Sleeping Dragon Green

Sipdown!

I quite liked Simple Loose Leaf when I had the subscription, but I just have too much tea to handle a consistent monthly shipment of more. Their packaging was excellent – opaque, lined, semi-waterproof, and with an air valve like on fancy coffee packages. As a result, this tea has kept pretty well over the two years I’ve had it.

Steeped hot, gong fu style, it’s fairly unremarkable. Just a gently smoky, grassy green. Better than a teabag but not particularly complex. To be fair, it may have been more interesting when it was fresh, so I am foregoing a rating.

Cold brewed overnight, this is very refreshing. The dominant flavor is more hay than grass. There’s just a hint of sweetness. The mouthfeel is simultaneously dry and juicy. Something about the texture reminds me of biting into a grape. I liked it so much I even tried doing a second cold brew with the same leaves. Alas, it didn’t really work. I just ended up with vaguely sweet, dry water.

Smells: sweet, grassy, smooth, buttery, finishes with sweetness and a hint of grain

Tastes: very vegetal, similar to steamed spinach.

Couldn’t find any gong fu instructions for this tea so I decided to wing it.

180F
5g leaves
120ml (4oz) glass gaiwan

3 infusions: rinse, 10s, 15s, 15s

Websites that say to start at 30 or 40 seconds are crazy!

The last two infusions were a bit bitter. The flavor wasn’t anything to write home about. Next time I’d use 4g instead of 5.

Backlog:

As I mentioned in my full-length review of this tea – http://sororiteasisters.com/2014/06/24/sleeping-dragon-green-tea-from-simple-loose-leaf/ – The aroma of this tea as it brews reminds me of the smell that fills the kitchen when I’m steaming broccoli. Perhaps with a bit of seaweed in the steamer. Not that I’d ever do that. I probably wouldn’t because I’m not a big fan of seaweed.

Fortunately the tea doesn’t have a seaweed flavor to go with the aroma.

The flavor reminds me of something between a green tea and a white tea. It has some of those sweet, melon-y notes of a white tea but not quite as delicate as the white tea would be, although it is a little more delicate in flavor than most green teas.

I also experienced notes of citrus, light vegetal notes, and a subtle smoky note. A really lovely green tea experience and it offers several infusions.

Simple Loose Leaf describes this tea as being similar to gunpowder green tea, with its smokiness and sweetness, and that’s pretty close to the truth. I know gunpowder green mainly as the base for Moroccan Mint teas and as the kind of default green tea I’ve encountered in many dim-sum restaurants, so the flavour was very familiar to me.
The dry leaves were dark green, tightly-rolled little balls, and smelled kind of vegetal and smoky.

The brewed tea was a nice amber colour with a hint of green, and it was slightly smoky and generally unassuming. However, after drinking a lot of it at once, it did start to become slightly astringent. For me, this would be the perfect kind of tea to have in the morning when I’m too groggy to make any important decisions – a tea that’s no fuss and undemanding.

Given the name of the tea – Sleeping Dragon Green – it’s kind of obvious that I needed to find a fictional dragon to link it with. Smaug? No, completely out of character. Something from Game of Thrones? Nah, I did that last week. Another dragon from Tolkien’s lore, like Ancalagon the Black or Glaurung? No, no, no. Not in keeping with this tea at all.

But don’t worry, I did think of a dragon to compare this tea to – though you’ll have to read the full post to find out which one: http://christinavasilevski.com/2014/07/sunday-tea-books-sleeping-dragon-green

Note: I steeped this twice. Both steeps were similar in flavour and colour.

This month the green tea offered for the Selection Club was Sleeping Dragon from Adagio. While I’ve said before that I’m not a huge fan of the decision to add Adagio teas to their lineup, I do tend to prefer their unflavored teas to many of their other offerings. This particular tea didn’t wow me, I find it to be a pretty middle of the road green tea. It’s nothing exceptional, but certainly not something I would turn down if it were offered to me. The flavor is vegetal with a hint of smoke and a slight astringency. It left me with somewhat of a dry mouth, which is something I tend to avoid with my summer tea selections. I find that if I cold steep this tea overnight, rather than brewing it using traditional methods, it cuts down on the amount of astringency making for a much more appealing iced tea. If you aren’t a fan of astringency in your green teas, this may not be for you.

You can read the rest of the review on my blog:
http://www.notstarvingyet.com/index/2014/6/24/tuesday-tea-june-selection-club-simple-loose-leaf.html

These fuzzy, tightly rolled, green tea leaves are grown high in the mountains of Fujian, China. Apparently this tea is a good introduction to novices into the world of green tea, I left the novice group a while ago, but I am certainly not one to turn my nose up to a new tea. The aroma is a blend of chestnut, green bean, and spinach. It reminds me of a very vegetal oolong, or like an oolong tea and a green tea had a clandestine affair and this tea is the result. The aroma is a bit faint, but the notes are pleasant.

The aroma of the brewed (and now not as tightly curled) tea leaves is very vegetal, lots of spinach and green beans with a finish of artichoke. The liquid’s aroma is sweet and chestnut like with a buttery and vegetal finish.

The first steep is fairly delicate with notes of toasted sesame and nutty chestnut. This fades to green beans with a bitter green, kale like finish. It is like a walking tour of the vegetable aisle in my mouth, and I am ok with that.

The second steep starts off quite sweet with notes of toasted sesame and a touch of honey. It reminds me of Halva, a delicious Persian dessert. This almost immediately switches into green beans and spinach, and this quickly fades to kale and green bitterness that stays on until the end. This is a strong tea.

The final steep left a bit to be desired, it is dry and almost entirely kale. It really feels like I am drinking warm kale juice, and while I really like the taste of kale, I do prefer a bit of moderation. Out of curiosity I chilled this tea, the results were very strong and very vegetal bitter, so the kale juice comparison stays. I really enjoyed the first and second steeps, the third, well in the future I will stop at two.

For blog and photos: http://ramblingbutterflythoughts.blogspot.com/2014/06/simple-loose-leaf-june-subscription-box.html

I feel all this pressure because this is the first review of this tea and I don’t know what to say. I underleafed it. The first infusion was okay but not great. Definitely not enough leaf. Then on the second infusion the water was too hot. I completely ruined this.