Please help me explore green and oolong tea
Hi everyone,
So I’m interested in at least exploring green and oolong teas, mostly because I’m looking to add a few teas to my collection that don’t inspire me to add milk and sugar (because I pretty much feel it absolutely necessary to add them to blacks). It will also make it easier for me to have a few teas I can prepare at work without having to fuss about my additions. But the problem is that I’ve had little exposure to greens, and have not liked what I’ve tried, although that’s more of a vague recollection than any specific memory.
As for oolongs, I haven’t really tried any, save for a random sip from a friend’s cup here or there, and I think I liked what I tried. Here’s what I know:
greens:
-I don’t like my tea to taste like a plant or grass or vegetables (does this pretty much eliminate all green tea ever?)
-I like fruit and floral flavours, as well as decadent ones like almond, vanilla, caramel, etc.
Oolongs:
-I’m intrigued by the concept of a milk oolong for obvious reasons. do they really taste milky? which would you recommend?
-nutty is ok, but again, i don’t want to be tasting, like, greenery or spinach
-floral sounds fantastic.
I wish I didn’t have such a fussy mouth, but it’s a good mouth overall, I promise! haha.
Thanks in advance, as always.
milk oolong = mandala’s (this coming from someone who doesn’t love oolongs)
teavivre has some really nice sampler packs of oolongs you could try.
Oolongs are great! I like DavidsTea Quangzhou Milk Oolong and Mandala Tea’s Big Red Robe Dark Roast (oolong). They don’t taste at all vegetal.
Long Jing or Dragonwell green tea tastes like sweet snap peas to me. I’m not very experienced with oolongs since I haven’t tried that much, but for floral, Tieguanyin is the way to go, and darker oolongs like Da Hong Pao, Shui Jin Gui, and Dancongs tend to taste fruity and honey-like. I’ve only had these teas from Verdant and a couple from Yezi.
Thanks, guys. I’m going to see if I can get a sample pack or something. It doesn’t help that all the names are so overwhelming LOL.
Thanks, also, for suggesting some of your favourites.
I hate wak tasting tea!
Sil, isn’t mandala like constantly out of their milk oolong?
they were but garrett restocked recently…also that gives you an idea of how yummy it is. he’s got some amazing puerhs too if you’re brave :) and will ship to canada for reasonable prices – you just have to email him. oh and the cleaning solution he sells is amazing for cleaning teaware/finum baskets…etc haha
Ok, I just checked and mandala actually has the milk oolong in stock. But there are only instructions for the gongfou method, and there’s no way I have the dexterity or materials to be able to try that yet, especially if I don’t even know if I’ll like the tea. Can the milk oolong be brewed western style and still taste decent?
And I should probably check out teavivre as well. And dT is nearby so I can always swing in and start exploring.
i picked up teavivres sample packs when i was exploring different teas. they’re good value and give you lots of options to try :)
You can always go to the Steepster page for that tea and read the notes people wrote. Often times they either use the feature at the bottom that tells you how long and at what temp they brewed the tea at or they write about it explaining what method they used for brewing. It is a good way to get an idea of what results people are getting with a particular tea without having to do all the trial and error yourself.
Oh that’s good to know. and given the comparison to fish, I think pu’er terrifies me! LOL
Can I e-mail Garret directly from the website? or is there a better way of contacting him?
Let’s page him with the steepster PA system!
haha just email him through the website. He is super helpful and will try and help you make some good choices :) Also, i’d be happy to share some puerh with you down the road if you like. I have lots of not fishy puerh here, though you may not enjoy their boldness if you always add to your blacks heh
I didn’t like the harsh grassy bitter notes of green tea and wrote them off for over a decade thinking it had to be that way, but have had a lot of revelations post-Steepster. One, the temp and steep time has to be waaaaay lower to avoid “burning” green leaves, which is what was making them so harshly bitter. Two, personally I don’t care for most Japanese steamed green tea (it tends toward a grass and lemon quality I’m not nuts about) and prefer the butteriness and relatively low astringency in Chinese panfried green tea, and the way many Chinese greens have a toasty nutty element. Three, I know I might be an odd duck in this regard (tea expert books and forums tend to have a lot of disdain) but I find flavored greens and oolongs awesome, to the point I’m slowly realizing tons of flavors I dislike when paired with black bases I LOVE with green or oolong ones (strawberry!). Four, there’s some green tea-derived stuff that isn’t really very green tea-like —genmaicha with matcha comes to mind (toasty popcorn-smelling tea, yum), hojicha which is roasted and doesn’t look like green tea at all (reminds one of coffee but supposedly without the high caffeine). Perhaps you’d be interested in those; this spring I kept saying stuff like "I don’t like green tea except for genmaicha…and hojicha…and and and, ha.
