Longan Charcoal Roasted Wuyi Oolong

So yesterday, I cracked open the mosaic travel mug that I purchased months and months and months ago and never used. Today, I cracked open the variable temperature Breville teakettle that I bought months and months and months and months ago and never used.
You see a pattern developing here?

My Bodum teakettle has been on its last legs for a long while. Still, I liked it and was quite attached to it. It was simple and boiled enough water for one 12 ounce travel mug. No fancy settings, just boil and stop. Despite that, I got to be quite good at creating my own variable temperature controls by adding an appropriate amount of cold water to steep oolongs, greens, and rooibos to best effect.

Enter now the variable temperature kettle. Temperature controls are not all that as I had figured out how to do it my way and make it work. However, the four travel mug or more capacity is shaking my tea world up :)

I seem to have quite the collection of travel mugs and thermoses. I use them for cold steeps for refreshing post-exercise beverages. I carry and misplace them in various bags for various purposes I carry throughout my day. And I often use them at home, keeping one or two with me wherever I am and whatever I am doing, to warm up my cup to ideal drinking temperature.

Now with this new teakettle’s capacity, I am able to steep a lot of tea, and fast. So, I am able to fill one, two, three, four travel mugs in one go. This ease extends to enjoyment of oolongs as well.

So about the tea now. The first steep is fruity sweet, caramelized sweet potato, with a roast undertone. There is that some of Wuyi tangy bitterness, not bitter exactly but metallic vegetal earth. Hard to describe. The scent is a walk in the woods with stewing caramelized fruit wafting in the breeze. Magnificent.

The roast mineral aspect comes through with more force in subsequent steepings. The caramel sweetness of the longan wood carries through to about steep four and then begins to fade but is still present some eight steeps later.