China Green Tips

1 full-leaf sachet for 400mL water (I think — great big mug at Starbucks), bare. I do not recommend the steep time I’ve recorded below.

(Backlogging.)

Starbucks keeps their hot water just under the boil, but it should be a little cooler for greens. I also lost track of time and left the sachet to steep waaaaayyyy too long. Like, a good 10 minutes. Yikes.

That said: I really like this green blend. Vegetal, for sure, though it gets briney if you leave it too long, like I did. Some creaminess and some sweetness. I can see this tea getting very bitter if the water is too hot, and it’s almost too hot at my local Starbucks. I’d suggest max 3 minutes steeping, and, if you’re at home, water below 90 degrees.

Treat this tea for the delicacy it is, and it should repay you with a quite acceptable and enjoyable China green liquor.

I’m in Washington state now visiting my friend and since I was packing in a hurry, I forgot to bring any tea. :( There are a few different kinds of tea bags here, though.
But yeah, this one was actually just a regular tea bag, not the full-leaf thing like in the picture. Mehh, it’s not so bad. Bordering on sour sometimes though, which is weird. Not much depth but I didn’t find it too bitter after a 2-3 minute steep.

A review of China Green Tips by Tazo Tea

Company: Tazo Tea
Tea Name: China Green Tips
Tea Type/Varietal: green
Region: China
Steeping Vessel/Amt. Leaf: tea cup/ tea bag
Plucking Season: Spring
Liquor Color:
Leaf Characteristics:

1st Steeping:
Water temperature: 190 Fahrenheit
Time: 3 minutes

I wanted a simple cup of tea and I reached for this tea by Tazo Tea. I take the tea bag and put in my cup adding cold tap water to it and put it in microwave for two minutes. I let steep for a minute more. Tea is brown in color and smell fresh and clean. When sipping this tea it is very mild with a lingering taste of green tea upon swallowing. In all it is light and lingers with its freshness in that you know it is green tea and nothing added.

I bought one of these teabags from a holiday trip to Hunstanton a little while ago to try at home at my leisure. The cafe server looked at me a little confused but it’s another tea for me to log and try so it’s worth it. :)

My experiences with Mao Feng are unfortunately not very positive overall as I find it usually unnecessary bitter and without much flavour. This claims to be a Mao Feng blend.

The bag contains small chopped up bits of green tea and resembles mixed herbs used for cooking. Raw the bag is a little bitter but not especially fresh or green.

Once brewed this is grassy yellow in colour with a extremely subtle floral fragrance. It’s very hard to detect any fragrance at all.

Flavour is light with a touch of floral tones and a gentle perfume tang. It’s also slightly bitter and astringent. I can’t detect any sweetness or creaminess that is mentioned in the default description. The tea itself is not particularly fresh and nor is it past your average standard quality (what you expect) but that’s the real problem with it.

This would be the sort of green tea that someone would buy for pure convenience over quality. It’s all around ‘just ok’ and while being ‘joe average’ is fine for some it just doesn’t cut it for me. I would not buy this again and nor would I order it from a menu.

This is my second office teabag tea of the day. I let the water cool for about 5 minutes before putting the tea bag in to avoid bitterness from scalded tea. It worked for the most part. The tea was a little bitter, but it mostly came out as the tea was cooling and was barely noticeable while the tea was still hot. I don’t really drink many Chinese green teas anymore because I prefer Japanese greens in general. However, this tea surprsingly reminded me of sencha more than it did of other Chinese green teas. It’s puzzling because the name of the tea acutally has “China” in it… It was less sharp and grassy than a lot of other Chinese greens I’ve had. It was more of a grassy/vegetal mix with perhaps even a bit of umami in there as well.

Maybe I’m not the best at explaining it eloquently, but as a mostly Japanese green, loose leaf tea drinker, I found this to be actually not too bad.

