Jasmine Tea

My second Gongfu of today. My previous experience with this tea was not a positive one (so much so that I did not review or rate). My first encounter was bitter and sharp (from what I remember) which I believe to be down to their default instructions. The packet says to use boiling water and keep covered for 5 minutes. It was yucky.

My Gongfu today is using a cooler water temperature and having my first pot steep for 1 minute. My own instructions :)

The leaves whilst raw are a dark brown colour with the occasional yellow flower bud or stem. It has a scent of musky jasmine.

What is produced is a lovely honey coloured tea with that beautiful sweet, floral jasmine scent (that us much expected). This is much tastier than before, it’s far more subtle with the sweet jasmine being fresh, light and at a perfect strength. The quality is not by any means the best but this was a cheap tea (roughly £3 for 227g/8 oz) so for that price it’s a nice every day jasmine tea.

Well first I thought I would have to throw this tea away but my second try with different methods has worked wonders. I may even take this to work. :)

We went kicking around a local asian supermarket today in search of a gaiwan (no luck) and any other random gems we could find. So we picked out a couple of things to try.

I have to say, the price of this jasmine green is really the only reason I picked it up. 150g for sub-$3, in a neat little blue tin. The tin probably isn’t airtight, and I don’t exactly have the faculties (or patience, really) to test that… but the seal is pretty darn impressive.

This tea is exactly what I expect from a Chinese restaurant, which, well, is because this is probably the exact tea I get from a Chinese restaurant. A light floral flavor, the green tea barely coming in at the end of the flavor, a mild but noticeable astringency. Compared to the Jasmine Pearls I have from Mad Hat, the flavor of this tea (particularly the Jasmine flavor) is much more subdued.

They had four different Jasmine teas by Fujian tea, one in a yellow square tin as pictured, one in a red square tin, the blue cylindrical tin that I bought, and then a green cylindrical tin. No differentiation other than a serial number up top that might mean something (mine is 2063). Well, and all of the writing that I don’t understand may mean something too, but I just assume it says Jasmine Tea in Chinese :).

I might keep this around. The quality definitely isn’t that of the pearls from Mad Hat (and I’m eventually going to want to try the pearls from Teavivre), but man… at this price… SO CHEAP. IT IS SO INSANELY CHEAP. Sorry, had to get that out.

This one fell pretty short night the night before last. It was very heavy on the jasmine and quite bitter. I brewed all of them at 176 for 1 minute. That was the instructions on the Teavivre package. None of the other packages had clear instructions. So one ring to rule them all. I think in the future I may have to try a lower temperature and see if I can get rid of that bitterness.

When I saw teawing’s review of this, I knew I had seen this tin before. We have a fairly large Asian market and I go there every now and then. Today I had a good excuse to go and there it was! This was only $2.39 for the small tin which is 120 grams.

Upon opening, there is a nice, strong jasmine aroma. It is strong, but it doesn’t accost you like the jasmine black I bought at A Southern Season.

I prepared it as I would any green, and not as the tin recommends.

Steeped, the aroma is really lovely. The tea is smooth with a little astringent edge, but quite good, and pretty unbelievable for the price. I could happily sip away on this regularly.

Thank you, teawing, for alerting us to this little treasure! There is another listing for it under Jasmine tea by Sunflower, and I think Fujian is just the distributor, but the tin is unmistakeable!

I was busy when we made this so I kinda forgot about it while it was sitting right next to my laptop :/. I think that probably affected the taste, but I’ll try to be as objective as possible.

I get a nice, fresh, floral aroma from the cup. I can’t say it’s specifically jasmine, but seems fresh enough. Unfortunately, I also get a ton of bitter green tea smell too. I think, largely, that’s a result of me letting it sit so long before drinking it, but I also think to some extent it as to do with the tea. It’s just too bitter and not flavorful enough to compensate for the bitterness. The instructions say boiling water for 7 mins which seems like a lot for green tea , so I think it could just be a lower quality tea. It was also pretty cheap :)

I’m going to have to give this one another shot sometime…just don’t know when.

