Melon Oolong

Great tea. Mellow but tastes strongly of melon. It is really really weird. I’d buy it though, I like weird teas.

mmm… taste like watermelon hard candy. delicious.

So, this was a sipdown! I’m not a huge fan of this tea. The melon (no clue what kind of melon it is: smells sort of like cantaloupe, but not quite) was really strong, while the Oolong was a bit lost, not to mention this was an easy one to get bitter on me. I found the melon taste to both smell and taste a bit artificial, and it was just too strong for my liking. It produced an odd tasting cuppa (maybe overripe melon?), and left the strangest (not so pleasant) aftertaste on my tongue. I wouldn’t buy this one again. It may have been drinkable, but it was on the cusp of being a down-the-drain-er for me. I think the melon definitely needs a tone down.

Lupicia has a lot of flavored oolongs, and they’re a really mixed bag. The super-sweet, almost cloying melon did not match well with the oolong, in my opinion. Rather than getting a unified blend I could smell a melon scent and taste the oolong tea, but I couldn’t really taste the melon flavor. Rather disappointed, but I did use one of Lupicia’s teabags – next time I’ll try to loose tea and see if it’s any better.

Smells very juicy – like a super-ripe cantaloupe, or maybe a honeydew, dipped in oolong. And it tastes just like it smells – like cantaloupe coated in an oolong jelly (if such a thing existed). Pleasantly weird. And very summery.

I went through my entire package of this preparing it coldbrew, and it was absolutely delicious! The melon flavor is really sweet and juicy, that sort of hybrid cantalope/honeydew flavor I get from other Japanese melon-flavored products. The base oolong is very silky and smooth with a bit of a fresh green vibe that carries the melon flavor perfectly. I probably should’ve tried this with some added sweetener and carbonation just to see how close it could get to melon soda, but just as a straight coldbrew it was perfect. Very gulpable. I really love Lupicia’s flavored oolongs for coldbrew!

The TTB has arrived! So big, so many teas… no chance to try them all!
Tea #39

Whoa, I have tried/sampled almost 40 teas from the TTB?

Well, another tea that is hardly available for me and I had mood for fruity tea, if possible without much ingredients and such, because starting headache.
This tea smells dry as well prepared as yellow melons indeed and it was very noticeable as well as in the flavour of the drink. It was also nicely smooth, creamy and overall indeed enjoyable.

The flavouring is spot on.

Finished my bag up as a cold brew. I added some hot water to cover the leaves and to melt the konpeito left in the bag before adding cool filtered water to sweeten the brew. It’s the perfect juicy melon oolong tea! The melon in this blend is exactly like my favorite honeydew boba, and somehow even the age of this tea hasn’t dulled that melon scent.

New tea tasting!

Testing out teas from Lupicia, still working on the trying or sipping down all the samples from Cameron, Skysamurai and a tea book from an importer. With my sensitivity to large amounts of caffeinated tea right now, I am down to 1-2 cups of caffeinated tea a day and sipping down is so slow for actual tea. :’(

Preparation: Western
Tasting Note:
Ah! Yum! I can actually taste the melon flavor in this oolong. I was worried all the Lupicia oolongs were going to smell nice but just taste like a normal taiwanese oolong. (I have my preferences for straight Taiwanese oolongs already so, if it’s going to claim to be flavored, I want to be able to tell it’s there.) The melon flavor tastes a lot like honeydew but sometimes the “mustiness” of the oolong makes me think it is closer to a really ripe cantalope. It is a super great combination and I appreciate that the candy gives a little sweetness as well. I would definitely try to make this as a cold brew too. It seems like it would be AMAZING in the summer. In fact, there is a -15 F windchill (actual temp of 0 F) outside right now and I am still in my memories of summer with this tea right now. :)

Total side note on the Lupicia Japan order: To follow up with my previous posting about making a Lupicia Japan order with a forwarding address generated by tenso.com. It all worked fabulously, the shipping total only took 9 days to get from Japan to Minnesota, which is really impressive to me. Now to the important bit, I bought 19 teas (roughly 50g each and 12 of the 19 were in specialty tins so this was a little more expensive than buying just tea) and it totaled to $183.70 (usd). Breakdown was $134.88 usd for the Lupicia (free local shipping after a 6200 yen purchase, which is roughly $47.64 usd) and an additional $48.82 usd for tenso.com’s international shipping fee (no coupons used). I bought the second cheapest shipping choice through DHL which was only like 4 dollars more to potentially save me a 100 days wait. Other than that the instructions in tenso’s emails and faqs were clear enough to help me fill out the japanese address on Lupicia and fill out tenso’s consolidation form (its a digital customs form mainly and took me 3 minutes to fill out). All in all, Japan is actually cheaper than Hawaii if you take into account the conversion rate and free local shipping. I am looking at both sites right now. If you buy (hypothetically speaking) 19 Cookie teas (50g ea) in Japan it is $109.48 with another roughly $50 dollars for shipping through tenso and that is $159.48. If you buy 19 Cookie teas in the Hawaii site it is $180.50 with free shipping and not including taxes. Oddly enough for large orders (not sure about small orders yet) right now, ordering direct through japan is cheaper and pretty dang fast, plus you get ALL the tea choices in Japan (except for other country exclusives).

Another one I could have sworn I’d already reviewed! Is Steepster eating notes again? Or maybe it’s from back when it was happening before.

Making tea is a whole project with a busted wrist so my partner has been helping me. Due to a miscommunication, he almost added cold seltzer to a hot mug of this! Thankfully we caught it in time and narrowly avoided a silly beverage crisis. I did end up drinking it cold, but without the seltzer.

I’m almost done with this tea, but it’s taken me years because I’m not a big fan. It tastes like honeydew candy on a floral oolong base. It’s not sugary but still too sweet for my taste. Back before the pandemic, this was an office tea – something I wasn’t very attached to and could drink while I was focused on work. YMMV – someone who likes candy-like teas might be really into this.

ETA: Out of sheer curiosity, I added some seltzer to the last bit left at the bottom of my mug. It makes an… okay tea soda. It just tastes like melon candy with bubbles, which isn’t really very satisfying or interesting. I’ve been enjoying some of DavidsTea’s cranberry blends as tea sodas lately, and what makes that work for me is that they have that combination of sweet and tart going. It doesn’t have to be tartness that balances out the sweetness, but there should be something – roastiness, zest, zing, something that gives it some depth and complexity to make it work as a tea soda for me.