Today’s review is a tea from a new tea seller! M&K’s Tea Co, located in California! Today is also a really neat tea review – Roasted Jiaogulan Dragon Pearls. This is a herbal caffeine free tea harvested from Pingli, Shaanxi China in 2014.
I wanted to try this tea so badly – any tea rolled into pearls is an adventure to steep!
The name of this tea sounds familiar to me, I’m guessing I saw this tea in the tea isle of Asian grocery stores. M&K’s Tea Co has good information on the tea, but I decided to google search it some more. With a quick google search it turns out people drink this tea as some sort of herbal remedy. I saw a few posts on “Drink this miracle herbal 3 times a day for a month…” Okay, once they use the word miracle I hit the back button hella fast. Anyways, here’s the jiaogulan wikipedia for more information on the plant.
Dry Leaf
The ball of Jiaogulan is twiggy and lumpy. Kind of looks like a hay ball treat I’d feed my bunny. M&K’s Jiaogulan is roasted and rolled into pearls for a fun, serving sized ready tea!
Steeping Instructions
I steeped one pearl of Jiaogulan in boiling water for 3 minutes. I used a small glass tea pot to hopefully see some cool tea effects.
Wow, does this tea ever steep up pretty! I wish I took video – it unfurled quickly!
Jiaogulan Dragon Pearls steeps up a crazy saturated yellow with a light roasty scent.
Tasting of M&K’s Tea Co’s Roasted Jiaogulan Dragon Pearls
Oh wow a neat flavor! Roasted Jiaogulan Dragon Pearls has a strong barley and corn flavor with a hint of roasty notes. If you’ve had Korean barley and corn tea, the flavor here is pretty similar. However, this herbal has a mellow sweet finish that is difficult to describe. It is pretty sweet, like sweet potatoes and herbs. The sweetness hits my mouth similar to stevia as a full mouth sweet experience. I’m not into stevia so I wasn’t a big fan of the sweetness here in this infusion, but I enjoyed the roasty grain vegetal notes.
Second Infusion: I did a 5 minute re-infusion and it was better than the first. The flavor is just as strong and of barley corn roast, but is less herby sweet. There is a bit of sweetness, but it’s enough to compliment the grain vegetal notes.
The Jiaogulan is still breaking apart – looks super cool!
Third Infusion: 10 minute run here. Roasted Jiaogulan came out mostly corny in flavor with a bit of sweet herb finish. Flavor is lighter, so I think this is all I’m getting out of this tea. Nice third infusion!
Iced: I prefer my Korean Barley tea iced, so I refrigerated the leftovers of the three steepings (hey, I’m a solo drinker, that’s a lot of tea to get through in a sitting!) overnight. The iced version has a more vegetal sweet corn flavor than barley.
Comments
M&K’s Tea Co‘s Roasted Jiaogulan Dragon Pearls is a fun to steep, caffeine free tea! I enjoyed the roasty vegetal grain flavors and the resteep ability is excellent compared to other caffeine free tea options (which is usually nil). The flavor is familiar if you’ve had barley corn teas. I’d give Roasted Jiaogulan Dragon Pearls high on the scale for tea adventure! Check this tea out if you are looking for something really different for caffeine free tea!
By the way, M&K’s Tea Co has an interesting line up of tea. They have teas I’ve never seen sold from other sellers, as well as teas that are in-house roasted!
(tea provided for review)
