Welcome friends,

This is the Honey Pot — A tea that will lure people into this fascinating world and a jumping off point for their deeper exploration.

In the modern sense, ‘Milky Oolong’ is a flavored tea based on a cultivar (cultivated variety of tea bush) from Taiwan called Jin Xuan. This one is a bit different, please read below to find out why.

The ‘Jin Xuan’ cultivar was created through the crossing of Taiwanese domesticated bushes back in the early 1980s. These days it’s one of Taiwan’s most popular tea cultivars due to its hardiness, yield, and of course flavor. The name ‘Jin Xuan’ itself translates to ‘Golden Day-Lily’ and accompanying ‘Jin Xuan’ you’ll often see the words ‘Nai Xiang’ which Nai means Milk and Xiang means fragrance (so all together it’s Golden Day-Lily Milk Fragrance). When tea is produced at higher elevations, it tends to be richer in texture and deeper in flavor than at lower elevations. This is due to the pace of which the tea bush grows, slower is better. In higher elevations the tea bush will grow slower and have more days to accumulate minerals which contribute to flavor. The Jin Xuan cultivar can be lightly roasted in the final stages of production to have its signature ‘milky fragrance’ boosted as well as giving the tea a warmer, creamier, richer mouth feel. It’s the combination of all the factors I just mentioned that give these ‘milky oolongs’ their milkyness, though in a typical setting, you would have different opinions between people over what they taste in tea. Jin Xuan isn’t milky to everyone — that’s just a matter of opinion, but eventually the tea and food industry collaborated and created a flavored tea akin to Earl Grey by adding an outside flavor to the tea leaves in the form of condensed milk essence (see link here).

Milk essence is generally used in Asian baking (as vanilla might be in European baking) and seems especially popular in China and India, compared to the rest of the world. This tea is flavored with milk essence to make it undeniably milky.

Truth be told, especially when my career was getting started, I loved this stuff. It’s a very popular type of tea, and I have tried many ‘Milky Oolong’ teas from online shops and those sold around Calgary; this one hits different.

Around 2016-2018  I sold tea to a restaurant in Calgary called Two Penny, Milky Oolong was definitely the most popular; many people reached out to me saying this was the best one they’ve ever had. That’s interesting, because this is the only Jin Xuan tea I’ve had that comes from mainland China instead of Taiwan!  It’s very likely that the reason for this tea outperforming all the other milky oolongs on the market is that this is not the Jin Xuan cultivar! It is instead one of Taiwan’s other famous cultivars called Qing Xin (which you would find planted around Meishan and Alishan). It has a very green, pear-like, grassy pasture land ~ flower field, quality to it. Qing Xin flavored with condensed milk essence puts this finished product into a box that there aren’t a lot of competitors inside.

I must admit that while I am not against ‘milk oolongs’ I do find them rather simple aromatically, and the flavors do not really align with my preferences these days, but it was very cool when I was new to tea.

It should be said that it’s easy drinking and nearly impossible to screw up brewing, and for that it tends to get brewed when my wife has her friends over. In wine terms, this is the Moscato d’Asti of tea.

It’s like a combination of white chocolate, pears, condensed milk, butter caramel popcorn, with a light floral note like white orchids to slightly tone down all the richness. Now you might understand the label for this tea a bit better.

It would seem that I’ll never escape from the milky grasp this tea has on my family and friends. This tea nails what it is: Simple, Rich, Fragrant, and a wonderful pairing for french toast (or even better, Hong Kong style milk toast).

I did my ‘official tasting and brewing parameter tests’ for this batch on January 22nd 2024, here are my results:
*Going into this I know that 1:75 is too weak for me, so I opted into beginning with 5g brews instead of 4.4g

Round 1: 5g:330mL @ 2, 3, 4 mins
2m: Aroma is fresh and green, reminds me of a tropical place, cooked pears and apple/pear jam notes. High tone aroma, white chocolate, apple sauce. Flavor is watery but pleasant, it’s very drinkable like this, but I want both more texture and flavor.
3m: Aroma is pungent and less fresh than 2m. More eggy, crepey, more ‘literal’ — pear in a crepe. As it cooled down it became fresher smelling, but the aroma overall doesn’t seem as ‘fresh/refreshing’ as 2m. The flavor was rounder and deeper, the mouthfeel is nice, but it’s coming off a bit dull.
4m: Aroma is pungent, reminds me of tieguanyin oolong. There is a burned popcorn note, like popcorn that has been microwaved slightly too long. All other aromas are in the background of that context. The flavor was rich, thick, satisfying but laden with bitterness. The bitter compounds weave in and out between sips. It’s not a deal breaker.
Conclusion: Ideal pot probably exists between 2 and 3 minutes. My expectation leads me to believe it’s closer to 2 minutes.

