Milk Puerh help - Soaked in whey protein?
Has anyone ever heard of pu-erh being soaked milk or milk dereived proteins to give it a milky flavour?
Thanks for the responses! I thought also that it would be flavouring, but as their were no milk related ingredients listed I checked with the company and they said the leaves are soaked in whey prior to being steamed and fermented. Seems unusual and I’d never heard of it., so thought I’d reach out. Also it’s very milky (hence thinking that was flavoured), so I wouldn’t have thought the process they are suggesting would retain that much milk flavour.
I am surprised that I have never heard of milky puerh before. Was it ripe or raw? Must be a very uncommon way of processing the tea.
I think it is uncommon, I’ve never seen it before and, honestly, Im not sure how accurate I believe the story to be. I believe it’s ripe.
@AllanK I’m not sure that would count as “processing” in my book. I would say that’s just plain old artificial flavoring.
Processing is a fairly generic term, artificial flavoring is a form of processing in this generic sense too. They have to have a way to impart the flavor and that counts as a process.
I see your point. I still think there’s a difference between processing in the sense of treating the leaves (drying, rolling and so on) and adding foreign “non-tea” stuff to them, thought I suppose one might argue that wo dui constitute “adding stuff”. Semantics, perhaps.
It is definitely a non traditional way of processing the leaves, at least I have never heard of it before with puerh, with Oolong yes. There is a tea called Milk Oolong and as I understand it, it only sometimes actually contains milk.
Right. Milk oolong is an interesting topic. I am by no means sure, but I have heard that milk oolong was originally not flavored but naturally have a taste reminiscent of milk. However, since producing that particular tea is expensive or rare the habit of flavoring oolong with actual milk got started, and today it’s tricky to find “non-flavored” milk oolong. Personally I have only tasted flavored milk oolong (I base this on the fact that the “milky” taste was very strong on the first steep and then disappeared). If this is correct it would be a case of the term “milk” migrating from a metaphor to an actual description.
I believe Mandala Tea sells one that is supposed to be very good. I can’t actually remember if I tried it. I think it does not contain actual milk but you would have to ask them.
I have bought from Taiwan Sourcing about five or six times and have always liked what I got. I have never tried their milk oolong though.
Milk oolong. The original milk oolong is the Jin Xuan aka Golden Daylily. It’s been around since the early 1980’s. Popular tea and a good one is a real delight. On our site we list it as Jin Xuan and it is a great seller. People often like to pick up both the Jin Xuan and the Milk Oolong we sell to compare. Our milk oolong contains no milk but is indeed a scented tea unlike the Jin Xuan which is just straight leaf. There are some really nasty milk oolongs out there, scented and soaked in heavy duty schtuff, not necessarily food grade and often artificial/chemical additives. It pays to be picky when finding one.
Myself, I prefer the Jin Xuan, but I would say our milk oolong is in our top 5 sellers and has been for many years. The source I have for it out of Taiwan is all organic and used only food-grade products in the scenting, again no artificial flavors or dairy/gluten/soy.
I love milk oolong! Unfortunately there are few places that don’t use milk like ingredients!
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