Silk Oolong Formosa

My last oolong wasn’t all that hot so I decided to try something I knew was good. I’m surprised I have as much of it left as I do. And when I say that, I mean I’m surprised I have more than one cup’s worth of leaves. I have two. Woo!

Okay, but now that I’ve brewed a cup up, I have the one cup left that I figured I did before. Confused yet? I kinda am.

Anyway, the flavor notes say light, sweet and rich with hints of mango, passion fruit and caramel. I’m with ‘em on the first bit. It’s light and sweet but it’s got a rich flavor to it. More like condensed cream than just sugar. Sweet but richly so. I’m a little iffier on the mango, passion fruit and caramel. What flavor is Juicy Fruit gum? Because that’s what this always makes me I think of. Wikipedia says that they probably use pineapple, peach and banana, so at least we’ve got the tropical fruit thing matching. I can see the caramel now though. I’m pretty sure that’s what give this tea the rich tone to the sweetness.

Anyway, I do love this tea. The Silk Oolong Anxi was a little better but I think it lacked what I’m now going to say is the caramel. So when I say ‘better’, it’s really a personal preference thing. I think when this tea was fresher it had a bit more body to it (or that might have been the Anxi) but all in all, it’s aged pretty well. I need to be better about remembering my greener teas so I don’t have to worry about how they age.

Well, one cup of this left for some unknown date in the future. Then, aside from samples, I will be left with only Citron Oolong for my oolong teas. Yikes. I need to order some oolong, stat!

Wow. I’m loving this tea.

I’m currently on my third infusion, and will likely get 1 or 2 more.

On first sniff of the dry leaf, you get cream and fruit tones. These continue throughout the steeping process. Each successive steep gets a little less fruity and a little more “green” but oh! is this a nice yummy tea. Definitely has a high tannic content, as it does leave a little of the dry mouth, but does it without any bitterness.

So far, my favorite oolong.

Shortbread.

That’s what I tasted on the first two steeps. Delicious, warm, buttery, with fruity notes and that distinct cookie flavor, shortbread.

I should mention that I’m now on steep five of this.

I know that I’m really digging an oolong if I get this far with it. Even though I know that oolongs are generally meant to unfold over steeps, if it’s really not gelling with me after steep two, I have a lot of trouble forging ahead [and often don’t]. Clearly, that’s not a problem with this one.

Auggy [thanks Auggy for this, by the way] and LENA F. mentioned tropical, candied, Juicy Fruit-ish flavors from this, and I didn’t really get that strongly until at or around steep three. The buttery component had become significantly weaker during the second steep, though I could still taste the shortbread, but by steep three it became notably more tropical in character. It shed its tartan and bagpipe and threw on a hat made of fruit and a coconut bikini.

Here in steep five, it’s light and fruity. I’m probably going to stop at this cup because it’s become significantly weaker for me. Similar to when you drop some fruit into water and let it sit for a while. It’s still enjoyable at this point, but in another cup I suspect the flavor will have dissipated beyond the point of notability.

This isn’t as complex as other oolongs I’ve had, and it is very, very different from other formosa oolongs that I’ve tried, but I imagine that I’ll want to have it around for, at the very least, those first three steeps.

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…

Silk Oolong has to be one of the best green oolongs that I’ve had to date or at least the first infusion. The aroma of the dry leaf had me initially uneasy as it reminded me slightly of a mix of sour milk and fruit but luckily the brewed tea tastes a lot better than the dry leaf smells. This is my first silk or milk oolong and it is clearly wonderful and amazing at how much it tastes like milk cream with a sweet fruity and maybe a tad floral notes that remind me of mango. From what I understand Silk oolong is designed to imitate the taste of Jing Xuan and I must say I enjoy the “fake stuff” made with real cream over the Jing Xuan grown to imitate the taste of cream in the tea itself. For me this tea peaked in the first infusion as it came off as declining a bit in the future infusions but it still left a very good impression on me. So you do have to at least admit that real Jing Xuan does hold up a bit better for more infusions than Silk Oolong.

I like this oolong and I’m usually not a fan of hand rolled leaves. This tea is super sweet smelling. I caught myself thinking about cotton candy…but by the time I identified the smell, it faded out. My nose spent a lot of time in my cup. There are several fruity notes in this tea. It could almost be a flavored oolong. Tasty cup!

This is a beautiful, glorious tea. Last time I checked at Red Blossom they said they WEREN’T CARRYING IT ANYMORE? If so, that is a travesty. This is a really amazing tea and the flavor is just unbelievable.

It smells like ice cream or popcorn or something in a movie theatre that is glorious. The steeping is pretty solid for at least 2 times or even 3 and it’s great for a dessert. The regular Silk Oolong was very nice but the Formosa version really plussed it up a lot in my opinion. I love this tea, it’s marvelous and tastes and smells like candy and happy tears of joy.

Hmm… I’m not certain what to make of this tea. First, let me say that I’m discovering I really love oolong. So, having had a few different silk oolongs, I was really expecting to have my socks knocked off… well, I didn’t. That’s not to say that it’s not a bad cup of tea. It’s simply that I had hoped for more.

First, the scent. I was a bit wary as I’m normally enticed by the aroma of the open bag. That didn’t happen this time. When I opened the bag and sniffed, I actually recoiled because it was so different from what I was expecting.

Okay, so I went with 195/2min steep using the Breville. The color was kind of a light yellow. Lighter than I expected, but I decided to give it a go. Mmm. It is good. I can smell that silk oolong scent that I had been hoping for earlier. It’s very nice, but doesn’t have that creamy heft to it that other silk oolongs seem to have. It does taste creamy, though, but with more earthiness to it. It’s interesting. I’m happy with it, but surprised by the experience all the same.

When I read “infused with the creaminess of milk” I thought I would dislike this. I’ve not had the best of luck with so-called milk oolongs with an exception or two. I have come close to gagging on some of the heavier ones.

So when I smelled the dry leaf of this in the packet, I was prepared for the worst. It has a sort of sprayed on buttery thing going on, like the butter flavor in butter flavored popcorn. In the packet, it smells to me like white rice as a butter delivery vehicle.

Gaiwan. 190F (for some reason my water isn’t heated all the way to 195 in the Zo), rinse, steep for 15 seconds plus 5 per steep for four steeps.

The first steep is pale yellow, which darkens to a champagne yellow and is clear. The third steep darkened to a yellow that was as buttery as the aroma.

The steeped tea’s aroma is also very rice-butter but the flavor is much milder.

There is definitely milk and cream, and maybe a little butter, in the flavor but there’s a sweetness that keeps it from heading toward buttermilk. It’s actually a pretty unique flavor, one I can’t recall tasting in other oolongs. It doesn’t really present as fruity to me, but perhaps that’s what I’m tasting, the hints of passionfruit and mango, and I’m just not recognizing it as such. The caramel is more apparent to me.

It’s always fun when you go into tasting a tea expecting to be horrified and you’re pleasantly surprised. While this is a shadow of the The O Dor, it’s one of the better milk flavored oolongs I’ve had, even with the “infused” bit.

Hands down, the first thing you notice is the aroma. To me, it simply smells like butter or buttered corn on the cob. This actually came from a small company called eL Tea http://bit.ly/cCHOyK