Some standout greens that made me a convert and huge fan include…
Butiki With Open Eyes (green tea, strawberry, toffee, ginger)
Joy’s Teaspoon Mahalo (green tea, lotsa fruit)
Den’s Tea Pineapple Sencha (I know, I said I dislike sencha, but flavored with tropical fruit I love it which is weird because I tend to hate tropical flavoring with black tea or rooibos)
American Tea Room Nirvana (green tea, lotsa fruit especially strawberry)
Harney and Sons Tokyo (has kind of a “sticky rice and coconut dessert from a Thai restaurant” vibe to it)
Butiki Potato Pancakes and Applesauce
Den’s Tea Organic Genmaicha with Matcha
Golden Moon Hojicha
For straight greens, my favorites have come from Verdant (Autumn Harvest Laoshan Green and Laoshan Bilochun Green blew my mind this summer…so nutty, sweet, satisfying, just delicious, really made me reassess what I thought green tea could taste like) and Harney (their fancypants Japanese greens like tencha and gyokuro, but I won’t recommend them specifically here as they do still have a clean fresh veggie taste to them).
I love coconut oolong, probably more than milk oolong. It’s sweet and creamy and nutty and just…yum! My three faves so far come from Golden Moon (Coconut Pouchong, the freshest of the three, more like coconut water than cream), American Tea Room (very creamy-rich), and Zen Tea (perfectly in between those two in terms of fresh vs. creamy). As for milk oolong, natural ones aren’t going to hit you in the face with the sensation of smelling milk, it’s more delicate…if you’re not against flavored ones though, yes, they can be surprisingly uncanny (I like Teavivre’s). The ones I’ve had don’t remind me of milk in the creamy-sweet way, it’s more like the scent of fresh skim. Not rich or dessert-y. I like them though.
If you like floral, you might be more inclined to the greener side of oolongs (the whole oolong spectrum is pretty intimidating when you start out, at least I thought so)—spring tie guan yin, bao zhong/pouchong (also known as paper-wrapped). Or the peachier ones. And some high altitude oolongs like ali shan, li shan, etc. have a creaminess to them you might like.
If I could recommend one tea to you though given what you’ve said, I think it would probably be Butiki’s Flowery Pineapple Oolong. It is an island vacation in a cup, with flowers and fruit and mmmm.
Wow, thanks for such a detailed list of recommendations. I feel that there might actually be hope for my discovering that there are oolongs and greens I could get behind, and I’m interested in drinking more than just my beloved blacks.
Sil: Are Pu’ers really bold? and you’re sure yours don’t taste fishy? and by bold, do you mean bitter/astringent? because I’m at that stage of my tea “career” where I’m sort of fascinated by pu’er, but from a safe distance where no one can fling a dead fish pu’er at me and laugh as I cower and scream. Ha!
I’m just so scared of not adding anything to my tea and hating the resulting wateriness.
i second Butiki’s Flowery Pineapple Oolong. It’s tasty!
Puerhs aren’t all BOLD but they are often much like black teas (at least the ones i tend to love) I have only tasted 1 fishy puerh. I for sure would call some of them earthy? maybe one has been similar to mushrooms…but mostly they’re much like the black teas that i love..and when i get to take the time to brew them in short steeps (doesn’t have to be a gaiwan..i’ve cheated this a brew basket before) i love how the taste changes over the various steepings :) though i’ve also been known to just go all in with a long steeps with a few of my puerhs :)
This list is awesome! I recently discovered I like milk oolongs and since I am a huge coconut fan, I’m now dying to try a coconut oolong as well….Thanks Keychange for starting this thread! I’m off to find a coconut oolong!
I love Gui Fei from Butiki for oolongs, but I prefer darker oolongs for sure. I’m trying hard to get on board with greens, but similar to you I’m not huge on vegetal. I love Bangkok and Tokyo from Harney & Sons for a lighter flavour.
If you’re interested I have some straight greens up for swap from Butiki right now (Organic Spring Twist and Organic Huangshan Mao Feng) and I can always send along some Tokyo and Bangkok too :)
Thanks for the offer, Courtney! Is there anything in my cupboard you’d like? I can only do really tiny swaps (maybe like three teas or fewer) because I’m blind and sorting through numerous samples often means I’ll never get around to them LOL. Although I can certainly send more than three.
Tao tea leaf does workshops for 25.00 / person. If you can get at least three people together you could organise a workshop tailored to your interests and needs that would allow you to taste some Chinese greens and Oolong’s.
http://www.taotealeaf.com/workshop/
I never liked green tea but recently ordered some flavored green teas from Mahamosa that I really enjoyed and it’s encouraged me to try more. Now I have at least 1-2 cups of green tea a day. My favorite is the Plum and Pear Green, but there are a number I like (plus they offer sample sizes).
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