Tag: Oolong Tea

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24 Days of Tea: Coconut Cream Pie

Coconut Cream Pie by DavidsTea
Oolong Tea / Flavoured
$9.98 for 50g

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First Impressions

Mmm, day 15 of the 24 Days of Tea advent calendar is Coconut Cream Pie! I was expecting with a name like that it would be an herbal/fruit infusion, but Coconut Cream Pie is surprisingly an oolong tea. There’s a delightfully strong coconut smell to this dry tea, it smells exactly like it’s namesake and the oolong base is kind of lost in the mix with the strong flavours that they’ve added to it. It’s easy to see both the tea leaves and the coconut, chocolate, and everything else that has been added to this tea.

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Coconut Cream Pie is made up of: oolong tea, white chocolate, coconut, toasted coconut, cane sugar, and natural coconut flavouring. The allergens in this tea are: coconut, milk, and soy (soy is in the white chocolate).

Preparation

DavidsTea recommends steeping Coconut Cream Pie in hot water (75-80°C/167-176°F) for 4 to 7 minutes. I don’t usually steep oolongs for that long, so I opted for closer to 3 minutes but found that the white chocolate hadn’t fully melted (it took a full 4 minutes in 80°C water for the white chocolate to completely melt).

First Taste

Coconut Cream Pie steeps to a nice yellow colour, with an oily film on top from the melted chocolate. The strong fragrance of the coconut is subdued after the tea has steeped, and the oolong base starts to take over as it is much stronger now that it has been steeped. There is an oily mouthfeel to this tea, which I anticipated from the white chocolate chips that I saw in the mix. The cane sugar adds a good amount of sweetness to the tea, but it does need a little bit more to help out the flavour. The tea lacks a certain creaminess that I was expecting, because of the namesake of the tea, and the coconut taste is milder than expected. However, there is a nice buttery quality to it that does add a certain sense of cream taste to it, so not all is lost.

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I’m not sure where the aftertaste comes from, but there’s just a slight hint of a bitter aftertaste to this tea from each sip. It’s not the usual ‘you oversteeped your tea and this is your punishment’ aftertaste though, so I’m not quite sure where it comes from.

As an aside, it always makes me smile to see how much oolong can expand and unfurl. Oolongs are definitely teas that deserve to have a whole tea pot to fill up, or metal infuser, versus being put into a tea bag.

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A Second Cup?

I resteeped Coconut Cream Pie just once, the odd bitter aftertaste persists, and the oolong has a nice buttery quality to it that adds more of a creamy flavour to the tea itself. Sadly, the coconut flavouring gets weaker on the second steep so I would say that Coconut Cream Pie is good for one steep only.

My Overall Impression

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I didn’t like DavidsTea’s Coconut Cream Pie. There was just something ‘off’ about this tea for me, with the lack of creaminess to the tea and the weird bitter aftertaste. This tea may taste better as a latte, I think, because the added dairy (or non-dairy milk) would add some much needed creaminess. A little bit of sweetener wouldn’t hurt either, to help boost the sweet coconut flavour a bit as well.

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24 Days of Tea: Nutty and Spice

Nutty and Spice by DavidsTea
Oolong Tea / Flavoured
$9.98 for 50g

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First Impressions

I was super excited to see that Day 7 of the 24 Days of Tea advent calendar was an oolong tea! And then I smelled it and I was just overwhelmed with the heavy spice aroma from this little tin of tea. I couldn’t even see the oolong until I started shaking it out into my stainless steel tea infuser because of the giant chunks of fruit. Honestly, the first thought that went through my head was “What’s all this stuff doing in an oolong?!”. There’s a heavy cinnamon smell to this tea blend.

Nutty and Spice’s ingredients are: oolong tea, roasted chicory root, pineapple, papaya, cinnamon, walnuts, ginger, apple, rose pepper, roasted almonds, cardamom, almonds, pistachios, cranberries, rose blossoms, natural and artificial flavouring.

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Preparation

The calendar packaging recommends steeping Nutty and Spice for 4 to 7 minutes in hot water, this is the same as the online product page where hot water is 75-80°C (167-176°F). I steeped my cup for close to 4 minutes.

