2 Tasting Notes
A disappointment to me! Before trying this tea, I had the Organic Miyazaki Oolong Tea Baisen from Yuuki-Cha, which I loved and might be the best tea I ever had. So I was very excited to open up my bag of Koubi Shiage. The leaves of this tea look pretty nice to me, however they are accompanied by a relatively large fraction of stalks.
This tea is somewhat cheaper than the Baisen (8$ vs. 10$ per 50g), but tastes not much like it at all. I tried different temperatures and leaf amounts, but the quality stayed similar. This tea has little or no real ‘oolong’ taste, and little else to make it interesting either, and on me leaves the impression of just any average black tea, however with some oolong smell.
Preparation
This is the first ‘good’ or ‘expensive’ oolong I had. I love this tea! At first I tried steeping it like a sencha (multiple short steeps for one cup, using 3-4 g), but didn’t get a balanced taste. I found out that for me this tea comes out best when steeped like a black, using around 3g for a pot of 2-3 average sized cups, however steeping at 80 C.
The leaves have a dry and soft, mildly earthy smell that reminds most of chocolate. After steeping, the tea tastes very nicely balanced and full. All kinds of taste elements are discernable (most of which I can’t name), drawing your attention to every sip, however coming together perfectly into one. It has that typical oolong malty-earthy sweetness, and every sip finishes with a very subtle and pleasant astringency and almost-bitterness. Even the color of this tea is interesting, which is a full brownish yellow with a very subtle green. A second steep of the same leaves was still enjoyable for me, but it did taste thinner and definitely not as good as the first one.
