Dragon Tea House

I had tried this earlier using my prefered moonlight 80C water temp. It was nice a little sweet, a little hay like, maybe some honey. Of the moonlight cakes I bought, this was my favorite.
conversation was happening today regarding the best way to steep moonlight and OMGsrsly said….. boiling water, flash steeps. Really? OK I never use boiling water and certainly not on a white tea, but I respect her opinion so I tried this tonight using her method. Wow, I was wrong. This method takes this tea to another level. It really brings out the honey notes, there is some subtle fruit notes in the earlier steeps. Later steeps and this is becoming more like a black. The changes in the steeps is more pronounced. I need to revisit some of the other moonlights in my collection.
Tea friends are the best, thank you so much for making me try this. :)

Morning brew let down…
This was like an oolong oiled up in a bit of salt and then given to me in a warm cup.

noms! the lsat of this is off to a tea friend…eventually haha. have really enjoyed this one the more that i have it – being slightly tastier and maltier when i overleaf just a little. happy to have experience this one.

yay for this tea. It’s not at the top of my list but it is a good one, and it’s nice to have it while i’m currently working on draining my cupboard of all my favourites. lol

super hot here lately, though i think the heat has finally broken. Not drinking as much as normal, but still trying to keep on working on my older teas. I am almost through this one as i need to set aside a little for sharing :) I am still enjoying this one, though there’s no need to repurchase

i am enjoying this offering from dragon tea house. Ir’s not as rich as some of the other versions that i’ve tried but it’s a decent cup and one that i’ll enjoy finishing up.

someday i’ll try this gonfu style..for now, i’ve been drinking this as of late – western style and the brew has been exactly what i want. Smooth, malty, delicious.

malty and delicious. need i say more? yum

this is delicious this morning. Malty, rich and just what i needed! :)

I had this again today and it was MUCH more delicious and exactly what i was looking for. The right balance of malt and strength in a tea. Will it replace other favourites in my cupboard long term? no….but i will enjoy drinking this one as long as i have it

Finally getting around to having space in my cupboard to open a few more teas that i haven’t tried. This is one of those sorts of teas. I need to have this one again, to really reflect on it. I remember enjoying it, but i can’t recall why or to what extent. overall a positive tea drinking experience but i’ll have to write a more proper note when i get to having it again.

GCTTB

I think this tea has been in the box for awhile. I didn’t try it last time so gave it try this time.

I didn’t like this tea at all. I’ve had chrysanthemum tea before but this one was a syrupy sweet drink. I just couldn’t finish it.

From the last round of the Great Canadian Traveling Teabox.

Ugh, I don’t know what it is about this tea but I’m really not liking it at all. I’ve had chrysanthemum in teas before but never by itself and the I’m finding the flavour to be rather off-putting. It has a musty, slightly bitter-herb flavour that reminds me very much of how the mums I plant in the garden smell. Bleh, I don’t know if I can finish the cup to be honest.

Took me a while to get around to trying this tea. Bought it quite a while ago. Didn’t gongfu it. Brewed it western style. It is a fairly pleasant tasting tea with light roasted notes, very light. The leaves are green and do not look roasted but that is what I taste.

I brewed this once in an 16oz Teavana Glass Perfect Tea Maker/Gravity Steeper with 3 tsp leaf and 190 degree water for 3 min.

Mmmm, big thank you to Anlina for giving me a sample of this to try. :) I admit, I remembered the “omg chocolate-covered raisins!” description while steeping this, so I was probably a bit primed to taste that, but yeah, this is a very raisin-y tea! It’s also smooth, rich, malty, full-bodied, with some of that classic yunnan black earthiness and a lingering sweetness. Tasty. :)

This tea is one that I don’t properly know how to describe. It tastes nothing like a raw puerh, and nothing like a ripe puerh. It is not bitter but the main flavor is not one I would describe as sweet or for that matter sour. It is closer to a salty flavor if anything. Is this what they call umami? I don’t know. I stored this tea in my pumidor with my sheng as Dragon Tea House calls it raw puerh. It does not seem to have taken on the flavor of the sheng in my pumidor. I don’t love or hate this tea but I don’t think I would buy it again if I ever ran out.

I steeped this six times in a 170ml teapot with 11g leaf and 200 degree water. I steeped it for 5 sec, 5 sec, 7 sec, 10 sec, 15 sec, and 20 sec. I should also mention that this tea developed the color of a black tea if anything by the second infusion. I think you would get at least ten or twelve infusions out of this tea but I didn’t like it enough to continue after six infusions.

