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“Similar to the 2021 Xiaguan “Gold Ribbon” tuo cha I’m currently drinking, but a lot smoother. Because I brew western style, these 8-gram dragon balls are a treat for me, brewing up a bit heavier...” Read full tasting note
Hi-Tech? What do we mean by that? Hi-Tech (aka 高科技) refers to a 2012 cake we pressed which was never for sale. Each cake was unique because it’s made up of 3 years of mao cha samples all blended together. Hobbes from the Half-Dipper blog reviewed the tea here.
The Hi Tech Dragon Ball is the same idea as the 2012 Hi-Tech cake and is made up of all our good mao cha samples from late 2012 until 2015. We get alot of mao cha to evaluate and even the ones we absolutely love there is no way we can ever drink all that mao cha. We took the mao cha samples and blended all of them together which gave us about 13 kg of mao cha, enough to make about 1600 of these Dragon Balls. Each one will be unique since it’s impossible to harmonize/blend hundreds of samples together with equal amounts of each, especially in an 8 gram ball like this which will have many teas represented in it, but certainly not all. Don’t expect consistencty in taste and aroma, but you can expect they will be enjoyable!
2018 UPDATE! – We made 25 kilograms more from mao cha samples that we got between 2015 and 2017! The original 1600 dragon balls produced from 2012-2015 mao cha samples are SOLD OUT.
These Dragon Balls were made by my mother in-law and father-in-law. They make them in their spare time. They use little pieces of cotton to compress them instead of saran wrap. Saran wrap compression is the most common method because it’s faster, but it causes off gassing into the tea since the tea must be steamed to soften and is very hot. We use cotton, which is safe.
100% of the profits from the Hi-Tech Dragon Ball will go directly to my father/mother-in-law. We will give them the first installment during Chinese New Year as a little red packet since they won’t accept money directly from my wife or I. Most likely they will put most of it in the bank for their retirement!
These are not EU MRL certified. We are offering a “Da Xue Shan Dragon Ball” which has been tested and is EU MRL Ceritified.
Each Dragon Ball is roughly 8 grams of tea (+/- 0.5 grams)
Company description not available.
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KuuraSimilar to the 2021 Xiaguan “Gold Ribbon” tuo cha I’m currently drinking, but a lot smoother. Because I brew western style, these 8-gram dragon balls are a treat for me, brewing up a bit heavier and more syrup-like than I am used to. I typically use 5 grams if tea for my 16-ounce glass, and now I am using 8 grams instead with this tea. I couldn’t bring myself to break up the beautiful pearls of tea, which come individually wrapped with little twist-ties.
I guess with this particular blend, you are receiving the “luck of the draw,” as there are many high-quality mao cha samples potentially included here, but they will not be uniformly blended. So I suppose one dragon ball may taste somewhat different from another. In my experience, the three dragon balls I’ve sampled have tasted more or less the same.
This was mellow brew overall, with nice woody notes and some cinammon/fennel spice in the background and hints of florals and fruit. There is a touch of smoke, but I wouldn’t consider smoke to be a major contributor to the overall flavor profile here. An enjoyable and amazingly smooth blend of raw pu-erh. At $3.25 per pearl, I’m not sure I would continue buying these, as I can find teas I enjoy more for less. But I’m glad I sampled and it was a good experience to help me understand the world of raw pu-erhs better.
I do very much enjoy the dragon ball concept, and will probably keep exploring these. The convenience of the individual-serving dragon balls makes much more sense to me than having to break up awkward cakes of tea. It would be nice to find more dragon balls available in my preferred 5-gram dosage, though, but I guess you can’t have everything.
