Dragon Feelers

Call me crazy – and I have not yet taken a sip but this tea smells like chocolate when stepped! LOL yeah I know that seems odd.
I love the look of the leaf – reminds me of pea pods!
I also smell a creamy aroma. YUMMM can’t wait for it to cool enough to drink!
I should be sleeping – but I’m not.
So first sip – very light – light vegetal flavors, buttery, and rock mineral? What the??? Its not an oolong but yet there is this fresh rock mineral flavor I am getting. Interesting!
A little salty, and a cooling sensation yet not minty flavored.
Very interesting indeed.
I will play around with this one a bit to see what else I can get from it with resteeps and perhaps different brewing methods.
So far I am intrigued!

This tea really looks cool – it does indeed look like the scaly belly of a dragon. They almost look like they’ve been crimped with a hair crimping tool! The color is much more like the color of a silver needle tea – the leaves are a very pale, silvery green color. Lots of downy fuzz on the leaves.

I played around with this tea until I found just the right way to brew it. I wasn’t very satisfied with how it brewed up in my Breville, so I decided to slow things down a bit and brew it in my gaiwan. This produced a much better cup. The tea is very delicate, and I think it was too delicate when brewed in the Breville vs. brewing in the gaiwan. The gaiwan managed to get more flavor out of the tea and that was what I was after.

Very vegetative – almost like kelp and steamed, buttered vegetables, but, again the flavor is delicate, so it doesn’t taste too vegetative if that makes sense. The flavor is almost all vegetal … but because the overall flavor is delicate, the palate isn’t overwhelmed by the vegetative notes.

I love how smooth this tea is. Very soft, very soothing. Very nice.

I’m deliberately not reading the tasting notes on this one so I can draw my own conclusions! This tea is definitely gorgeous, and reminds me of small, newly formed pods on sweet pea plants in the summer.

First off, I was surprised that the brewing recommendations here called for boiling water. Green tea? Boiling water? Crazy! However, I followed the recommendations, and did so. The leaves had no real aroma to speak or, nor does the brewed cup. In fact…. the tea also has very little flavour as well. All I can taste is a very faint honey-sweetness, with a bit of a boiled veggie flavour. Maybe a bit of almost a mintiness? All very, very mild though. I thought that if anything, I had kind of overleafed the cup, but I very much doubt so now. The most noticeable thing about this tea is its mouthfeel: quite full and silky-smooth, contrasting with the other teas I have on the go this evening.

Clearly I should give some other brewing parameters a try, because as it stands, this tea is really not one I’d go for again. There’s just so little flavour! Hopefully I can manage to coax a bit more out of it next time.

First of all, I have to tell you…when I first saw the picture of this tea on the Butiki website I said “Ewww! this tea looks like fuzzy bugs!” (It had nothing to do with your lovely picture, Stacy! Your photos are always gorgeous on the website:) and then promptly added it to my list to order.
Why?
Because I am weird.
I think if it looked quirky then I was sure to love it.
Guess what?
I was right!
This tea is just so delicious.
It has this delicate buttery smell, then it tastes like the first fresh sweet peas of the season steamed with butter.
There are also notes of sun-warmed wheat (I know this smell well, my house is literally right next to a wheat field:)
This tea hits the ball right out of the park!
A very fine tea, indeed.
Brewed in my Bodum, this tea has a stunning champagne color.

yeah, I admit I just bought this because of the name and the funky shape of the leaves. I have to say Stacy seems to go out of her way to find some really cool and interesting stuff.

So I steeped this for 3 minutes, not quite sure of my water temp. since I’m at work. I got a very light colored, yellowish brew.

Unfortunately I had a cup of coffee this morning so my tastebuds are totally off. This is very subtle and I’m getting the marine flavor but I think I need to try it another time in order to rate it properly…

Have had this tea for a while but never got around to tasting it. I think it came from a swap with Azzrian, but I can’t quite remember! But thanks for sending it along.

I often go along with odd steeping instructions from trusted retailers (like Butiki) but I cannot for the life of me bring myself to steep a green tea at boiling. So I didn’t. The resulting tea smells green and a bit nutty. The flavor is very smooth and pleasant. Sweet, a hint floral, buttery, and a bit of savory-umami notes. I am quite enjoying this one! The flavors are light and subdued, but present enough to make a tasty cup.

