Red Dragon [Releasing 27th Nov]

Red Dragon – China Anaerobic Natural Purple Typica

Flavour Characteristics

Best As: Filter Coffee / Black Espresso Drinks
Flavour Description: Red Wine, Date Syrup, Passionfruit, Nutmeg

Origin & Producer Details

Producer: Lao Wang 
Farm: Red Dragon Estate
Origin: China
Region: Baoshan, Yunnan
Variety: Purple Typica
Process: Anaerobic Natural

Importer: Yundian

Recommended Rest

For the best tasting brew of this specialty coffee from China, we'd suggest enjoying this coffee when it is 25–44 days off roast — we wrote a blog on this here.

Browse all Single Origin coffees

About this coffee

Lao Wang’s Journey and Innovations in Yunnan's Coffee

Lao Wang, who has been in the coffee industry for eight years, grew up hearing his parents praise Baoshan’s traditional small-bean coffee. Their admiration sparked a long-standing curiosity about Yunnan’s potential to produce exceptional specialty coffee. Determined to explore this for himself, he returned to his hometown to visit the coffee production areas in Baoshan, Yunnan.

Red Dragon Estate

Between late 2016 and early 2017, Lao Wang drove his father’s car through nearly 80% of the mountains in Baoshan’s Lujiangba region. This journey eventually led him to Red Dragon Estate, a high-altitude coffee farm at 1887 meters, which is extremely high altitude for China's coffee growing region. 

Here, he met Uncle Yang, a lifelong coffee cultivator whose dedication to coffee and deep local knowledge convinced Lao Wang that this was the place to build something meaningful. With no money at the time, he promised Uncle Yang higher-than-market prices for fully ripe cherries and free seedlings of new coffee varieties. After just two meetings, Uncle Yang became the first employee of Lao Wang’s emerging company.

In 2017, Uncle Yang and his family hand-picked a large quantity of cherries from Red Dragon Estate, including a dedicated selection of fully ripe, completely red cherries for Lao Wang to taste. The clarity and clean sweetness of these cherries were so striking that they shaped Lao Wang’s entire philosophy.

From that moment forward, he committed to using only fully ripened coffee cherries, establishing his uncompromising All Red Cherry Plan — still a defining value of Red Dragon Estate and Voiceless today.

Knowledge and Expertise

In June 2017, Lao Wang travelled to Beijing to deepen his coffee expertise. Over six months, he earned his Q-Grader certification, completed intermediate roasting training, advanced SCA coursework, barista training, and the Gold Cup Standards. This period equipped him with the skills necessary to elevate Yunnan coffee to new levels of quality.

In April 2018, he launched his Typica Renovation Project, cultivating around 70,000 Typica seedlings at 1887m on Red Dragon Estate. This was a long-term investment in improving Yunnan’s potential for the cultivation of new varieties and improving cup quality.

In 2019, Lao Wang founded Voiceless, named after his belief that “good coffee speaks for itself, without the need for a human’s voice.” The brand’s slogan — “We just speak by our coffee” — reflects a commitment to quality, authenticity, and transparency.

Experimental Processing

Inspired by techniques featured in WBC and WBRC competitions, Lao Wang began running extensive processing experiments on Yunnan coffees. Over time, he discovered that Restrained Anaerobic Fermentation could help Catimor varieties overcome their common earthy aftertaste, producing a cleaner, sweeter, and more expressive profile.

This innovation became key in developing standout lots such as the Anaerobic Natural Purple Typica, which combines:

• Selective picking under the All Red Cherry Plan
• Partial shade and partial sunlight drying
• Retention of approximately 80% of the fruit mucilage, preserving sweetness without introducing any of the characteristics associated with over-fermentation
• Carefully controlled anaerobic stages to enhance clarity and depth

Since 2019, Lao Wang has continued to refine cultivation techniques and experiment with new processing methods year after year. Despite the evolution of his methods, one principle has never changed: Only fully ripe coffee cherries are used, with zero compromise.

This unwavering value underpins every lot from Red Dragon Estate, ensuring that coffees like the Chinese Anaerobic Natural Purple Typica showcase the very best of Baoshan’s terroir.

Preparation Guidance

Preparing this coffee depends a little bit on your equipment and your water quality.

Red Dragon is exceptionally light roast, and so you may find that this is best enjoyed as a filter coffee. Although if you have good equipment, you can definitely make this as an espresso also.

For espresso, it works well at the traditional 18 in 36 out, but the best shot that we had was actually a turbo shot that we ran through our EK43 in our QC lab. 20.5 in 60 out in 17 seconds, with 10 seconds pre-infusion. Expect an exceptionally sweet, vibrant, funky cup, with a silky body.

It's worth noting that if you are running Turbo shots, you need a coffee grinder with a burr set fitted that allows for a more unimodal style of grind size particle distribution, otherwise your coffee will likely taste very ashy at these lengths. It's also a good idea to have a really good set of scales (we wrote a guide on this here) to allow for accurate, repeatable results. 

For filter, consider brewing at a 1:16 ratio. We've tried a number of different brew methods, and personally I really like this coffee through the Orea V4 using the Kalita Wave 185 filter papers, as you can really bring out a little more acidity this way without compensating against some of the natural sweetness, but feel free to try some of our other recommended recipes here.

Other Coffees You May Like

If you enjoyed Red Dragon, consider trying some of our other coffees. 

For coffee of a similar quality, although stylistically different, consider trying our Dylan Aguilera Gesha.

For a coffee that is similar stylistically and flavour wise to the Red Dragon, consider trying our Matilde.

For something totally different, consider trying out either our Licho, El Roble or Bekele Kachara.

Equally, if you love to try lots of different coffees, maybe consider signing up to one of our coffee subscriptions.