Dragon Lychee Pearls

Samurai TTB #13

Wow, these pearls are HUGE! The bag said to use “1 tsp”, which wasn’t really helpful, so I ended up using two pearls which nearly filled my infuser as they expanded. The resulting brew was a lovely balance of sweet fruitiness from the lychee and rich maltiness from the base tea. A re-steep was lighter on the fruit flavor but still malty and delicious. I think I’ll be hanging on to this one!

The tea box is here and I randomly grabbed a tea to try. The pearls are pretty big, and I do like a strong morning cup, so I put three in and tried a quick 3 minute brew. This first steep smelled like soap to me, something about the flowery component just didn’t seem that appetizing. The tea actually tasted better than it smelled, the soapy, flowery note was up front, but a cocoa note lingered as an aftertaste. The second steep for 5 minutes it still soapy, and some of the cocoa notes have faded.
Glad I got to try, but this one’s not for me.

I received this from Ost’s cupboard sale in summer 2018. I had about enough for a single cup so I brewed that up this morning. The tea is a lovely brown color and does have a nice fruity aroma.

The taste of the tea is slightly malty with some honeyed notes, but the lychee flavor fills out strongly in the brew. I really love the taste of lychee, I get strong notes of pear and rose. The fruitiness and florality leave a lot of sweetness in the brew and the tea is very smooth. I think I enjoy Art of Tea’s Lychee Peach a bit more, but the age of this sample might have something to do with that; fresh, it could easily be on par with that one for me. Even aged, it is still a very enjoyable cuppa.

Thanks for the sample!

sample from evol ving ness this one was a resounding NOPE for me…i dunno what it was about the tea but between the aroma and the taste, i could drink it… oh well, can’t win ‘em all and i’ll happily shre what i have left with folks since lots of others seem to have enjoyed them!

Finally getting around to trying this one. It’s been in my cupboard long enough, that’s for sure. I followed the recommended parameters, and used 1.5 tsp of pearls (which amounted to 12, some smaller than others). I gave them 3.5 minutes in boiling water, no additions.

I’d heard a lot of good things about this one, and fortunately it’s as delicious as I hoped. It has a strong, fruity, juicy lychee flavour right up front, followed by the smooth, malty chocolatey flavour of the black tea base. It’s an amazing combination! Although the lychee is strong, it’s not overpowering or cloying, which is always a bonus when it comes to flavoured teas. I wish more things were lychee flavoured, actually. I think it could only improve my life, in all honesty.

I have some of Tealux’s unflavoured Black Dragon Pearls to try next, and it’ll be interesting to see how they compare with both this blend and with the Teavivre pearls I tried a while back. I love that there are still new tea discoveries to be made, even though I’ve rated 900-odd individual teas in my two years on here. Hooray for new tea adventures (and more lychee!)

Pure fragrant lychee with its distinctive floral sweetness together with pure black tea. This is delicious!

This is a queued tasting note.

This tea comes from Liquid Proust’s stash sale! A while back we were talking lychee teas and he highly recommended this one to me, so when I saw he was selling it I had to jump on the chance to try it!

I made this in a teacup, using five of the tiny little pearls, and resteeped it twice after the initial infusion. The first was very smooth with an incredibly light, bright and juicy lychee/floral top not practically bouncing off notes of malt, cocoa, and honey from the base tea that composed the body of the sip. It was absolutely delicious, and the juxtaposition of flavour was quite lovely and intense. Subsequent infusions were much the same, though we the lychee flavour fading fairly substantially throughout infusions. The more it faded, however, the more I noticed the floral and honey notes.

Truly, this was a wonderful tea though. Quite worthy of LP’s praise, for sure. I particularly loved the intensity of the lychee flavour that definitely stayed true to the flavour of actual lychee fruit. Mmm!

OH HELL YEAH!
My best friend came over last night and we picked out five pretty high end teas to drink with this included. We only ended up drinking three because we resteeped this tea four different times. This is one sneaky tea,who would of known it was a black tea by tasting it?
Water at 205f poured right over these guys. The lychee is strong and last throughout the steeps.
Now I want to know where I can find me some black pearls without jasmine in them so I can start to play with them.

Nice, easy and yummy! This is a simple flavored tea, and I like how easy it is to brew! I usually use like 6-ish pearls tossed in a pint glass at work. Everyone thinks I’m crazy, but daymn it is good! The lychee note is spot on, not artificial to me at all. The black tea takes a back seat, but it does compliment the lychee really well. Like chocolate covered lychees, yasss!

Full review here:
http://sororiteasisters.com/2015/04/23/dragon-lychee-pearls-black-tea-tealyra/

I wanted to try these after having the Black Dragon Pearls from Teavana. I got them in my first Tealux order and I like them; the lychee isn’t overly prominent but it’s there and the base tea is good. What I’m wondering though is what people’s experiences have been with resteeping this tea. I usually steep the other Black Dragon Pearls three times but I’m not sure yet how these will hold up. I’m on my second steep right now, so we’ll see I guess! But I’d love to hear others’ experience with resteeping this one.

Edit: Second and third steeps were good!