This evening when I got home I turned on the tea kettle so that I could have some hot water for some tea.

I also had just found out that January is National Hot Tea Month. I didn’t know that there was such a thing, but several tea sites are hyping it on their home pages.

Tonight I tried the Nepal Oolong that I brought back with me from my trip to Germany. It is one of the teas that I bought from Tee Gschwendner in Jena. See: Tuesday Night in Jena

Here is a closeup of the tea leaves. I need to be a bit more careful taking closeup pictures as this is a bit out of focus 🙂 However,  you can see the withered tea leaves pretty good despite the blurry section of the picture.

While waiting for the water to boil I put a teaspoon of tea in the infuser of my TrendGlas Jena Teecup. Some oolong teas are brewed with cooler temperatures, but for this tea the instructions called for boiling water.

Here you can see the tea leaves starting to open up in the hot water and the changing color as the water is infused with the tea. The brew time for this tea is only two minutes so it didn’t take it too long to infuse.

Here I have taken the infuser out of the cup and placed it into the lid. With loose leaf tea you can get several infusions from the same leaves so it is all ready for the next cup of tea.

However, I am sure you want me to write about the beautiful tea that you see in the cup. The color is a wonderful golden color and it also has a wonderful aroma that is a bit flora. While letting the tea cool a bit I just held the cup so that I could breathe in the aroma.

The taste of the tea was also wonderful. It has a slightly nutty taste with a bit of floral notes. The mouth feel of the tea is also really nice. The tea has a very smooth taste and a nice finish.

It was interesting to see how the tea changed with additional infusions. One of the nice things about an oolong tea is that you can get multiple cups of tea from the same leaves.

The Nepal Oolong compares well with the Oolongs from Taiwan. I also bought some Oolong from Taiwan in Germany so will be trying it soon for comparison.

Hmm, should I have another cup of tea before bed?

Steven