Jasmine Green

OH MY CEILING CAT WHY MUST IT BE SO HOT???

I think I’ve worked out what controls my green tea moods and my black tea moods. It’s heat. When it’s hot, green tea seems more refreshing. When it isn’t hot, it often seems to be a little boring to drink for me. When it isn’t hot, I like the strength of a good black much better. Oolongs, they’re sort of an all-round type.

It’s hot today, so I turn towards green. This one, with it’s strong jasmine flavour, probably wasn’t the best choice but it was the first tin I saw.

goes back to melting

I am having a cup of this today, and de-Cupboarding as I only have enough for another pots worth.

A really lovely jasmine. Not my favorite, but, definitely a good one. The jasmine is soft and sweet and the green tea tastes lush and vibrant. This tea has managed to maintain its sweet, fresh taste even though it’s not the youngest tea I’ve got in my cupboard.

Still quite nice, and happy to be sipping on it.

A Jasmine Green tea experience fail has occurred. Cause: Faulty user cannot compute JGreen correctly.

Yesterday afternoon, I heated up some chicken curry with onions and green peppers. A cup of JGreen sounded like it would go great with the meal. For the past week or two, my allergies have been acting up in varies degrees of horribleness, trending towards worse over time. While JGreen was indeed a great compliment to the meal, somehow the floraliness of the tea was being associated in my head with contributing to the awful feeling of the allergies. The tea tasted delicious but my mind was interpreting it as this is bad for your allergies.

I finished the first cup and thought I would get another steep or few in at some point during the rest of the day. I thought about it several times but never brought myself to do it. I hated throwing out the leaves after only one steep. It felt a bit wasteful, especially since I so enjoy this tea usually.

I did start taking Zyrtec yesterday and am now going through the 5-7 day adjustment period where I’m pretty groggy at times until my body gets used to the medicine. I was hoping to make it through the allergy season with just some bad days but no meds. Alas, that was not the case. I am confident that once the allergy symptoms have subsided fully I shall be able to enjoy JGreen without any hangups.

1 rounded TB for 500mL water, drunk bare (nothing added).

As others have noted, jasmine does a cheery ‘Ta-da!’ when you open the tin. And that’s great.

I set the timer but couldn’t repond right away and ended up with more of a 4-minute steep. With that length of a steep, a new scent wafts up from the brew: line-dried white shirts. That incredibly clean scent you only get in summer when you, that’s right, hand white shirts on the line to dry in the sun and the wind. I love that.

The longer steep thickens the body a bit; any longer and it might get soapy. I’ll probably water this cuppa down a bit. But oh, that clean, irreplacable lovely jasmine. I can taste more of the green tea base today, too: a sweet green, as others have pointed out, thank goodnes, not grassy and not briny.

Jasmine fabness. One of the best I’ve tried. Up there with some of the jasmine pearls.

I deliberately overbrewed this using boiling water and keeping the leaves steeped in my travel mug—and it still tastes wonderful! The flavor is deliciously toasty and potent but the overall effect still manages to be bright and creamy. There is briskness toward the end, but no bitterness!

This is a very easy-going tea. It seems I can’t go wrong with it.

(instead of a demanding, high-maintenance diva :) )

Every time I see the tin for this tea, it makes me want to sing Lady Marmalade (original Labelle one, s’il vous plaît!)

http://videosift.com/video/LaBelle-Lady-Marmalade-original

Mmmmmm these tea leaves smell good!!!!

1st steep: Hellooooooo Gorgeous! Floral, fruity and sweet. Maybe I’m crazy but I taste something like banana or some other sweet tropical fruit!!! It’s different from any of the green jasmines I’ve so far tasted, and I really like it. I lowered the temp and steeping time slightly based on what others have said and I think it was a good way to go.

2nd steep: (3min) A lighter sweet and floral cup. I really can’t get over the natural sweetness!

Also – magical mood lifting properties in full effect!

Gitchi Gitchi Ya Ya Da Da!!!!

After a day full of errands I arrived back at my apartment to fin my mailbox stuffed with A&D tea. I really wanted to try this one first because I have another Jasmine tea coming from Mighty Leaf tomorrow. I wanted to see how this lived up to how I remember that tea.

I have to say, I love A&D’s packaging. Such bright vibrant, detailed labels (hippie chick with an afro on this tin, amazing!). I brewed 2 tsps in 12oz water at 175F.

I am enjoying the strength of the jasmine flavor in this. It doesn’t taste perfumey, it tastes sweet, smooth and floral (as it should). The base tea is sweet and melds well with the jasmine flavors.

I will have to do a side by side comparison of the two jasmine’s to determine which I like more, although I’m not sure it matters, as I like both, and this is a limited tea. Nice job with this blend DFT!

I was at a loss. I wanted to try this tea really badly, but I also had to go to class. And then I remembered that I had that travel tumbler from Teas Etc. that Steepster Select ran a while ago.

Crisis aborted.

Class actually wasn’t bad, but I was going in sleepy and I credit this tea to keeping me fully awake for three hours of lecture. This is going to have to become a regular practice of mine.

So, the tea.

The tea kapowed me in the face with scent when I opened the tin. I almost half-expected to see a little cartoon splat with WAP! in it. It was almost stronger than Samovar or Harney & Son’s Jasmine Pearl teas smell, which is kind of impressive if slightly overwhelming. I was a little bit afraid that the tea would judo chop my taste buds, but I steeped it, dumped it into my travel tumbler, and headed out into the cold.

And so I sat in class, listening about the physics of acoustics, and I unscrewed the lid on my tumbler.

Smells good. Strong, but good. It didn’t have that artificial tinge that some jasmines can have, which was a very good sign. Good good good good good.

Took a sip, tentatively. It was in that lovely temperature between hot and lukewarm that tips just a little bit closer to hot. The taste of jasmine filled my senses and, after it had been downed, that lovely perfumed sweetness tickled my breath when I exhaled. I had to suppress a little giggle and concentrate on standing waves for a bit, before returning to the tea.

I managed to time finishing the tumbler with our break in lecture [for which my bladder thanked me] and found myself wishing I had more to sip on during the rest of the lecture. It probably ended up working out well, though, because the caffeine kept me awake and I would have been wired if I’d had enough to last me through the end of class.

Jasmine Green wasn’t pretty strictly jasmine tasting, and it was not a quiet, lullaby-like taste. It was more Whitney Houston power ballad – you know, old school Whitney. I Will Always Love You Whitney. This doesn’t have some of the other notes I’ve gotten out of jasmine tea – like the cocoa notes I sometimes get in Samovar’s; it’s really a solo act. But like Kevin Gillespie in Top Chef has proven – keeping things simple and doing them well can be pretty damn effective. And this tea plays that hand with skill.

Series three has hit the ground running.

Whoot! I just recently got the package Takgoti sent me and this was one of the teas she included. I’m really excited about trying the Samovar ones, but I’m almost scared that I’ll end up wrecking them!

I have to say that I’m a little disapointed at how small and broken up the leaves are – thought that could have happened easily enough in the mail, I suppose. The scent of the tea is a little ‘green’ but mostly it makes me think “Mmm, jasmine soap…wait-!” Sooooo maybe not the most auspicious beginning, but let’s move along.

I have to say that I think it’s too perfumed for my tastes. The taste-recognition part of my brain keeps sending me ‘jasmine soap’ which I like well enough – just not to drink. The green tea base strikes me as a tad bitter aswell, unfortunatly. I’ve got more leaf to experiment with so maybe I’ll reduce the length of the steep next time.

Some of this on a warm summer afternoon? Lovely.