It has the honeyed barley taste I’ve come to think of when I hear Da Hong Pao .For the price this tea makes me very happy , $6.99 for 50g and free shipping so its a good deal. You do wait awhile for shipping though.

After years of contract work, consulting, working from home, and other non-traditional work arrangements, I actually have a pretty normal job where most of my days are spent in an office. I have a space that’s mine, but I’m almost always in another room, so I’m travel mugging it, and this has become my go-to tea for travel mug steeping (even though I should be sipping down the way too much tea I already have in my cupboard, I keep ordering more of this.)

This tea is so, so flexible and forgiving, which is a wonderful quality for steeping in a travel mug. I can use two, three or four pagodas for a 16oz cup, steep from 3 min to indefinitely, use 96C water or much cooler and always get a delicious cup that’s not astringent or bitter. It’s also one of the few teas that I find worth resteeping western-style.

Lighter cups are very malty and chocolatey. Long steeps with lots of tea bring out very rich, almost meaty notes, with a hint of tartness. There are lots of faces to this tea and all of them are good.

The flavour and quality has also been consistent over multiple purchases and multiple years, which I appreciate.

Yesterday my partner and I decided to go on a mini road trip, to see how the landscape is melting and to try out the new truck on some dirt roads. We drove the loop in Nopoming Provincial Park, which is north of the Whiteshell, along the Manitoba-Ontario border. It’s a lot more rugged and less developed than the Whiteshell, and much quieter at all times of year, which, in my opinion, makes it far superior. When I’m camping or in the wilderness, people are the last thing I want around.

The prairies at this time of year are fairly dull. While I generally see them with an artist’s eye, and appreciate the nuances of all the different colours and textures, even those subtle differences are flattened in the post melt, pre bloom of spring. The fields, trees and ditches blend together into a fairly uniform grey-brown, contrasted with the uniform blue and deep green of the sky and evergreens. Add to that the road and the clouds, and you have five colours for this season.

Once you hit Canadian shield, the landscape gets more interesting – shield is always a less subtle beauty than the stark flatness of the prairies (and so utterly flat, in a way that I haven’t experienced anywhere outside of Manitoba.) The rock, interspersed with mixed forest of fir, spruce, poplar and the occasional birch, creates a macro texture, while the lichens covering the surface of the rock, and striations of broken sedimentary rock that protrude along the side of the road add a more subtle and delicate texture. Lakes, rivers and streams frequently abut or cross the winding road that undulates over granite that the road builders chose not to remove.

I sipped a travel mug of this as we drove, prepared earlier. Two pagodas, steeped for five minutes in 14oz of water yielded a rich, deep tasting brew, full of cocoa, malt and sweet potato. A good choice, whose flavour held up well in the travel mug, which seems to inevitably carry some trace of other flavours, no matter what I do.

I got a second excellent steep out of the two pagodas later in the evening, still rich and deep tasting.

The directions on the package recommend three pagodas per cup, but that is without a doubt overkill. Each one is at least the equivalent of a teaspoon of tea, possibly closer to two.

Between sharing these and drinking them often, they’ll be gone soon, and this will be a definite restock. They taste wonderful and the shape is also wonderfully suited to steeping without a strainer, and so, quite convenient.

Oh man these are good! I wasn’t expecting too much – I mostly picked them up because they looked cute and I like Dian Hong, but I’m impressed.

I steeped two pagodas in my 50ml gaiwan in 96C water. I didn’t time any of the steeps, just watched the colour of the tea. The tea soup is a deep mahogany red.

Both the dry leaf and the tea smell rich and malty.

The flavour of this is great – really strong, rich notes of dark chocolate, malt and sweet potatoes. It has that richness that’s edging into bitterness that dark chocolate has, but no unpleasant bitterness like oversteeped or poor quality tea. Super smooth. The first few steeps are quite sweet, and the sweetness fades a bit and the flavour takes on a slight woody edge in later steeps.

After a few steeps the pagodas fully open and fill my gaiwan. They’re not as pretty as blooming teas – the pagodas don’t stay oriented upwards, but it’s still lovely to watch.

I didn’t keep track, but I think I got somewhere between 7 and 9 steeps out of these before I gave up, though I could probably get a couple of more if I was inclined.

I’m so pleased I picked these up!

My morning cup again. This one is so tasty and easy to reach for. So glad I rediscovered it in my cupboard.