Tie Kwan Yin Oolong

Another wonderful sample from Tea Ave, that I brewed up in my gaiwan as per the instructions on the packet. Longer brewing time, with less leaves than I usually use for this type of tea yielded a truly wonderful series of steeps!

An aroma of dried fruit, roasted barley and a touch of sweetness, was followed by the fantastic taste of the same. Second steep had an additional touch of roasted sweet potato flavor and deep, rich mellowness. Third and fourth steeps were only slightly less intense and continued to please.

Having a medium oxidation level, and medium roast really gives this Tie Kwan Yin a wonderful flavor/aroma to sit back and enjoy. A truly excellent tea!

The third and final of the Tea Ave samples I received along with the awesome aroma tasting set. OK, when I opened the sample I contemplated that Tea Ave was messing with me. The dry scent was roasted as expected along with fall leaves and grape. Grape? Makes no sense to me either but that is how my brain interpreted it. Then I looked at the leaf and instead of the dark green I expected, this looks like a tippy black tea rolled into nuggets trying to look like an oolong.

Steeped 3 1/2 minutes in the gaiwan. Poured into the aroma cup, flipped into the tasting cup without making a mess (Score!). Out of the aroma cup I was just getting roasted notes until I pulled the cup away. The I got a flood of floral bouquet. I liked it.

The taste is dark roasted and nutty. Then it seemed to turn very creamy. I don’t recall any one else experiencing this. Late in the sip I get apricot and greenhouse florals. There is a sweetness throughout.

What struck me is what I was not catching. Normally when I think tie kwan yin, I think geranium, or what those who are less amused taste as latex. This note is only lightly found momentarily in the lingering aftertaste. Between the roasting and the heavier oxidation it seems to be mostly eliminated. Interesting tea.

This was one of the free samples I received with my order. I’ve had unroasted TKYs before, probably before I could really appreciate them, and I’ve also had the one at Peet’s, which I think is roasted, but it didn’t really taste like much to me. That was likely due to me burning my tongue on their ridiculously hot water!

The instructions to gongfu brew this tea said to steep it for 3 minutes for the first infusion! I was totally second-guessing that, because it seemed way to long, but it worked! The tea smells and tastes roasty right off the bat. It also tasted a bit like honey on toast, with a sweet fruity honey-like texture underneath the roastiness.

I used the aroma cup and the aroma was like a fruit pie or pastry! Like a brown sugar crust with jam! Yum! I also found the jam note to linger long after sipping.

I spilled my second infusion all over the place! Yes, sometimes I’m a klutz. The real tragedy of that was that I didn’t get to taste the sure-to-be delicious second steep! :(

Anyway, after cleaning up, I resumed steeping it and enjoyed a few more infusions. The spent leaves are humongous!

I really like this roasty oolong. So good! I wish I had ordered this. If anyone orders this and decides they don’t like it, let me know! I’d be thrilled to take it off your hands! ;)

Definitely a black based oolong. Darker leaves and clear, amber colored water like black tea. My first thoughts on the taste are of corn husks. I’m also detecting a bit of hay. Slight sweetness in the aroma cup but I’m honestly not tasting any sweetness. I’m not really a fan of most striaght black teas so I will leave this one unrated.

This is another sachet sample from TeaAve. Thank you!

I feel like a broken record with these teas. Amazing, wonderful and so on so forth, but these oolongs have been quite the treat. The Tie Kwan Yin has been no exception to that. It was a roastier TGY than I was expecting, but it was a great level of roast for me. It was slightly fruity, I was definitely picking up on the peach notes in this tea. Like the other oolongs I have been sampling from TeaAve there was a slight creamy mouth feel to it. I didn’t get to spend as much time with tea as I would have liked. It was a crazy afternoon at work, but my first impression was a very good one. Thank you!

I often joke about how subjective tasting is…what’s grapes and dark chocolate to me may be moldy bread and scrap lumber to you. So it made me smile when my impression of this nice Tea Ave oolong was exactly as advertised on the packet. Teeny hint of roasted bitterness to give it some backbone. Mellow. Fruity. Precisely. Sweet peaches and apricots.

Isn’t as thick and heavy on the tongue as the Dong Ding from Tea Ave I tried before, but that makes it no less fine.

Thanks, Tea Ave, for broadening my tasting horizons!

So, this falls outside of my taste-through-the-cupboard, but I wanted to have a gongfu today (it’s been forever since I’ve done one), and I have the samples I just got from Tea Ave to try. Plus I was going to play with the aroma cup, so it made sense.

Anyway, this is a bit roastier than I usually prefer my TGYs. I found their gaiwan instructions kind of confusing because besides the volume, the steeping instructions seem to be the same as the western style. So I did about 6g in a 6oz gaiwan, steeping a few seconds to start and going up from there.

The aroma cup was fun. I really got the florals in that, moreso than in the tea itself. They had a rich, orchid note, especially in the early steeps. Also a hint of charcoal and leafiness.

The tea itself is roasted to the point of edging toward bitter; not bitter as in the tea steeped too long, but bitter in a burned charcoal-y way. I got it in all the steeps, really. The flavor is nutty with a bit of vegetal notes.

This seems to be a pretty nice roasted oolong with some charcoal notes, which is not my favorite type of oolong, but I still had a nice session with it today.

My favorite so far out of the samples I tried from Tea Ave. The oolong looks great with nice delicately large leaf. The flavor is rich, roasty nutty with a strong peach apricot aftertaste. Later infusions got kinda dry, but the after taste was still going.

I really want to get my hands on more of this tea to get a full gong fu experience – it was originally bagged (and whole leaf!) and I gong fu steeped it with the 3 grams I had.

Full review and preview of Tea Ave teas on Oolong Owl http://oolongowl.com/tea-ave-oolong-preview/