First Taste

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Nutty and Spice steeps to a nice golden orange, the first thing I could smell while it was steeping was the cinnamon. Unfortunately, the first thing that I could taste when I was drinking it was the cinnamon. I could not make out the oolong base at all – I’m assuming it’s there because I can physically see it and pick it out from the rest of the ingredients. It has a very “warm” flavour profile, the mix of spices is almost comforting in a way with how they just warm you up from the inside out. Unfortunately, that’s not what I look for in an oolong – especially all that cinnamon.

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A Second Cup?

I attempted to resteep Nutty and Spice a second time and was disappointed as it was kind of this watery messy that sort of resembled a cinnamon stick.

My Overall Impression

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I didn’t like DavidsTea’s Nutty and Spice. I really like oolongs, generally speaking, and the additives thrown in here don’t do the tea any favours. I find that the spices are very heavy in the flavour profile and effectively drown out any flavour that the oolong base would have added to this tea. On the other hand, I wish that some of these spices had made their way into day 6’s Apple Cider for more of a mulled apple cider flavour.

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Murchie’s Ti Kuan Yin Oolong

Ti Kuan Yin Oolong by Murchie’s
Oolong Tea / Straight
$8.95 for 1oz

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First Impressions

Ti Kuan Yin is one of the ‘top shelf’ teas at Murchie’s, which means you can purchase 1oz at a time rather than 2oz (like the majority of their loose teas). I got this one when I popped into one of their Vancouver locations because I just wanted some more oolongs to sip and enjoy. Ti Kuan Yin has a very sweet, floral smell to the dry tea. The tea itself has this amazing green colour that I find difficult to accurately capture in photographs. As a straight oolong tea, the only ingredient in Ti Kuan Yin Oolong is oolong tea.

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I’ve talked about Murchie’s loose tea packaging before, when I reviewed Canadian Breakfast. It hasn’t changed and is still informative with the steeping times and temperatures for each type of tea. I’m always a fan of having the information right on the packaging because it just makes life a little bit easier.

Preparation

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Murchie’s recommends steeping oolong teas in 180-195°F (82-90°C) water for 2-3 minutes. I used my Breville IQ Kettle, which heats water to 195°F for oolongs. I steeped Ti Kuan Yin for about 2 ½ minutes.

First Taste

Ti Kuan Yin steeps to a very pale yellow. The floral notes in this tea really pack a punch because it’s the first thing that I notice – sweet floral notes that play well together. There is almost a creamy quality to the tea that reminds me of smooth butter, but it isn’t as strong as the floral flavour to the oolong that I do need to close my eyes in order to pick it out.

At the recommended water temperature and steeping time, Ti Kuan Yin made for an enjoyable cup of tea. There was a nice smoothness, with just a little hint of astringency at the end of each sip that had a nice mouth pucker feel to it. There was no bitterness, and I feel like the tea would do very well for at least one more steep so that’s exactly what I did.

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A Second Cup?

I resteeped Ti Kuan Yin a few times (in total: 8 resteeps, so 9 steeps in total for the same tea leaves). Each steep I steeped for an additional 30 seconds (3 minutes, 3 ½ minutes, 4 minutes, etc.) until the last steep (6 ½ minutes). The colour of the oolong deepens to a more golden yellow with the first three resteeps, and the creamy quality of the tea gets more pronounced. I feel that the floral notes started to take a backseat to the buttery quality of the tea by around the third steep. By the ninth steep, the tea leaves were really beginning to be exhausted of most of the flavour.

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My Overall Impression

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I loved Murchie’s Ti Kuan Yin Oolong. I am a sucker for a good tea, and while the initial price of the Ti Kuan Yin may have given me a little bit of sticker shock (since I had to double to price in my head to consider it as I usually buy my teas in 50g quantities), there is a very good value to this tea. The simplicity of the initial steep is just a hint of what’s to come, this is a tea that I would highly recommend resteeping over and over again because it gets more interesting and has a much more complex flavour profile than you might initially think if you go by the first steep only. While I love floral teas, I find that the later steeps of Ti Kuan Yin do not disappoint as the floral notes wane a bit and allow the buttery creaminess of the tea to become more and more pronounced.

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