After far too long, I am finally back with (I hope) a nice long review of a new tea! I have been holding back on opening any new packets because it’s really not great to have too much tea open and exposed to air but I have finally finished my Miss Ohh Long from Renegade Tea and now it’s time to try this Taiwanese black tea.

蜜香红茶 (Mixiang Hongcha) translates to “honey scented black tea” and I was obviously very excited by the name itself. According to the Baidu article on the tea, this is another one of Taiwan’s bug-bitten teas. I think when it comes to Taiwanese bug-bitten teas, I’ve only ever tried the famous Dongfang Meiren (Oriental Beauty) so this should be interesting.

First Impressions

The dry leaves were very small and twisty, so these should be younger leaves. Since the word “honey” is in the name, I expected something sweet and was surprised to find more of a woody note. This tea smells quite similar to some Japanese black teas I’ve had.

Tasting Notes

I’ve had two sessions with this tea so far, and I tried steeping in the tea in two different ways.

First Session – Shorter Steeps

The first time I had this, I decided to steep the leaves with water about 80 degrees celsius for about one minute. The tea liquor from this steep was light amber and very sweet. The sweetness did remind me of honey so the name was right in that respect. I also got a fruity tinge, but that may be because I was drinking a fruity tea shortly before.

The second steep was very short. I didn’t time it but rather just judged it based on the colour of the tea liquor. The tea here was an amber colour and still quite sweet, though I also tasted a woody note (very much like a Japanese black tea – validating my initial impression)

The third steep lasted three minutes and produced a deeper amber cup of tea (though still light compared to other types of black tea). It might have looked the darkest, but it was the lightest in terms of taste. There was no more sweetness here so I stopped drinking the tea.

Second Session – Longer Steeps

I read somewhere online that the first steep should be about two minutes instead of the one I used, so I tried that out. The tea liquor was a dark amber and it tasted both sweet and woody. For some reason, the tea felt a bit “thin”, I think because there wasn’t much to round out the tea (or maybe I was expecting a malty note for a more robust tea?)

Since the first steep was already pretty long, I steeped the leaves for three minutes during my second steep. I found the sweetness to be greatly reduced by now and it tasted like a regular black tea with a woody and slightly smoky note. This trend continued in the subsequent cups, where no matter how long I steeped, I only got woody notes.

The spent leaves were generally a bit rough to touch. I had the feeling I could have coaxed a few more cups of tea out of them, but honestly, I stopped my sessions mostly because the tea lost its sweetness.

Overall Thoughts

This was an interesting tea. I expected the sweet honey note to last a lot longer than it did – while the tea does taste really sweet in the first cup, that disappears fairly quickly.

After trying two somewhat different steeping times for this tea, I’d say my preference is to start with the shorter steep – I think the sweet notes aren’t compromised with this and it keeps the second cup sweeter than if you started off with a two minute steep. I might actually try this gongfu-style soon – much more tea leaves than what I used and much shorter steeping times. That might be interesting!