Desperate for some decent green tea while traveling, I picked some of this up (the full leaf sachets).. It’s okay. A little pleasant vegetal flavor, but other than that it’s flat, boring, and has a little bitterness to it. It’s definitely the best I can get around here, but it leaves a lot to be desired when you’re paying $7.99 for under an ounce of tea. I could get a very high quality loose leaf for that much. But it’s what I’m stuck with. Tazo just really bothers me. The description on the can makes it sound all nice and high grade, and there’s something written about how their “tea shamans” pick the finest teas and masterfully blend them and blah blah blah… But in Atlantic City, this is as close as I’m going to get to real tea.

This tea seems really bitter to me.
Why is this popular?

i think this is an excellent, high quality green tea. definitely vegetal…i mainly get a grass note from this (like a faded, sun-dried grass note, not fresh grass), but if i think about it, i do suppose string beans also come to mind! people are so creative (or highly sensorially gifted) when it comes to descriptions on here, that i’m starting to think a little meditation is in order before one sips a cup, so as to prime their senses properly! as with tea, one must give their brain a good rinse before steeping! ;)

this tea has been a favorite green of mine for many months now, whenever i visit Starbucks. so if i’m not in the mood for my usual black/sweet teas with milk & sugar, i can just as easily savor a cup of this in all its simplicity.

i’m on the fence too, about which green i’m liking most: Tazo’s Lotus Blossom or Stash’s Organic green (with a bag of Pukka’s Detox- read: fennel, rye bread- thrown in for savory delight!) they’re all so different and yet so lovely.

my 3 minute 2 icecube rule worked on this just fine, as it has with all my other green teas…so far. but this tea gets bitter very fast & i have had many burnt cups at Starbucks because they indiscriminately pour scalding hot water over the leaves. then again their specialty is coffee, not tea. if this were Teavana, they’d dump you down the drain (along with your cup) if you steeped Gyokuro Imperial for longer than 45 seconds!

ETA: i’m not happy with the rating i gave this because i think it’s better than a 76 (it’s at least an 80), but face-wise i’m just a little over smiley.

I’ve been enjoying this tea more these days than I would like to admit. I don’t know why, but its comforting simplicity is just magical to me. The best way to enjoy it in store is to get the tea bags on the side, and then put them in your cup about five or ten minutes after the water has had time to cool down sufficiently. Otherwise, this will be a big bitter mess.
The perfectly roasty, vegetative smell that this tea gives off is more than welcome right now. The slight astringency is also welcome. I’ve been feeling this tea even more than genmaicha’s soothing comfort these days, as I seem to be in a bit of a rut both tea-wise and life-wise, and China Green is an easy decision to make.
And who can overlook the ease with which this tea can be brewed? I love not having to measure, scoop, and clean my infuser. Not all the time, of course, but when the cup is this good, credit must be given where credit is due.

For the 3+ years I’ve worked at Starbucks, I’ve been trying to figure out a way to enjoy China Green Tips (especially since we switched to full leaf in 2009), but I just don’t like it! :[ I have access to essentially infinite bags of the stuff, and as I’ve mentioned in past tasting notes, I’ve tried many ways to enjoy it.

Eureka! I felt inspired to try something new yesterday after brewing up a cup of oft’ mentioned sencha from Yamamotoyama. At home I dust the leaves with matcha powder before brewing it to make my own rich ‘supergreen’ tea. At work, we also carry a matcha powder, though it is contaminated with a good amount of sugar. When I use the sweet matcha, it’s to put in a smoothie, steamed milk, or lemonade. I’d never thought to use it to ‘dust’.

12 ounces of water for two sachets. Steep it a bit and pour the hot tea into a shaker with a stingy pinch of matcha powder, swirl until it turns a nice fresh lime color. If it’s not ‘Kermit the Froggy’ enough (as my coworkers tend to describe my drinks) swirl in a touch more matcha. Add a big cup of ice, shake vigorously, pour into a tall cup, and adore the pretty color.

It’s not perfect. It’s still made from China Green Tips. It’s a utilitarian green; good more for a cup of antioxidants and other awesome green tea magic, and less for enjoying a nuanced flavor profile. It perks me up on those long shifts and is acceptable in taste.