Bagged
Appearance:
Aroma when Dry: sweet jasmine floral, soapy
After water is first poured: hints of jasmine
At end of steep: hints of grassy jasmine
Tea liquor:
At end of steep: Light yellow
Staple? Type yes, would not buy brand
Preferred time of day: any

Taste:
At first?: flat jasmine notes, hints of grassiness
As it cools?: taste gets lighter, slightly soapy

Additives used (milk, honey, sugar etc)? No
Lingers? Yes, with faint floral creamy notes

Got a sample of this from Jillian (thank you so much!) and gave it a whirl this morning. I thought it was a fairly average jasmine; no outstanding notes, no detracting characteristics. Hubby thought it was pretty good. Not one I’ll actively seek out, but not a bad tea at all.

Typical, run-of-the-mill jasmine green tea.

Just picked this up at a local oriental market. It was pretty much all they had for loose-leaf, and only $2.25 to boot (so how am I not going to buy this?) They recommend 3g/cup, boiling water (for green tea?), for 5minutes. In reality, I think I used 4g/10-12oz boiling water.

I really think I’ve burnt myself out on green tea for quite a while, but this one smells less like grass clippings and much more like…well…jasmine. Refreshing. It reminds me of Chinese restaurants and old-lady floral perfume both at once.

Hm. Not bad. Although there’s a slight bitterness and astringency (my mouth feels a little dry with each sip), the sensation isn’t overwhelming. It’s towards the end of the sip and only on the middle of my tounge, just before the swallow. There’s a little greeny-sweet in there too. My mouth is full of jasmine if I breathe through my nose. Neat. Next time I think I’ll play with the temp. …or maybe the amt of leaf. This is getting more bitter the closer I get to the bottom of my cup. :/

I pick this up when ever Im in Chinatown, and today I threw in some rosemary and thyme cause Im sick with a head-chest cold

I’ve passed this tea in the International Foods section of the grocery store for a long time, but I didn’t really take note until I saw it mentioned favorably here on Steepster. So the last time the boyfriend-creature and I were shopping I tossed this into the cart (accompanied by much eye-rolling on my boyfriend’s part) figuring that since it was only four bucks for a decent-sized tin, why not?

The dry leaves were quite fragrant and I was worried at first that it would be a jasmine-overdose. I fecked up the first cup unfortunately, since the water wasn’t hot enough (I was guess-timating with my kettle) and I ended up steeping longer than I should’ve to make up for it. So the first cup was rather harsh-tasting, although I was relieved to note that the jasmine wasn’t too powerful.

I resteeped the leaves to much better results which I’m drinking as I type this. It’s not a bold-tasting tea, although it IS slightly astringent, though not in an unpleasent way (if you steep it right, that is). I’ve also noticed that it has a sweetness to it that becomes more pronounced as the tea cools.

6 years ago, I would of thought this tea was amazing. Now? It’s a good tea when I’m watching my tea budget, which is now. I make an iced quart of tea for work off and on. The jasmine flavor is at a strength I like, not too overpowering where I can’t taste the tea itself. The tea itself is good, mild. Once I go through this tin, I probably won’t buy more unless I need to tighten my tea budget. For the price, you can’t find a better tea. The Asian grocer in my town seems to have a good turn around on this tea.

I’m fairly sure that I oversteeped this, as it came out so incredibly bitter that I had to add sugar just to drink it. I’ll give at another try and an actual rating some other time.

Note to self: stop getting distracted while brewing your tea!

Although I do have to mention that I have this tea in an utterly gorgeous tin, dark blue with flying cranes, and the tea’s pretty much worth it just for that. I wish I remembered where I got it from.

Cold brewed overnight. A little bitter so I added some simple syrup. Not sure I like the jasmine, it’s a little strong. Very very flowery. Luckily this was super cheap, less than 3 dollars. Also comes in a nice tin that I’ll stick another label on and reuse later.

