, you really are the best. In all the grocery stores I’ve been to around Beijing, I’ve only ever found it in the one inside Xidan Joy City, a big mall. I go past it on occasion, but not very often. Thus I haven’t had this in a while and I forgot how delicious it is. I wish taro was more common as a flavoring in the states!
What does taro taste like?
I always think of it as a little almondy, but not suuuper almondy. Haha, it’s hard to describe. Once I identify something as a particular taste it’s hard for me to break it down in terms others might understand.
That is interesting. In my bubble tea search last night I found places that sell taro powder to use as flavoring for it. I might have to put it on my list of tea stuff to try.
That taro powder is pretty much exactly the flavor of taro milk teas. I have a box of it at home and I love it!
Oh, it’s morning again. It always seems to come too early no matter how early I go to bed. :P This morning I used the gaiwan and made like the people in the tea malls for tastings… that is, I did a number of short steeps but dumped all of them into one vessel. The result is definitely very tasty, and fairly similar to basically drinking each successive gaiwan steep. As such, even though I end up with a cup of tea that looks the same as “western” style steeping, the taste is definitely different. An interesting experiment, and one I am excited to try with other teas at home!
Preparation
At Red Blossom Tea one of the sales girls told me that’s how she makes her tea every morning, by dumping multiple gaiwan infusions into the same container. Still it seems kind of time consuming to me…
It is a bit time consuming, but not that much more because the successive steeps are so short. I actually only heat the water once and used it continuously… I know that means that it was actually dropping in temp as I was steeping and not increasing, but it seemed to work anyway.
Today I am brewing this basically gong-fu style in a gaiwan. I’m not sure if people usually do that with jasmine teas, but that’s what I’m doing. My first use of a gaiwan, and hey I’m actually pretty good at it! I don’t even need an easy gaiwan like I thought I would.
Brewing this gongfu (high leaf:water ratio, short time) is really interesting, and it brings out other flavors that I haven’t tasted before. The jasmine is floral but… different in some ineffable way. I don’t know, but it is tasty. It’s also a little sweeter, a little fresher tasting. The first two steeps seemed pretty similar, but I also concentrating very much on the tasting, I just wanted some tea this afternoon. It is amazing how good this loose tea from the grocery store is… it makes me want to go pick up 50g of their high grade tieguanyin just to try it out!
Preparation
Ok Steepsterites, I finally made a trip yesterday to the Maliandao tea street! I wrote up a very long report over in my “Beijing Tea Travel” post on the discussion boards.
So why am I not drinking one of my new teas or at least using one of my new teawares? Well, I spent all day outside today and I am sunburned and I wanted a cold tea. So I grabbed this one out of my fridge. I bought this one recently because I do love floral things even though I’ve never really been head over heals for osmanthus. I find it to be a pretty subtle floral. That is the case with this tea, as well, which tastes mostly like the original flavor but then there is a light floral note. It’s rather pleasant, actually, though if I’m not paying attention I could almost miss it. But I often find that that’s osmanthus for you! At least it is for me.
Today I tried to room-temp steep this by throwing some leaves into the bottle of water that I usually take with me to work. Let’s just say, it didn’t turn out well. Who knew a cold steep could be so bitter! I definitely need to go for far less leaves, I guess. I’ll try again next week.
But now I’m having this one hot again with dinner. It really is lovely, and oh so smooth. It’s just such a pleasant tea to drink, though I can’t see myself craving it and I think I would get bored of it, too, if it was the only thing I had. I guess I just crave more variety!
Preparation
Yes, craving variety makes sense! How many teas do you have at work? When I think of trying to get by on just a few teas, myself, I get kind of shaky….. ;)
Dumb question—when Steepsters refer to cold brew/cold steep, is it generally room temp as you’ve described above, or in the fridge?
At work in the states is where all of my tea is, so I have a ton! I don’t drink the same tea very often.
gmathis: most people (and usually me) call brewing in the fridge cold-brew, I just called this room temp brew cold brew since it wasn’t with hot water. I’m not sure if there is a big difference with room temp versus refrigerated water, though.
Carrefour! Gosh, I never even noticed they sold tea when I went there. I always went straight to the candy or cookie areas… not the best grocery shopper, I will admit.
variety, YES!!! that’s part of what drives my tea cupboard to expand. That way, I can avoid having the same tea more than once a week, sometimes even in a month!
I had a bottle of this once before but didn’t get around to writing a note for it then. This is the “original flavor” milk tea, that is, basically unflavored. I remembered that the last time I was in China on a trip (2004), almost all of our bottled water was from this company, Wahaha, and it said that on the bottle in letters (not just Chinese characters). I will always remember one of our Chinese colleagues one time saying “Wahaha… the sound of children laughing.” Oh, Wahaha, you take me back.
Anyway, I enjoy this milk tea a lot. Not quite as much as the taro but not much beats taro. Actually there is a flavor to this that is similar to the taro (not surprising, since that one should have the same base as this), but I had thought that it was not just black tea, milk and sugar. Either the milk is slightly flavored with something else or the black tea is really tasty. I will never know! Oh well, I can definitely say I will miss this when I leave China. But it’s probably good, because I would probably gain 500lbs drinking this sugary rich drink all the time. :D
I don’t know about ‘children’ laughing – the name sounds more like an evil supervillan laughing over his plans for world domination. ;D
I’ve never actually had authentic milk tea – what all is supposed to be in it?
You know I don’t really know exactly, but it’s definitely very sweet, so perhaps something like sweetened condensed milk mixed with a black tea.
Wahaha happy baby drink!!! That is some good stuff. As you say, both sad and glad it’s not available here.
Have fun on the rest of your trip!! sorry your last tea didn’t work out :(
I’m still childishly amused by the name of this company. :D