Black Pearl

Yup, still like this one a lot. It’s thick and brothy and smooth and yet still mineral-y and sweet. Still get no apples, though. :)

I have been looking at my tea stash(es) and my tea cupboard and my tea shelf and thinking “Man, you really have got to drink this stuff before you buy anything else, on sale or not. This is getting obsessive and probably it probably indicates an addiction. Not to caffeine but to collecting and hoarding.” So I threw out things that I knew from the last tastings were past their prime and not very good. I’m newly resolved to not let my tea “go bad” anymore. And if I do without a favorite for a little bit while I still have a second favorite or two, so be it.

And in pursuit of yet another stash reduction, anyone who wants to try something, let me know. No swap needed, please don’t send me anything. :) My cupboard is up to date. Browse and let me know!

Here’s another tea from the book club trade with Alpha Kitty!

I immediately liked the looks of this tea! It’s dark, rolled up, & visually appealing to me, with a dry smell of sweet apple pipe tobacco with a hint of chocolate! MmmmmMMMMmm!
There were no instructions, so I went with 3 minutes.
The wet leaf does not smell quite so appealing to me. It still smells fruity, but there is a bitterness to the aroma.
The cup of tea smells fruity, malty, & bitter.
Flavorwise, it’s ok. Malty, for sure, roasty, a little bit of a buttery taste, & the aftertaste de apple-like. I drank it straight.
Not bad, but not on my list to purchase. Nice to sample though.

thank you nicole for sending this one my way! I enjoyed this a lot this morning – it was just the thing to get me going after a rough night of the crazies waking me up several times. I have another cup that i’ll spend more time with tomorrow since i didn’t get a chance to really focus on it before i had drunk it all up!

Another one from Nicole! Thanks so much — it’s very appreciated! This one sounds interesting! It looks really delicious too — very dark leaves for an oolong with hints of red.

First steep —waited around 10 minutes for the water to cool. Then I would infuse for 20 seconds, take the infuser out, sip a bit of it, and then steep for another 20 seconds. I did that until I got to two and a half minutes. Somehow, the flavor stayed consistent. I wasn’t finding the magic in this cup like others have found. There is like a light charcoal flavor and fragrance. I wasn’t finding the apple or anything else fruity that others have mentioned. There really wasn’t any typical oolong flavors here. There is something oaty and vegetal about it. It also dries the mouth a bit. It’s a tough one to describe.

Second steep — I used just boiled water and steeped for one minute. I couldn’t taste test right away — the water was too hot! But it tastes exactly the same as the first cup.

I can’t really tell if this is a tea that you should steep for around 15 seconds or minutes. It seems to taste the same either way. The Mountain site wasn’t too helpful either! I don’t dislike this one, I just think I’m missing something!

I was going to hold off logging this till I had done a few more steeps, I’m brewing gongfu after all and I’ve only brewed for 5-8 seconds but oh my goodness this tea is blowing my mind and I had to share. First off, thank you to tperez for sending me a big pouch of this, several ounces in fact along with many other delicious teas. When I saw this on the swap board I didn’t look it up, I just thought it was the large rolled balls of black tea. I was surprised and delighted when it arrived and I found out that it was far more unique. I think tperez mentioned it was a Taiwanese oolong processed as a black and described it as tasting similar to Teavivre’s Bailn Gongfu Black, yum! However this says it Sumatran, I once passed on a Sumatran Oolong at TeaGschwender and regretted it. Anywho!

At only five seconds this is rich and dark and sweet. I picked up dark rye, raisins and dark chocolate. Then something happened in my cup that flipped my world upside down. I had never understood how a black tea could be fruity, never experienced it beyond the wine notes or a hint of plum or raisin in Darjeeling and a few high mountain teas. But this, oh my goodness, fruit! There are berries in my cup! Raspberries and strawberries and juicy plums and now that I’m reading it, yes apples!

Mind you I didn’t read any descriptions or tasting notes before drinking my first cup. But now I’m off to brew a second and am very excited. I hope the fruit sticks around for awhile! I should probably also eat something, as my head is swimming, beyond my giddiness.

