A daily ritual for many in Taiwan, afternoon tea can be as quick as a midday pick-me-up from the boba shop, or as leisurely as a tearoom gathering with friends. It’s an excuse to slow down and savor good tea in good company.

This gift set was curated around our loose leaf, ball-rolled oolong. They are sourced by BANGtea, directly from tea masters producing Taiwanese oolongs so good that they sell out before they even make it to market in Taiwan. Learn about each kind:

To brew the tea, we've included our A-OK Glass Teapot, a cute 200 ml borosilicate teapot that channels Taiwanese hardware store vibes.

And because it's not teatime without snacks, we've also selected a variety of preserved Taiwanese fruit treats that pair deliciously with our oolong.

Our micro-batched jams are gently processed and made with just fruit, sugar, and lemon juice. Spread them over toast, fold them into pound cake, or scoop over yogurt. Learn about each flavor of jam:

Our dried fruit line is made from fresh Taiwanese fruit, dried low and slow to lock in as much of the fresh fruit's flavor and juices as possible. Learn about each fruit:

Our Ai Yu Jelly Kit has what you need to make a wobbling amber jelly often flavored with lemon and honey. Simply rinse ai yu fig seeds in mineral water to set. You can even make ai yu oolong tea jelly.

And our Plum Powder, made from brined then dried plums, tastes delicious sprinkled over fresh fruit like guava or watermelon.

Everything is packed in a technicolor box inspired by the ga ji dai. Designed by our friends O.OO, this silkscreened box is printed with 雲海嚴選, our name in Chinese, calligraphed for us by Taiwanese typographer Joe Chang.

How to Drink Tea

See below for how we recommend brewing each tea, but truthfully, they’re all so good, you can’t go wrong. When starting with high quality tea, brewing can be as simple or as complex as the individual prefers, with a variety of different results, all enjoyable.

Green Oolong: 5 g per 150 ml water, 205 degrees F, 45 seconds / for multiple brews
Milk Oolong: 5g per 150ml water, 205 degrees F, 60 seconds / multiple brews
Black Oolong: 5 g per 150 ml water, 210 degrees F, 50 seconds / for multiple brews

You could brew gong fu style, with a gaiwan or clay teapot. Or, go “grandpa style,” as BANGtea suggests, and toss some leaves into a beaker with hot water, no measuring. We love it as a cold brew, too: add 8-10g of this tea into a 16oz water bottle, and let it steep in the fridge overnight.

How to Taste Tea

While we are brewing-method agnostic and feel that great results can be achieved in many ways, we do feel strongly about using your senses to experience the tea in all of its stages.

Try:

Rolling the leaves around in your hand to appreciate the color, shape, weight, and density.

Smelling the leaves before and after brewing—dry and wet—for a completely different experience. We recommend putting your nose into the brewing vessel, breathing out hot air, and then inhaling. The heat from your body warms up the leaves and activates their flavor and scent compounds.

Tasting the broth by rolling it around in your mouth before swallowing. Notice the parts of your mouth being activated. Is it juicy along the sides of the tongue? Chalky on the palate? Lingeringly sweet in the back of the throat?

Tracking the flavors and smells as they develop throughout the drinking experience. How does the aroma linger while you drink (retronasal olfaction), and how does that smell impact the experience?

Appreciating the color. We love to brew tea in clear glass to see both the leaves and the hue as they transform throughout the brewing process. The color of tea is expressed on a wide spectrum: the black oolong leaves have an inkiness to them from the oxidation, while the milk oolong offers just a wisp of flax in the first brew.

How Our Tea Is Made

Our oolong is grown at an elevation of 1300m on a tea farm in the misty high mountains of Alishan, Taiwan.

After hand picking the tea leaves and buds, the producers wither the tea under the sun to dehydrate them and make them more pliable.

Then, they tumble the leaves in a large cylindrical basket to encourage oxidation. The agitation bruises the cell walls of the leaves and allows the amino acids, polyphenols, and enzymes to interact, causing the flavor of the tea to develop. To continue the oxidation process, they lay the leaves out on bamboo plates and periodically toss them by hand.

Once the desired level of oxidation is reached, the tea undergoes "kill green" 殺青, a critical step in the oolong-making process that halts flavor change by tumbling the leaves in high heat for a short period of time. They then roll and dry the leaves over the course of a few hours, targeting a 2% moisture content.

If the tea is meant to be unroasted, production stops here. If it’s meant to be roasted, the dried leaves are exposed to heat until their final flavor is achieved.

Specifications and Dimensions

Estimated Gross Weight: 3.1 lbs / 1.4 kg

Ga Ji Dai Box Dimensions: 18.5” L x 12.2” W x 5.1” H / 47 cm L x 31 cm W x 13 cm H

Ai Yu Jelly

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