Oolong Owl 2023 Tea Year in Review

Welcome to 2024! 2023 went incredibly fast for me with all the caffeine and crafting. 2024 is looking to be a large shift compared to previous years. I’ve been Oolong Owling for 12 years now. A decade public display of my tea guzzling, teaware collecting, addiction, and wallet destruction. Oolong Owl’s Tea Stash Google Sheet Template of my Tea Stash Spreadsheet! Save a copy and start keeping track of your stash. Spreadsheets are forever, flexible, and unitaskers – you’ll never be at the mercy of an app or website. Previous Years2015 | 2016 | 2017 | 2018 | 2019 | 2020 | 2021 | 2022 I managed to track my tea stash for… Continue reading, hoot!

Gongfu Tea Drinking Temperature feat. Oolong Owl’s Asbestos Mouth | Sunday Tea Hoots

I have been thinking about Gongfu tea drinking temperature lately. Not too long ago, I had tea with some friends. It has been years since I’ve had tea with others (due to covid) and it reaffirmed my asbestos mouth and hands. If you ever drink with me, I drink fast. Boiling steeped tea gets poured, and I immediately drink it. No need to wait for it to cool. All the while my party hasn’t started sipping yet. My hands are pretty good at hot cups too. It seems my hands don’t feel hot anymore. I have gotten too lazy to… Continue reading, hoot!

Tea Drunk Experience on Matcha | Sunday Tea Hoots

I had the fortunate (or unfortunate) experience of having the most insane tea drunk experience in a long time. Though there are a few things that lead up to this. First off, I get random tea items in my mailbox that I cannot promote here due to TOS. Secondly, with my current diet and medication, caffeine affects me more than usual, which is saying something as I am always quite susceptible. So I drink a max of 10 grams of awesome tea instead of 17-24 gram consumption I’ve done for years. A Mushroom Matcha showed up on my doorstep and… Continue reading, hoot!

2022 Taste of the Mines Fubrick Tea from OWLAI

Today’s first of April tea review is a brand new tea from OWLAI – 2022 Taste of the Mines. This heicha is a wild new venture into the tea world, so let’s dig in! 2022 Taste of the Mines is a beautiful fu brick that is made from whole tea leaves that have been compressed into a dense, geode brick-like shape. Like all Fu bricks, the exterior is covered in gold mold, but this brick also has a coating of rock crystals. Depending on where you break off a slice, you’ll find interesting caverns of tea gems. I used 2-3… Continue reading, hoot!

Sunday Tea Hoots – Owlthousanth Post

This post is my 1000th (Owlthousanth) post, holy hoots! It is a feat to stick with blogging this long as I’ve seen many tea bloggers come and go in my time. Oolong Owl started back in January 2013 in a quest to get more tea and creative control over my tea reviews. I thought I’d take the time to share some of my more memorable Oolong Owl posts and talk about the ones I enjoyed writing. Most popular post of all time Matcha Comparison series – Honesty is the best policy and in these tea reviews, I had no problems… Continue reading, hoot!

Locking Down on Unethical Tea Covid Marketing | Sunday Tea Hoots 41

One of the disadvantages of being a tea review writer is my email gets loaded in questionable tea vendor requests. Lately, a number of unethical tea vendors have been taking advantage of Covid and I have reached my limit. Early in the Covid pandemic, I had gotten a tea industry newsletter pleading for tea vendors to not talk about the health benefits of tea and covid. As the months went on, that advice was slowly being forgotten, posting, “Tea is great for flu, maybe Covid. Blahblahblah, buy my tea.” Then a few months back someone in Japan did a study… Continue reading, hoot!

Sunday Tea Hoots 41 – Back on Tea Caffeine

I successfully cut out caffeine leading up to major surgery so I didn’t have to go through additional withdrawal pain. Now that I’m in recovery for a few weeks I have been introducing tea back into my routine. After not having caffeine for weeks, I gotta say, holy hoots this stuff has so much energy! Backing up, I had an overnight stay in the hospital, so they had to feed me a number of awful meals. I was on a liquid diet as my guts were untested in not being glued together from endometriosis. They literally strained my cream of… Continue reading, hoot!

Sunday Tea Hoots 40 – Grow a Tea Plant!

During the Tea Fest PDX Portland I purchased a single tea plant from Minto Island Tea. They sold three different sizes of tea plants, but I went with the youngest cheapest one in case I kill it quickly, then my investment was small. You can purchase your own plant here, as well as read planting and care instructions. So, I am no gardening person, I am quite terrible and exceptional at killing plants. However, I am enthusiastic and enjoy plants, so it is a constant cycle of me purchasing things, killing them, and purchasing more plants. I had a great routine… Continue reading, hoot!

Sunday Tea Hoots 39 – Anniversary Octopus Teapot

April 13th was my 5th wedding anniversary to my Tea Hating Husband. Both this year and the day we got married landed on a Friday, haha! I didn’t receive wood or silver, which are the traditional anniversary gifts (who makes that stuff up?), I got an octopus teapot. From afar, it looks more like a work of art than a teapot. Before I was a big owl obsessed person, I quite like octopi as they are tasty and strange looking. Admittedly, it functionally is a questionable as the lid is small so it is hard to add tea leaves or clean. The… Continue reading, hoot!

Sunday Tea Hoots 38: Will it Tea Egg?

Hoot, Happy Easter and April 1st 2018! It is a perfect time to find what makes the perfect tea egg! My favorite Tea Egg recipe is from Culinary Tea which makes a picture perfect Tea Egg. Tea Eggs are made with hard boiled eggs cracked and boiled/marinated in soy sauce, sugar, various spices, and tea. A post shared by Char (@oolongowl) on Feb 4, 2015 at 11:43am PST The tea in the Tea Egg doesn’t vary too much as generally black tea is used. Lapsang Souchong is generally the best, though cheffy, Tea Egg tea. I have substituted in some… Continue reading, hoot!