Dragon Tea House

Sil sent me this One ages and ages ago too.

It’s uhh, not my cup of tea.

Thank you for sharing, Sil. Is this revenge for all the earl greys???

I found this one in the cabinet. I’ve had it unopened for about a year, but it seems to have kept well. A whole leaf Orthodox. Lots of yellow tips. Traces of caramel in a sweet smelling deep reddish liquor. I like this a lot!

Great smell and taste of Malt, Chocolate, Honey, Roasted, Butterscotch, Caramel.
But it does not last for so many steeps ….

Fantastic aroma – bright, sweet fragrance, along with some “mountain mist” aura to it.
The flavour is a bit disappointing after that: the aroma’s fireworks do not fully materialize in the flavour …
Clear liquor, on the light and pale side.
It can be a bit picky on the brewing – easy to to get bitter, difficult to get a consistent taste … Tried both gongfu and western style …
All in all, a very good green tea, but … The search can continue …

Deep earthy notes and seaweed. It is a good choice for those who do not like the grassy, vegetable taste of other green teas.
The price of the tea has unfortunately increased a lot in recent years…

More reputation than body …
This tea needs a lot of leaves to get a good taste out of it, so not a great bang for the buck.

so so

It was crazy windy last night, waking us up in the wee hours with potted plants being flung about outside, and then rainy all morning, so the mail arrived rather late today … with guess what nice surprise, just in time for my afternoon tea pick me up? Yes, this dandy Dian Hong. How perfect. It’s a nice, strong, dark cup, smooth and richly flavored. Just the thing! I over steeped my first go a bit, between 3-4 minutes while I was tending to something else, but 2-2.5 minutes is probably best for the first (western style) infusion. It was still delicious (on my third infusion now), and would have been pretty perfect with a bit of milk. I was tempted, but wanted to try it black first, and it does not disappoint.

I would put this in “breakfast tea” category, which, for me, is actually late afternoon tea, when I want a fine, confident, strapping black tea, no added flavorings or gloss. Give me Kings and Queens and all their fancy moods in the morning, shapeshifting magical Wizards, Sorceresses, and Fools in the night, but a doughty, dependable Knight for the win in the afternoon!

So, a 20-year-old old arbor tea. For €35. I bought a 50g sample of this just to try. It is actually not a bad tea to my taste. It is sweet, somewhat savory and there is a smokey sweetness that lingers. This sweetness isn’t really deep or warming, it’s more of a high, citrusy sweetness, almost acidic. This tea isn’t weak or unsubstantial, nor is it overly strong or astringent. Perhaps it’s even a nice budget raw, although I think it would get boring pretty quickly. . The leaf and liquor color are really light. I’m no expert but really can’t imagine this having been stored for 20 years.

Nice and interesting tea. Dry leaves smell of hay and honey. Washed leaves first smell a little smokey and somewhat savoury, with a weird resemblance to Dutch smoked eel. After some time the smell is more honeyish and vegetal. The liquor is nicely smooth and honeyish. Leaves are surprisingly well-oxidized for s silver needle and this tea doesn’t have that very crisp and vegetal asparagus/spinachy profile of some other silver needles. It leans more towards darker white tea types such as moonlight white.

luckily found this tea at a local asian grocery store – cost $17 for a 9 ounce can! love it and so happy to learn I can brew 6-8 times. I do like my brew a little on the strong side and this one doesn’t disappoint. I am still a novice tea fanatic but my knowledge is growing thanks to sites like this one.

Nice. Interestingly, it has that warming, toasty aroma that also characterises Wuyi oolongs. I always attributed this to the roast of Wuyi oolongs, but since it is also present in this black tea I guess it also comes from terroir. Also this tea is nicely mineral, but still it is clearly a black tea. No astringency or bitterness present at all. I find it also a bit tame though. I like teas that have a little bite and lingering aftertaste. The aromatics of this one are gone the moment you swallow. I guess you could call that a `clean finish’, but to me it feels a little unsatisfying. When brewed with an extra large amount of leaf (sheng puerh style) I like it a bit more.

1 tsp leaf, 300 mL hot (~75 deg. C) water, 3 minutes

Creamy, more similar to a jade oolong than a green. A few lightly vegetal notes, some fruity (pear?) notes. It was better than I anticipated. I usually like long jing but have had a few teas from this company I did not enjoy. This tea sample is a bit older, so it’s good to have a sipdown. It is also nice that it still tastes good despite being older.

Exactly what a green tea should be. I loved learning the mythologies behind it as well because it was fun to think about it’s history and all the important people who had done same while drinking it!

This is one of the best teas I have ever tasted! It is the lightest, sweetest, and most refreshing green tea I have yet to taste. There is no bitterness or smokiness, just a pleasant rich grassy quality and appealing dark color. I highly recommend.

Sipdown! I’ve reached my sipdown goal now, but I might just keep going.

I managed to brew this much better than my previous attempt. I pretty much used the same parameters, but reduced the steep time to get weaker tea (oolong/milk flavour comes out at the same speed as the bitterness, so it is either flavourful_bitter or weak+not bitter). I’ll always take the least amount of bitterness, and I achieved a good balance here of creamy, buttery milk oolong and unpleasant aftertastes. It still isn’t a good tea, though.

This is steeped in a small teapot (200 mL?) , I am gong fu brewing this with 4g leaf
Thank you to Mackie for the sample.

Steep 1: 70 deg. C, 10 seconds
Very light, jade oolong flavour is present, slightly buttery

Steep 2: 70 deg. C water, 45 secpnds
Stronger flavour, milk flavour is starting to come out, but this tea is extremely astringent

steep 3: boiling water, 8 seconds
hmm flavour is weak again but astringency is back, nothing really stands out (no floral, fruity, creamy notes), flavour is pretty unremarkable and generic

Steep 4: boiling water, 45 seconds
Astringency is back. Apparently short steep times give you little flavour, and longer ones are overpowered by astringency

I’m going to end things here. This is unimpressive and there are many better milk oolongs out there for a similar price. Don’t waste your time with this one.

Puerh Tea TTB. I tried this from the puerh ttb. The first few steeps before it opened up were a bit like a raw puerh. Once it opened up I got the notes of a charcoal roast oolong tea. I only steeped this eight times. I just had no desire to keep going. This is not one I will be buying.

I steeped this eight times in a 75ml teapot with 6g leaf and boiling water. I gave it a 10 second rinse. I steeped it for 5 sec, 5 sec, 7 sec, 10 sec, 15 sec, 20 sec, 25 sec, and 30 sec.

Super cheap Da Hong Pao I picked up from Dragon Tea House on Ali on 11/11 I believe. It’s…passable, but I wouldn’t give it any higher praise than that. Some decently nice mineral and roasty notes for the first few steeps, but within just three or four steeps, it starts picking up a bit of a funky note that I kind of associate with steeped out roasted oolongs. Kind of a rotting floral/wood note or something – normally it’s not bad, because it only sort of appears at the end of a session, but in this tea it showed up early and made the second half of the session a bit unpleasant. Drinkable, but definitely not very good in my opinion.

I had relatively high expectations for this top grade TGY from DTH. However, the smell in the bag does not produce much fragrance and the taste was definitely lacking as well.
It was a nice emerald color and the leaves unfolded well when steeped but the flavor was very light….. 3 infusions and just a hint of mineral a little sweet on the tip of the tounge but not much beyond that.

Very light flavors and almost no smell out of the bag for this tea.
3 steeps, light mineral flavor , surprising hint of roast, and a nice fresh mist taste that I wish was more pronounced.

All 3 steeps were quite light on flavor.

This review is for the premium grade.