Jasmine Black Pearls (Organic)

I like this tea, it has different flavours throughout the drinking experience. I get jasmine, wood, smoke, sweet, caramel and a touch bitter (on the second steep). It is also a fun tea to steep, the cute little spheres open up, very pleasing.

My friend bought me tea today! Yay! I feel so loved! I decided to try this tea. I’ve never had a straight black tea from DT, so I was really excited! It smelled so lovely! I’m not sure how many pearls were in my cup because I got it to go and I never thought to ask. My first sip was sooo yummy! Then I drove home. Aaaaaaand my tea bag was still in my tea. Aaaaaand now it is almost too strong to drink :( Too floral for my taste right now! (The tea itself was soooo dark, and in the DT post they say it should be a light golden liquor haha. Oops!) I will definitely be trying this again and I’ll actually make it properly. I usually like strong tea but this time I left the bag in waaaaay too long.
I will have some frequent steeper points to use up soon so I think I might try this as my free tea! It’s quite pricey so I don’t know that I would buy a big tin or anything, but if I can get it for free I definitely will!

Very good tea!

The dry scent is sweet and strong with the smell of jasmine. The taste is very deep – not rich, but deep and a bit woodsy/bambooish in a nice way. Very sweet and fragrant from the jasmine. There’s a hint of bitterness but I may just have steeped it too long – I put 3 pearls in 250mls of water with simmering water for 4 minutes, I think I’ll cut it down to 3 next time.

Edit: I’ve gotten rid of the bitterness and have come to really love this tea. Its full bodied yet light and refreshingly sweet. Boyfriend and his mom love it too! I ordered the 250g for 40% off because I love it so much and needed a good stock!

Tea # 2 from The tea box. This is my first tea bow and while I am super excited to try as many as I can before I send it on I also feel a bit overwhelmed by the sheer amount of tea staring me in the face.

I’m going to set a few pearls aside for later to try again. I love jasmine tea of all sorts but I’m pretty sure this is the first black/ black pearl that I’ve tried. The jasmine essence is very mellow. Usually I add a little honey to jasmine teas but I just couldn’t get myself to add it to this rare one. Nevertheless it’s still a delightful drink.

Backlog!

So I flew an hour from NorCal to SoCal and I wanted to drink tea but I left my sachets with my mum back home so I figured that these little beauties would be great to drink on the plane :)
Yep. I asked for a cup of hot water and dropped these little bad boys in :)
It was actually really good! I had a great cup, but it definitely started getting bitter by the end of the cup. Not the best way to drink tea, but good enough who where I was at. I’ll be trying these sometime this week, this time actually taking time to make the right cuppa :)

Tea #22 from Considering a new TTB
Normally I love Jasmine Black tea, but these failed to impress me, they were much more bitter than I expected. I let my cup sit for awhile to see if the bitterness dissipated once the tea had cooled, but it didn’t really which was disappointing. I did begin to notice a somewhat sweeter note towards the end of each sip, but these just don’t have the depth I’m looking for.

I gave this one a go today from my local DT store – I have to be in a particular mood for jasmine tea, and I was intrigued that this one had a black tea base instead of a green. The jasmine taste was still pretty stong even with the addition of some milk – and the weird thing is that it didn’t taste all that different from a lot of green tea bases. Hmm.

Starting to venture in to the more traditional tea zones (I still love weird blends like popcorn and dehydrated ice cream bits of course), but I want to also learn more about the bases and such. Starting with these puppies this week… So yummy!

I used my new Steeper, three pearls, filled it up with boiling water and steeped for 4.5 minutes. The jasmine is a perfect amount, engages your senses, but doesn’t smell like you opened Grandma’s perfume chest. Very lovely, drinkable. Fun to watch the pearls unravel their mysteries in the steeper. Overall, a nice start to a (hopefully) relaxing weekend.

I loaded up on theses pearls during David’s last sale. I use about 5 pearls per 16oz as I love strong jasmine. It’s nice to have a black base, I usually have green with jasmine. I’m having a sipdown on this small bag because the seal broke and I don’t want to put them in a tin. I’ve been brewing western style, too busy for gonfu, and can get about 2 steeps from them and still have the jasmine. I could probably brew 1-2 more times to enjoy the black base.

These pearls have a nice smooth jasmine, not perfumey. The black base is very tasty and has never gone bitter on me. I found brewing at 208 degrees tasted better than 195…for 3 minutes.

Chocolatey with jasmine floral-ness. Haven’t found a tea like it. Must have.