Gui Fei Oolong Tea, Lot 832

Tea type
Oolong Tea
Ingredients
Oolong Tea Leaves
Flavors
Autumn Leaf Pile, Grain, Honey, Roasted, Smooth, Sweet, Apricot, Astringent, Bitter, Brown Sugar, Brown Toast, Fruit Tree Flowers, Malt, Mineral, Nuts, Nutty, Orange Blossom, Orange Zest, Peach, Roasted Barley, Roasted Nuts, Straw, Vanilla, Wood, Flowers, Ginger, Sandalwood, Bread, Cinnamon, Grass, Pine, Raisins, Stewed Fruits, Butter, Caramel, Muscatel, Roast Nuts, Toasted
Sold in
Loose Leaf
Caffeine
Not available
Certification
Not available
Edit tea info Last updated by LuckyMe
Average preparation
200 °F / 93 °C 1 min, 45 sec 5 g 6 oz / 171 ml

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5 Tasting Notes View all

  • “And yet another tea courtesy of White Antlers. Thank you :) The session starts with a thin, brown sugar sweetness and a hint of vanilla. Really strong roast, so much that most of the time I taste...” Read full tasting note
    49
  • “I’ve always meant to order some of TTC’s Gui Fei, but demurred due to mixed reviews. Thanks, Derk, for the generous sample. I steeped 6 g of leaf in a 120 ml porcelain teapot at 195F for 25, 20,...” Read full tasting note
    76
  • “So glad I bought another pouch of this tea, especially in the midst of this brutal cold spell that’s hit Chicago and doesn’t seem to be going away anytime soon (thanks Polar Vortex). The windchill...” Read full tasting note
    100

From Taiwan Tea Crafts

Gui Fei oolong is a remarkably distinctive and unique Taiwanese tea in both flavour and stories to tell about! For the stories, read the Background Information found below, for some tasting references we could easily sum it up by honey, honey, and more honey! Wild honey that is, with it’s mineral and pastoral complexity of wild flower sweetness with roasted nuts and woodsy overtones. Honey in the colour, Honey in the texture. Honey in the soothing, sweet comforting taste! We simply can’t make enough and end up producing several Lots in one year. This new Lot 832 is a fresh new lot made from spring 2018 tea allowed to mellow one full year before baking in the summer of 2019. It follows in the footsteps of our previous lots and has undergone a 3 stage baking process by our in-house Tea Master with air-tight mellowing breaks of several weeks in between. This allows the flavours and aromas to stabilize and fully permeate the leaves. For those of you who liked our previous lots, this year’s bakings are one good notch above owing to the particularly generous teas provided by a good spring 2018 season! This is a wonderful tea for chilly winter afternoons or evenings.

About Taiwan Tea Crafts View company

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5 Tasting Notes

49
1557 tasting notes

And yet another tea courtesy of White Antlers. Thank you :)

The session starts with a thin, brown sugar sweetness and a hint of vanilla. Really strong roast, so much that most of the time I taste mostly roasted nuts, roasted barley and brown toast. Past that I can taste apricot, peach, orange blossom honey, and orange zest. Strong mineral taste and tingles, light apricot and orange blossom aftertaste. In subsequent infusions, the fruitiness and sweetness are overtaken by malt, wood, straw, astringency and bitterness tasting much like a washed-out black tea.

Unlike LuckyMe, I didn’t find this oolong to be easy-drinking. The roast easily dominated the session for me. The leaf seems temperamental, unforgiving. Then again, I don’t have a finessed hand. I thought with the level of roast aroma in the dry leaf that I would brew this with water off the boil; based on the unfavorable results, the next session I will try with lower temperature.

Not recommended… for now.

Flavors: Apricot, Astringent, Bitter, Brown Sugar, Brown Toast, Fruit Tree Flowers, Honey, Malt, Mineral, Nuts, Nutty, Orange Blossom, Orange Zest, Peach, Roasted, Roasted Barley, Roasted Nuts, Straw, Sweet, Vanilla, Wood

Preparation
205 °F / 96 °C 5 g 3 OZ / 100 ML
Leafhopper

I steeped it at 195F and I think I had a slightly better experience, though I also found it to be overly roasted.

LuckyMe

Sorry this one didn’t work out for you derk. I underleafed quite a bit so that could be why mine tasted less roasty.

derk

Did you brew it in a teapot or grandpa style?

LuckyMe

@derk sorry i know this is late, but yes this was grandpa steeped. 1.3g in 8oz of 200 F water.

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76
413 tasting notes

I’ve always meant to order some of TTC’s Gui Fei, but demurred due to mixed reviews. Thanks, Derk, for the generous sample. I steeped 6 g of leaf in a 120 ml porcelain teapot at 195F for 25, 20, 25, 30, 30, 30, 45, 60, 90, 120, and 240 seconds.

The dry aroma is of honey, baked cinnamon bread, and fruit leather. The first steep has notes of honey, baked bread, grass, and stewed fruit. The next adds autumn leaf pile, apricot, raisins, and slight astringency, though the honey is still the star. In steep three, sandalwood, cinnamon, and a bit of roast emerge, and the autumn leaf pile flavour is stronger. The fourth steep is a lott less sweet, with roast, wood, pine, autumn leaf pile, grain, and honey. By the sixth steep, the roast is really asserting itself, accompanied by black tea-like minerals and malt. The session ends with nuts, honey, minerals, and roast.

While this Gui Fei is quirky and enjoyable, as LuckyMe pointed out, it’s more like a Dong Ding than a honey oolong. I might still pick this up, however, because it’s so affordable, but the strong roast detracts from it being truly amazing.

Flavors: Apricot, Astringent, Autumn Leaf Pile, Bread, Cinnamon, Grain, Grass, Honey, Malt, Mineral, Nuts, Pine, Raisins, Roasted, Stewed Fruits, Wood

Preparation
195 °F / 90 °C 6 g 4 OZ / 120 ML

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100
676 tasting notes

So glad I bought another pouch of this tea, especially in the midst of this brutal cold spell that’s hit Chicago and doesn’t seem to be going away anytime soon (thanks Polar Vortex). The windchill was -15 F the other day and I knew my usual morning green tea or green oolong wasn’t going to cut it. I was craving something warm and toasty and this tea came to the rescue.

It’s been a year since I last had this tea which was picked nearly 3 years ago. Despite the age it was still mind-blowingly good. Credit to TTC’s hermetically sealed foil bags…I wish every company packed their tea like they do.

Grandpa steeped 1.3g of leaf in my 8oz mug @ 200 F. I was immediately greeted by that familiar yet delicious honeyed flavor. Nectar sweet with notes of wildflowers, toasted pine nuts, and caramelized minerals. As the tea steeps, wildflower honey gets mingled with a subtle bug bitten sweetness. A wonderful example of a skillfully roasted tea that brings out complex flavors without tasting roasty.

Flavors: Caramel, Honey, Mineral, Muscatel, Roast Nuts, Toasted

Preparation
200 °F / 93 °C 8 OZ / 236 ML
Courtney

We’re at -40 C here brrr. Also, I can’t seem to enjoy this one no matter how hard I try!

LuckyMe

@Courtney OMG, spring can’t come soon enough. I was honestly puzzled reading all of the negative reviews for this tea. The only explanation I find is I won the Gui Fei lottery and got the lone good batch from this picking.

Courtney

You must have! Mine is far too floral for me, sadly! I still have an unopened bag that I can’t bring myself to open and try haha!

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