Round 2: 5g:330mL @ 2m15s, 2m30s, 2m45s
2m15s: Aroma was pears with skin, fresh, high tone silver-grey metallic. Flavors were warm, gentle, pear…water? Rich pear water.
2m30s: Aroma was neutral-pungent. Aromatically boring, kind of fruity. The flavor was neutral, warm, fruity-boring, but clean, balanced, leaves mouth feeling dry.
2m45s: Aroma was pungent-light. Mouthfeel was good, great balance between aroma and flavor, everything is in harmony… but nothing is clear. Has the perfect level of ‘punch’ for me.
Conclusion: Ehh… tough call. All 3 were good, 15s was better for clarity of flavor, 45 was better for mouthfeel. I like both equally but for different reasons. I’m going to try to go down the clarity path though.

Round 3: 5.3g:330mL, 5.5g:330mL, 5.8g:330mL, @ 2m15s
5.3g: Aroma was full, good wavelength, maybe a touch pungent smelling at first but that was mostly related to the heat. Green aromas, pears, apple sauce. Flavor had a nice perceived sweetness. It’s not really watery, but it is light in flavor. I would like it a bit richer still.
5.5g: Aroma has tinny metallic notes, otherwise similar to above. Seems rounder in the aroma, and the aromas seem to be leaning into the white chocolate / buttery notes. The flavor was fuller than 5.3 but its starting to introduce a coating effect that lingers with an astringency.
5.8g: Aroma was whole, complete, but … subtle? Might be sitting in the ‘perfectly balanced therefore boring zone’. The flavor was out of harmony, the other 2 infusions were better. I would note this was an odd infusion, the color looked lighter than the other 2 despite having the strongest ratio.
Conclusion: I don’t love the coating effect of 5.5 (but I don’t hate it), I wish 5.3 was a bit richer … so 5.4g next?

Round 4: 5.4g:330mL @ 2m10s, 2m15s, 2m20s
2m10s: Smells very good. White chocolate/caramel — blonde chocolate centric. The flavor was pretty potent and powerful, very direct. Coats mouth with a green apple skin astringency that lingers brightly and naturally.
2m15s: Smells ‘flatter’ than 2m10s. While it still coats the mouth with what I mentioned above, it feels less ‘direct’
2m20s: The aroma is more on the caramel side than the chocolate. The flavor was smoother at the sacrifice of flavor.
Conclusion: 2m10s was the best. This ratio is 1:61.1.

Grand conclusion:
For clarity of flavor sake, I had mentioned that a coating effect became obvious at 5.4g (1:61 and stronger) that wasn’t mentioned when kept weaker than 1:62; and that the aroma develops unwanted pungent notes when brewed for longer than 2m15s. Therefore the best infusion to me is 1:61.1g (5.4g:330mL) for 2m10s with boiling water.
For mouthfeel and richness sake, 2m45 seemed to be the best. It might be able to go to 2m52s without negatives (that would need confirmation). It might be able to be pushed as strong as 1:57.8 (5.7g) but it will likely always contain the coating effect. Stronger than that and I think too many negatives would be introduced that I wouldn’t be satisfied with it.

Bonus conclusion: (1:57.8 @ 2m52s)
Aroma is heavy, kind of blurry, nothing is standing out, but over all it’s nice, warm and pleasant. The flavor finishes dry, coating. It is heavy and rich. While I’m not doing a direct comparison and just going from memory, I guess this might be richer than the ‘perfect brew’ noted above; but the negligible increase in richness isn’t worth sacrificing so much clarity to me. This recipe isn’t bad, let’s call it fine. It’s not good, or great, etc. I’ll stand by my results in the grand conclusion.