Honeybee

My bowl of Matcha disappeared fast!

I haven’t had any Oolong tea lately, and I’ve missed it. And this is an excellent Oolong!

Very nice, natural honey-like essence to it that presents itself in the aroma as well as the flavor. Happily, I can taste the floral notes of this tea – One of the things that had kept me from drinking too many of my favorite teas now while I’m sick is the fact that I was worried that in their impaired state my taste buds would not pick up on the more delicate features of those teas. Not so with this particular cup. A lovely floral flavor that melds so well with the natural sweetness. Slightly woodsy. Even a hint of buttery flavor.

YUM!

It is so comforting and delicious. Just what I needed this afternoon.

My review of this tea for the Tea Review Blog recently published, wanna check it out? Here it is:

http://www.teareviewblog.com/?p=12497

MandyB is soooo good to me! Thanks for this one, too, girlie!

This is a neat cup! It’s roasty, toasty, buttery, slippery, Sweet like honey, nutty, it’s just NEAT. I am not sure how I get all of these individual components to this Oolong in my sip but I am glad I do.

I say Ooooo…
YOU say LONG…

Ooooo…

First of all I’m not an Oolong expert by any means. That being said this tea is very good. I really can’t explain any of the flavors although I get a touch of honey and fruit. The tea has a sweetness to it. The smells are alien to me but the tea is smooth, mellow and tasty. It tastes nothing like Formosa Oolong by Harney and Sons. It taste much lighter with a light mouthfeel. The flavors seem to come through the cooler the tea becomes.

Smells like a slightly toasted Nilgiri but fortunately it doesn’t have the raw taste I associate with Nilgiris. Instead, this tastes like roasted nori sheets – a little fishy, a little soy sauce-y, fairly vegetal and crisp. It’s quite tasty and makes me crave rice with nori sheets.

Hmm, second steep isn’t nearly as nifty. The smell still brings to mind a Nilgiri and the taste has migrated from toasted nori sheets to a mix of wakame seaweed and Nilgiri rawness. I definitely prefer the first steep.
2.5g/5oz

Upped the amount of leaf significantly this go-around to see if I could pull a more saturated liquor out of the leaves. I think I did…but the result is still undeveloped and somehow unconvincing to sip on. It’s completely inoffensive as a tea, but there just isn’t much substance to it at all, and what is there isn’t intriguing enough to make hunting for it with focus a worthwhile time.

Not bad. I would drink it again without hesitation…but I won’t be sad when I run out of it.

I got a bag of Honeybee in a swap I did with Carolyn because she suspected I’d like it [and she was right]. It brews into a beautiful, deep gold, honeyed hue, but the taste is extremely light.

For me, the majority of the taste for this resides at the back of the tongue, and a bit at the sides. At the front, I get some light floral notes that are much less obvious when the tea is hot, but at the back…mmm…

When the tea is VERY hot [like right when it becomes drinkable], it’s difficult for me to get much of a taste out of this tea at all, so on my second cup I let it cool down a bit more before I got started and I found it to be much more enjoyable that way. The honey taste is definitely evident for me in the aftertaste, and if I inhale through my nose while the tea is still in my mouth I can taste it near my throat.

Again, it’s a very light tea. While part of me likes that, I also find myself wanting just a liiiittle bit more from it. I need to work to get the flavor, and while that’s fine when I’m concentrating on the tea, I feel like this is going to be a tea that I can only enjoy when I’m concentrating on it. I’ll play around with a longer steep time to see if that makes it a little bit stronger, but in the meantime this is a good tea. Thanks, Carolyn!

I decided to skip the last untried Tea Desire tea I’d purchased and try this one. I didn’t want anything black for the late evening.

It smells very deeply vegetal, like that bagged ti guan yin I have.

Luckily it doesn’t taste anything like that. It’s light, but dark, not green, more closer to a very milk black. But not a Darjeeling black. I’m not tasting anything significant right now, but it’s still quite hot.

But I like the bright honey colour. I hope I see some semblance of the name in the taste when it cools a bit more. However, enjoyable so far. I think this is my kind of oolong. Not green, but definitely far enough away from black for a difference in taste.

When I breath out I’m getting that sort of Ceylon black taste that reminds me of honey (not in the taste, just in the Black Tea And Honey = The Perfect Match mind-set I grew up with as a kid). With that is a bit of Black-style astringency. But there’s also the sort of oolong taste I remember from Jade Teapot’s ti guan yin. Hard to explain.

There is almost a touch of bitterness as well. I spent some time trying to decide if I should go with two minutes or three, because the package reads three, but looking over the tasting notes many did two minutes instead. Perhaps next time I will try a lower temperature as well. Their samples are pretty hefty, I have a lot to experiment with.

I’m not getting any touch of the honey factor, but when I take large gulps I get a sweetness, and overall it has an appealing smoothness. Also getting more of a nutness. It’s odd, it smells vegetal but doesn’t taste it. I think someone said woodsy, and I can see that too, somehow, even though I don’t know what ‘woodsy’ should taste like. Deep, I guess.

The second steep has a sharper taste, less dryness.

Today is an amazingly annoying day. I’m herding cats, apparently through minefields. So I’m trying to not scream at people and drink lots of tea. I’m starting with some of this iced.. I think I brewed this too strong, but I think overall I may just like this better iced than not. We’ll see..

Cross your fingers for me!

I confess, I’m always a bit leery of oolongs. I’ve had so much bad luck with them that I approach them much as I do pu-erhs, with a “Chin up! Be brave!” admonition. But I remembered I liked this tea from The Simple Leaf (and I love the company), so I thought I would try it this afternoon. Hopefully it will help quell my hunger pangs until I can get home and eat something healthy.

The fragrance is honey sweet and the liquor looks like honey as well. The taste has floral notes, honey, and a slight sharpness that I can see would veer into bitterness with a longer, hotter steep. It’s nice.

Yum!! I had this tea hot with vanilla soy ceamer for breakfast. It has a nice sweet flavor that asserts itself well with the creamer. BUT—I liked it even better iced! You can get a lot of infusions out of this tea, I made the third one iced and it was quite good. It has a cooling kind of aftertaste that suites iced tea well.

Definitely a keeper!