Joy of joys! My order from Red Blossom Tea Co. arrived today. My first shipment of new tea since joining Steepster… almost makes me a little misty-eyed.
New teas: Silk Oolong Formosa, Organic White Monkey, Pi Lo Chun, Ming Qian Lu Jian, Jing Xuan, Silver Needle. Plus I got a very pretty little gaiwan and samples of Phoenix Eye Jasmine and Jade Kuan Yin. Yay!
I was very excited to try this tea. Steepster was how I discovered silk/milk oolongs and the idea was wonderfully new and exciting to me. I think I fell in love with milk oolongs before I even tried one. So it’s fair to say that I had very high expectations for this Silk Oolong Formosa.
The dry leaf smells like caramel or maybe those White Rabbit chinese milk candies (love those!). It smells sweet and creamy – like no tea I’ve smelled before.
The first steep: 2 teaspoons, 6oz water at 195, 2 minutes. The rinsed leaves smell like peach ice cream. That was the first thought that came to mind. Fresh fruit and cream. Such a wonderful aroma. I can’t wait to taste this. The liquor from this first steeping had a light cream flavor but that was kind of… it. I steeped it for another minute and it developed a somewhat thicker mouth feel. The tastes I got were all over the map. At times it had no creaminess, at times I got a very lovely milk flavor at the back of my mouth. For the most part it tasted like a fine tung ting oolong with nice fruity notes. Not bad but also not what I built this tea up into. I can’t really blame the tea for that. The second steep (195, 4 minutes) tasted like a nice oolong. Sometimes like a nice oolong with a little milk added. This tea, on both steeps, leaves a nice, sweet, fruity taste behind. Occasionally there’s a caramel taste.
It’s a very nice oolong. It’s exciting to drink since you never really know what taste you’ll get. I’m definitely a fan. The description leads me to believe that this is an oolong scented to taste like a jing xuan which, based on my research, has the milk flavor naturally. Although the information about milk oolongs on the web is sparse and varied… what I’ve gathered is that jing xuan teas are the “real deal” and then there are milk scented teas. So I’m excited to try the jing xuan.
ETA: Also! Do you rinse the leaves between steeps? I didn’t do that but I’m wondering what the general consensus is…
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I do at the beginning but not in between steeps. I guess I never thought to.
I think you can do it in between steeps to sort of wake the leaves up if they’ve gotten cold or something, but I’ve never done it or really heard much about it so the fact that I think it exists is pretty much all I’ve got.
never thought to rinse between steeps. maybe it’s just a personal preference? congrats on all of the new teas. looking forward to reading all about them.
Your research is correct! The silk oolong is a flavored tea. It is steeped in milk and then roasted to give it that “creamy” flavor that mimics the natural thickness of the oolongs grown at higher elevations like the Jing Xuan. I recommend having a comparison tasting side by side to really taste the difference between them! And no need to rinse the leaves between steeps.
I do at the beginning but not in between steeps. I guess I never thought to.
I think you can do it in between steeps to sort of wake the leaves up if they’ve gotten cold or something, but I’ve never done it or really heard much about it so the fact that I think it exists is pretty much all I’ve got.
never thought to rinse between steeps. maybe it’s just a personal preference? congrats on all of the new teas. looking forward to reading all about them.
Your research is correct! The silk oolong is a flavored tea. It is steeped in milk and then roasted to give it that “creamy” flavor that mimics the natural thickness of the oolongs grown at higher elevations like the Jing Xuan. I recommend having a comparison tasting side by side to really taste the difference between them! And no need to rinse the leaves between steeps.