1st steep in the Gawain was 3 minutes as per directions, it brews up a nice clear yellow color with a slight green touch (according to Lance*), the taste was very delicate but quite pleasant slightly vegetal flavor that i just can’t place, tho the taste was delicate the flavor of the tea was above the line. No bitter or astringency just wonderful tea flavor.
2nd steep I added 25 seconds,it yielded the exact same pale color and that same wonderfully delicate tea flavor as before but of course slightly stronger and this time unknown pleasant vegetal flavor became kinda like sweet peas?? not sure, it was very delicious tho :)
_{~I’ll have a little blog post of this one soon with photos and a better review :)}~

You ever just make something that is so good you feel like you could go build a skyscraper or something? I made a curry sauce for pasta with spinach and green bell pepper and it made my nose run, something suuuuuper helpful right now. When I went back to the kitchen I seriously gave myself like a happy dance because I have another bowl for tomorrow.

It’s fun to watch these steep because they look like pea pods floating around.

This is odd. It tastes like juicy fruit and kind of more like oolong? Peaches or pears..I can’t tell.

I don’t get much butter/cream, just sweetness. It is just a little bit vegetal, and just a tad astringent at the end. Mostly I get sweetness from it too, though I would guess that’s why it tastes like pears to me.

I really feel like my taste buds are broken now.

This was a sample — thanks Stacy!

I really enjoyed this one, moreso than I thought I would. Light, crisp, and refreshing. I tasted fresh green beans with a smooth creaminess, and at the suggested 3 mins not a hint of astringency.

I don’t think I’d drink this on a regular basis; it’s not an overly exciting tea (other than the lovely, fuzzy, and obviously carefully crafted leaves!), but it is simple and satisfying. Really pure and fresh tasting.

I think I’m finally ready to explore unflavoured teas a little more, and this was a nice place to start.

So, I tend to buy flavored/blended teas and I love finding some interesting combinations or it to taste like other things. Straight up tea I drink once in awhile, and of course, is the teas I first started to drink.

Now, I saw Hesper June review this tea – I took a look at the pictures of the tea and was all “OMGWTFBBQ is up with the look of this tea! I NEED TO TRY IT!” as it looked like if I saw a few pieces of this tea on the floor of my kitchen I’d flip out in fear. So when I got around to my butiki order, it was in the cart.

DRY: Not much of a scent, but what I can tell, smells like green tea :P yeah, that’s awesome. The appearance is another story: little fuzzy fishes from a chinese herb stores? little fuzzy bugs? UGG! The stripes on the leaves is kinda cute though. However, the little fuzzy buggers were pretty big and tricky to stuff into my teaspoon.

STEEPED: A beautiful light yellow/green cup with a buttery veggie smell. The crazy dragon fuzzies steeped look liked overcooked mini green beans. No more fuzzies.. wahh I’m going to be drinking fuzzies!
I was a little worried as the instructions were for boiling (used to low temperatures for green) but did boiling water anyways.

TASTE: Clean, light, and buttery. The veggie taste is very light, but what I can make out is more on the sweet side like a fresh pea. Refreshing. No tart, grassy or bitter taste. As the cup cools, the tea becomes more crisp and sweet.

WHO’D DIG THIS TEA: Green tea drinkers that wanna be schooled! Peeps who love a cup that is light and refreshing.

COMMENTS: This tea is fab! Dragon Feelers like “the ugly duckling” of tea – looks kinda scary, but steeps into delicate, buttery magical tea. Yep. Now I want to drink more of it. Maybe now I have the courage to touch the leaves this time.

I randomly chose this out of my Butiki bag of fun leaves today. :) The dry leaves certainly are interesting. They appear to be striped in the picture. But in actuality, they’re creased in perfectly spaced lines. The aroma from both the dry leaves and the brewed tea is subtle, generic green tea.

The taste, however, is not subtle or generic. It’s delicious! Savory. That’s the main word that comes to mind. It’s very flavorful and savory. The taste is buttery veggies and salty nori (seaweed). It’s an interesting combo that I don’t know if I’ve come across before.

I’m wicked surprised that this tea calls for boiling water. It was really hard for me to put the brewing basket into that steaming cup. I thought for sure the whole thing would be so scorched, it’d be prone to burst into flames at any second. But luckily, the brewing instructions did not lead me astray.

I’m sipping at a yummy cup of green tea with a perfect balance of flavors. It’s not grassy at all and it’s also not overly veggie. Sometimes the green teas that lean too heavily towards artichoke aren’t to my liking. This is simply perfect. No bitterness and only a little astringency as it cools.

It’s different and yet the same. That’s what I love about green teas. At their heart, they’re mostly all the same. And yet, somehow they are all different and unique. If that’s not evidence for God’s beauty in nature, I don’t know what is.

This is another sample from my swap with Emily M (^^)

The dry leaves of this one are just so intriguing that I really wanted to like it. Unfortunately, I didn’t like it so much. It’s very vegetal, but a kind of vegetal I haven’t had before. Maybe its the pea and marine notes? I like peas, though. I like it well enough to finish my cup, but it won’t be on my shopping list.