Oriental Beauty Bai Hao Oolong Superior Grade

I was boiling water for black tea, then changed my mind. I have to write the methods of a systematic review…and Oriental Beauty caught my eye.

So, steeped in an atypical teapot in somewhat too hot water.

This is a nice, light floral bai hao oolong. The liquor is amber brown and enticing. While floral dominates the smell, on tasting there are layers as well of something slightly smokey or nutty, I can’t figure out which one (and I just had an oatmeal cookie, which doesn’t help). Overall, a nice solid tea, not a top favorite but I think that is me, and not the tea.

I cn’t decide if I like this or not. It is not a particularly floral OB, which I really like.It is a beautiful coloor, like some dandelion jelly I got at the farmer’s market. To me it is both nutty and vegetal. The mouth feel is very full and somewhat astringent, drying to my mouth. A good counterpoint to sweets. The second brew smelled like the steam of ironed clothes and was greener tasting and I liked it better. Definately one to explore

I have Oriental Beauty (Bai Hao Oolong) from 4 supplying sources, and this is absolutely my favorite. Compared with another two OB products I have, this one has slightly larger leaves, and the flavor leans more toward sweet, floral and honey, while the other two are warmer with deeper spicy aroma.

Most of the time, I would use a small teapot to “gong fu” this tea. When it comes to oolong, I have very greedy taste, always yearning for strong flavor and hot liquor. But in recent months, I’ve more and more tried out casually brewing loose leaves in a mug, cup or bowl. The reasons for doing this are, (1) I am curious which prestigious teas can still be fairly delicious when the drinker doesn’t have to follow strict brewing parameters; (2) As I’ve started trying to mesmerize people into drinking tea, I thought casual drinking might be less intimidating than orthodox brewing methods like “gong fu”; (3) I have to admit, I sometimes feel a bit guilty about spending so much time drinking tea. I would like to do more casual drinking as long as the flavor is not much sacrificed.

Today after a long day of working and hours of suffering from dry eyes and dryness inside out, finally it’s tea time! I wouldn’t want to have too much caffeine at this time, and I am too exhausted to use little teapot and little cup. So this time I simply brewed this tea in a mug. I laid the dry leaves to cover the bottom of my glass mug and pour in hot water. That’s it! It is very relaxing and very enjoyable. The tea is warm with fruity aroma. Each sip ends with a hint of honey flavor. The first 2 infusions are the most aromatic. Afterwards, the flavor fades a bit. But the honey like aftertaste resulting from previous infusions starts to linger in mouth and makes the later infusions taste sweeter. The tea starts to get weaker in the fifth infusion. Too lazy to start another tea session, I just keep re-steeping this tea. The tea becomes bland, but still bears a very light spicy flavor.

Compared with gong fu brewing, what’s nice with glass mug brewing is you can see the leaves (they are pretty) and the silver tips (Bai Hao, or white tiny fibers) of the leaves suspending in the liquor. The downside of mug brewing is, flavor can’t be as strong as gong fu brewing (since less tea is used), and not as consistent (however, when tea gets over strong, you can always adjust it by adding hot water). When a shock of very aromatic tea is the dominant need, gong fu probably is still the best.

I guess this is the tea I’m about to drink now.

Looks like it’s made out of 3 kinds of various leaves. They smell like the smell of what they sell in stores as indian black tea. You know filtered not very good kind. There’s also an additional smell that i cant define.

I steeped it rather short as it says up here. Looks too bright. Yeah I’m putting the tea back in. After like 2 min it’s still quite yellow and light for an oolong. But I guess it’s how it is.
Idk this one isn’t very tasteful. It’s not bad either. It’s just very mild and undefinable to me.

Wouldn’t get this one again.

Has a slight earthy taste I have found common in Pu-Ur Teas. There is nice sweetness to taste as Gingko describes. Very warming taste.