Dragon Tea House

Meh tea. I got the 2022 harvest of this tea as the only tea I ordered from DTH to try them out. Beautiful leaves and a rich aroma especially in the dry leaf that reminded me of the spicy peanuts I ate back in Taiwan. Liquor is a beautiful slightly pale green-yellow sheen. Flavour is average, a bit too light for my taste with only a slight nuance, texture is average to decent, slightly oily and smooth. Character is mediocre, not a lot of steep variability. Finish & aftertaste was surprisingly decent, juicy finish with a lingering hay note at the back. Cha-qi is almost non-existent and steep longevity is mediocre to decent, topping out at steep 7-8.

Maybe I’ll give DTH another shot in the future, but I got other teas to drink for now.

This was the best last dark oolong I ever binged on. Take into consideration my starting point was local shop, then all kind of obscure sellers on eBay until I realized that the best variety and within budget was this vendor. You go with minimum purchase of 50g and somehow I knew this was the one making a big leap forward. This is the first tea I ever bought 500g of. By the time I was half way thru 2nd bag, I was already eyeing lighter Oolongs alike golden key one. But it was the richest taste I experienced at the time. I am still drawn to black teas once in a while but none really gave same thickness of taste.

Chocolatey. Pretty decent. It does tend to shed hairs if brewed in a gaiwan or other coarse-filtering device. It has a lighter chocolate flavour than some black teas I’ve tried, and also has some malty taste.

It’s okay. Sweet-ish, mild, has a very faint seaweed taste. There’s a note with which I’m not enamored, but heck if I know what it is. Not the best sencha I’ve had, but it’s one of the more affordable organic ones available.

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.

i have like, no experience with puerh whatsoever, so you know that stuff that catches on the surface of meats that have been cured at home, the old fashioned way in a shed? thats sort of what this tastes like, with a bit of a wet dusty earthy wine cellar overtone too. i mean its literally a bunch of leaves that went rotten and that’s exactly what it tastes like so idk what i expected.
i’m not really sure how to rate this. open to suggestions on brewing methods.

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.