Tieguanyin taste
I have two tieguanyin tea samples that was given as a free gift:
one was green and had a strong grass taste that i did not like at all;
the other was darker and had a mellow taste,with a subdle and light baked undertone and a complex and changing aftertaste at each brew.
Does tieguanyin taste like grass or is it just a bad sample? (they were free samples, some of them are really bad, some are acceptable or even good but nothing exceptional).
The second package may be a “tan bei” tieguanyin so i suppose it’s the baked one;
i don’t usually like black or too dark or baked tea but this one was subdle and well balanced so i really liked it.
I think there are two basic types of Tieguanyin, unroasted and roasted. The unroasted will taste a little grassy or vegetal. Roasted oolongs often have what is described as a roasted barley taste. Your second oolong almost certainly was roasted as they are fairly dark when roasted and quite green when unroasted. If it is a good Tieguanyin it should change from steep to steep. It is just one sign of a good tea.
Thanks, that clears things up!
I restepped it but i still don’t like that “grass” taste but thanks to the roasted one i’m planning to start testing oloong teas.
Like i said i don’t like teas that taste too much of grass or that are too bitter or too roasted (i tried Da Hong Pao, i liked it but the “baked” taste was a little too present to be on my favourites) and prefer fruit-mellow taste.
I also have a Ginseng tie guan yin (of good quality) and i like it but i drink it only sporadically (i like that “liquorice” aftertaste) and a taiwan Milk Oloong that i like a lot(only brew in gongfu for best results).
Could you please name some oloong teas that may match my preferences?
I’m currently interested on trying:
- Phoenix dangong honey orchid (seems very promising) and other version of dancong (other variants could get too expensive btw)
- An Xi Mao Xie Hairy crab
- Huang Jin Gui golden osmanthus
- Taiwan hight mountain or Ding dong (what’s the difference relative to a milk oloong?)
Feel free to propone other oloongs, i want to spend approx 10-15$ for 100/250g (i’m buying from DragonTeaHouse).
Thanks
Plokko, sounds like the one you didn’t like was a light roast tie guan yin.
According to Wikipedia there are in 3 types of tie guan yins: unroasted (green color, floral), throughly roasted (darker, more baked taste), and moderately roasted (somewhere between the other two, a newer breed of TGY).
Since you mention you don’t like teas that are too dark, I would avoid wuyi oolongs. They are on the darker end of the oolong spectrum and while some varieties can be really good, the last few wuyi’s I had were very roasted and tasted like black tea.
Any time you are buying roasted oolongs you can end up with something poorly roasted. Generally, if you spend more you end up with a better tea, but not always. I would stay away from the bottom line of Dragon Tea House oolongs. I don’t know enough about oolongs specifically to know what you would like.
MarshalN has written extensively about Tieguanyin. His blog is a good read. Seems like it is more difficult now to find the traditional charcoal roasted dark, the norm now is what is called “nuclear green.”
That explains why most TGY I try are not to my taste, but occasionally I get a good one or hear people talking about them being roasty. I just thought they were nuts.
Ubiquity, this place seems to have an interesting spectrum of TGY. They seem to have a problem with their pricing of under a 100g at the moment though ( it only seems to be a problem on this page though). They are Canadian. http://treasure-green-tea-company.myshopify.com/collections/iron-buddha-tieguanyin
An Xi Mao Xie Hairy crab is less floral compaired to the TIG; instead you find hints of mandarin and peach…. It’s a wonderful tea!
one of my favourite oolongs is aged anxi rou gui – cinnemon oolong.(roasted) First you get hints of cinnemon, and then the floral/fruity notes appear. Tea can be steeped endlessly and each steep has a different taste.
enjoy your journey to discover oolongs!
I bought a TIG roasted from 2002 last week. Will have a go at it later this week.
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