Soo many teas I need to try and write notes for! And I think I have some more waiting for me when I get back to school. :P

Dry leaves: The dry leaves have a thick, chocolaty aroma that reminds me of brownie batter. Its mostly chocolaty, but with some nutty/bready smells as well.

Brewing: The wet leaves have a strong, juicy aroma of red apples. Not like “a little bit apple-ish”, like “if I was blindfolded I would think there was a red apple in front of my face” haha This tea brews lighter than I expected, with the red-gold color of oriental beauty.

Tasting: The tea has a heavy charcoal flavor that sort of reminds me of the coffees grown in Sumatra. I wonder if this is coincidence, or a flavor imparted by the land like the Wuyi “rock” flavor? There are notes of honey, walnut, fresh red apple, and I might be crazy, but anchovy? Not in a bad way, just interesting and I don’t have a better word for it. The tea has a soupy quality that reminds me of some Chinese greens like long jing and bi lo chun.

Overall this is a fairly nice tea. Not a favorite, but definitely unique and worth trying, especially with Mountain Tea’s low prices.

First steep: 10 oz disposable coffee cup (because I forgot my travel mug) + boiling water that makes tea undrinkable for like an hour because it is so hot
The pearls unraveled very fast and now fill up the entire teabag (they have expanded about 3x their previous size)

The tea was extremely flavourful and typical of a good quality black tea. I love how it is as strong and bold as a tea that would normally be bitter, but there is no hint of bitterness or astringency from this tea. I also taste oats and tannins.

Second steep: same deal
It only steeps medium gold this time and it a little bit weaker. It taste mostly spaghetti noodles with no sauce, like wheat and wet straw.

Overall, this is a very strong tea the first steep but then is not quite as strong in the next cup. I might experiment with the water temperature to try to get 2-3 cups out of my next leaves.

So excited to get my first order from Mountain Tea :) I received some of their tea in a Tealet contest and was completely won over. Normally I stick to greener oolongs, but I made an exception for this one — it’s SO dark, the first time I had it I was convinced it was black tea. It tastes like raisins and malt, and holds up well to re-steeping. I think a little sugar helps bring out the raisin notes, but it is good with or without.

I got this in this month’s Tea Sparrow box – a neat change of pace from the flavoured teas! I spent a bit of time trying to decide where to leave this tasting note, since there are duplicate entries in the database, this one under “The Mountain Tea co” and the one under “Mountain Tea”. If you look at those two company listings, one has 25 teas listed under it and the other has 19, with a fair bit of duplication. What a mess! This one has a lot more tasting notes, which is why I chose it.

This is an interesting tea! With dark oolongs I tend to assume they’re going to be heavily roasted, but this one is actually just heavily oxidized – I don’t detect any roastiness at all. It is a neat blend of malty and floral, with a light, fruity note that I convinced myself was apple after reading the description. :) It’s like a light, surprisingly floral, black tea.

This is a dark roast Sumatran grown oolong, with small tightly rolled nuggets of tea that seem to have been allowed to rest as there is no smoke or charcoal notes apparent.

After a rinse, the tea yields a maple coloured brew that maintained a fairly consistent flavour profile.

I used 1 TSP of leaves in 150 ml of 95°C water.

The first three steeps (35,30,25s). maintained a scent profile consisting of apples, and a sweet floral at times cocoa, malt and cinnamon were present.

The tea tasted of an empire like apple, sometimes with skin, cocoa, butter, malt, a floral note, and cinnamon. Often the darker more bitter notes would be most apparent when hot and then gave way to a more balanced tea full of fruit, floral and spice notes. In the last steep of this set an oatmeal note appeared.

I then did 2 steeps of 35 and 45s, that were fairly weak. Next time I would increase the steeping time by more than 10s at this point. The tea at this point had more oatmeal and malt, less cocoa and fading apple.

The last two steeps were 60s and 2 min. These steeps had tones of apple, oatmeal, malt, cocoa, cinnamon and a hint of honey.

Altogether an enjoyable oolong with good and distinct apple tones. Thanks Nicole, I’ve been wanting to try more of Mountain Tea’s dark Oolong’s.