Thread: Tea anyone ??!!

No Fighting...take it outside the tea room please...I'm trying to enjoy my Cha thank you.......speakin O which, here's tonights tucker.........Chicken pot pie over mashed potatoes with a nice cuppa Earl Grey..mmmmmm good hobbit grub ! Attachment 108319

T Bar Fruit Melange and Robur Signal Black Tea, sugar (1 cube)...

Originally Posted by Mcduck

Can't believe you went to that much trouble and put DILMAH in!
Where is your Aussiness????
Where is you Billy and Bushells?
You crack out the good china and everything....
PFFT you call yourself an Aussie - You are a disgrace Mate!

Well what do ya expect when you send the missus out shoppin' with specific instructions to totally screw up. I said Kings Billy Tea, but she got Dilmah instead, thinking to save a bob or two no doubt. Taking ages to get through it 'casue she bought a double sized box with the extra savings she made


Mick

Trouble n strife !

Ya learnin' mate.


Mick

Giggidy !

Originally Posted by Nightblade

Trouble n strife !

That's how they earnt the title :-)

Originally Posted by carlmaloschneider

Oh my goodness. Fight! Fight!

No fight, just some friendly QLD mateship

Fair warning - This is a long post.

Secondly I will not be surprised if I cop a mouthful of flack from Mick after this

I tried to do a blog, and then just link to it here in the forum, but I couldn't work out how to make a blog post. If anyone knows feel free to PM me.

Now to the good stuff. For years I have been enjoying cups of Oolong but that is about it, I really didn't fully appreciate it's full flavor and complexity until I tried to work out what I was really tasting through each seep and how the flavors changed over that time. So I decided to do a fair bit of taste testing and give the results to you all as a bit of a write up and a profile of the tastes. For those that drink Oolong regularly, let me know what you think, if you get the same tastes or different ones, and for those that haven't yet tried Oolong - hopefully this will give you a good idea of the tastes to expect.


From what I have discovered myself whilst doing this, I came to the resolution that I would call the Oolong "The Daily Tea" this is because I found that if you spread the seeps / cups of tea out over the course of the day the tastes tended to evolve much the same way as a typical day unfolds. Not only this, but another thing I found was that by using a pot of leaves from new to 'seeped-out' within one day also means that you consume 5-6 cups of water in a day, hitting the daily recommended water intake fairly easily (Bonus!).


I both consumed all of the seeping within the one sitting (over the course of a couple of hours); and also spread over the course of the day multiple times, this helped me compare the flavors to the last seep and also get the true tastes over the course of the day - comparing them to that part of the day.


For this I used plain Oolong, and seeps were all done with 85C water and started at aprox 30 seconds with longer brewing the more times I seeped with the last seep for around the 1.5min mark.

With the first seep comes nice earthy and mellow tastes, there is a mild nutty flavor that stays in your mouth as it wakes you up slowly and eases you into the morning.

The second seep gives of stronger nutty flavors but not too overpowering for the morning a nice smooth seep, and perfect to have with morning tea just as your are getting into the day.

Seep number 3 really shows off, there are nutty flavors that linger whilst smoky flavors begin to come forward and develop in your mouth, once that subsides a slight fruit aftertaste takes over. I found this great at lunchtime as your day is in full swing

Seep 4: This seep is where the fruitiness really shines , and you start to get the mouth feel of black tea from the tannin , the leaves in the pot are fully open and it really shows with the flavor you receive. There is an undertone of citrus here which also starts to bring out with it, the bitter taste to the brew. This is a nice way to end a day at work, or sit down to as the sun sets at home with afternoon Smoko

The fifth seep -I would say this is near the end of seeping for one batch of leaves, here you start to loose the fruit flavors, as they hide behind a stronger mint taste. Great for dinner or even after dinner with that minty flavor.

I did manage to get more drinkable seeps out of the pot on occasion, however the consistency of getting a nice tasting brew was hard. Lowering the water temperature down to 80C or lower helped with the delicate state of the leaves, but still did not give fully consistent results.

This was actually quite enjoyable to do and I now drink 4-5 cups of Oolong on a daily basis among other teas.

I think I am going to try out more varieties this way to give my taste buds the full experience of each tea.

You may even see some more written up like this!

Luke

Thank you Luke!
B.