Oh, this tea. Like most of the other Steepsterites, I found this at an Asian market — that is, the new Asian market in Moscow, ID, that has good turmeric, frozen lemongrass, some really nice peanut/sesame/adzuki mochi and Rotiland frozen rotis. One look at this place and it was instant love.

The only bad thing about this place is that there’s a $5 purchasing minimum. I can’t just pop in and get some Fruitery jellies or hot mango chutney — I have to buy multiple small things together. I guess that’s the reason I got this (they had mango Fruitery, and it was only $1.59). The tin of this jasmine tea was $1.99, and I’ve always seen it in the other Asian markets, so I decided to splurge. I was pretty glad that I did.

The smell from the tin is very floral, and the taste of the tea is, too. It’s incredibly sweet and aromatic, and really great for blah days. I’ve had pretty unhappy run-ins with jasmine teas before, so I was a bit wary of the strength of this tea. However, it’s not too bitter or too strong (unless you leave the leaves in for 30 minutes while drinking, which I did the first time). In fact, I brewed this tea, left it for approximately ten minutes, then remembered it. I thought it’d be horrible overdone, but it was perfect. It seems that the taste doesn’t change much from about 5 minutes to 10 minutes of steeping. Lucky me, since I’m the tea-forgetting queen of the world.

Overall, I’ve had good experiences with this tea. It may not be too special for someone who loves jasmine and drinks it regularly, but it’s good enough for me to keep it as a regular in my tea stash. Oh, and the tin is adorable.

For $2.99 at the local Hmong grocery store (and in a lovely blue cylindrical tin no less), I figured, like many who’ve commented, that if I hated this tea it wouldn’t be much of a loss. After one cup, the verdict is: no hate whatsoever, but no special love. To me this is not as sweet or smooth a jasmine flavor as others I have had, even other jasmine greens. The scent in the leaf is mildly artificial-smelling to me. It improves when brewed, but not to the really intoxicating level of, say, Samovar’s Silver Needle Jasmine. (But then…not much rises to that level.) This brews up medium reddish-brown, with tea dust in the bottom. The bitterness isn’t bad at first (I was really careful to brew for no more than two minutes), but does get worse as you get to the bottom of the mug, as others have noticed. (The fault of the small amount of tea dust? I dunno.) The jasmine doesn’t taste artificial in the brewed tea—sigh of relief—but the green tea base is not particularly good or bad, just a basic Chinese green tea base. I personally like Chinese greens in general, so I’m glad I gave this a try, and will drink more of it. And of course I’ll keep the gorgeous tin it came in, for future teas! But probably will not buy this again. The world is too full of better-quality jasmine teas than this one!

I just moved to San Francisco, and in the neighborhood I live in, this stuff is everywhere! Everywhere, as in any store with goods from South East Asia. This has been a really refreshing add.

For the price, it’s worth it. I use it as a nice relaxer at the end of the day if I don’t want to have to put too much care into a perfect cup. A little box of this kept me alive when I went home to Ohio for three months, where, “Isn’t that supposed to be in a bag?” would be easy to hear.

Not the highest quality, sure. It’s got a good realistic jasmine aroma. I’ve steeped it a number of different ways, and I enjoy about 2-2.5 or 3 minutes at 175 the best. Don’t listen to the package. I don’t know what they’re talking about. Flowery aroma, slightly earthy taste, smooth if steeped shorter. A satisfying tea.

they also have this bagged. but i couldnt taste/smell the jasmine very much…so im wondering is there really that huge a difference between the loose leaves in the tin and that bagged ones when they have the same name?

i will try steeping with 2 bags next time.

Not the best jasmine I’ve had, but decent enough. It’s too bitter for my taste and I have to add something sweet — but then again, I almost always feel the need to sweeten floral teas. As others have said, this is definitely worth the low price point and I personally expect to keep some around as long as I’m on a budget.

Backlogging from SF. I hardly steeped this tea at all, and I enjoyed the light floral flavor. I steeped it many times in my hotel room with the teeny tiny coffee cups.