Tag: Green Tea

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Tielka’s Jade Mist

Jade Mist by Tielka
Green Tea / Straight
$13.00 for 56g

Tielka has provided me with Jade Mist for the purposes of writing an honest review.

Until June 28th 2020, when you order a pouch of Jade Mist from Tielka, you’ll receive a free storage tin with your order when you mention One More Steep in the comments of your order!

First Impressions

Jade Mist comes in a white cardstock box with a printed the label (that has a handy dandy perforation that goes right over the box flap. The tea leaf itself comes in a vacuum sealed pouch that is not resealable (but I solved that easily with a zip top baggie). The leaves are Wulu green tea from Hubei Province, China. These leaves are harvest in the spring time (April to May) and are “hand harvested and crafted by organic artisan tea farmers”. Huge bonus, Tielka highlights that their tea is certified free trade and organic.

The leaves of Jade Mist are dark to light green, short and wiry. The aroma is really fresh – there’s some grassy and cucumber notes that are just really enticing and remind me of the crispness after a nice rainfall. Very much a light aroma, but it’s inviting.

Preparation

Tielka recommends steeping Jade Mist in 70°C (158°F) water for 3 minutes. My variable temperature kettle (Breville’s the IQ Kettle) doesn’t quite go down that low… So I heated my water up to the lowest setting 79°C (175°F) and allowed the water to cool for 5 minutes before steeping my tea.

First Taste

Jade Mist steeps to this brilliant yellow colour. The aroma of the tea is bright, grassy and fresh smelling. The tea itself is smooth with a very mild astringency and slight umami notes. I found the tea to have some cucumber notes n the flavour as well, which is really nice. It just had a nice freshness to it that makes it really tasty.

A Second Cup?

I resteeped Jade Mist twice, adding an additional 30 seconds for each subsequent steep. I found the flavour to be fairly similar throughout and it held up really well to resteeping. Plus it was just really fun to see the changes in the leaves as they opened up and revealed such a lovely olive green colour.

My Overall Impression

I loved Tielka’s Jade Mist. There was just something so pleasant and fresh about this green tea – from the dry leaf to steeped tea to admiring the spent leaves at the end. I would highly recommend making sure you follow the temperature suggestion so you don’t burn the leaves and end up with a bitter cup of tea, because it’s just so pleasant! I really enjoyed the crispness in this tea and the umami notes.

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Whisk Premium Matcha’s Organic Hojicha Powder

Organic Hojicha Powder by Whisk Premium Matcha
Green Tea / Straight
$29.00 for 100g

First Impressions

Out of the purchases I had shared from the 2020 Vancouver Tea Festival in my Instagram stories, the Organic Hojicha Powder that I picked up from Kimmy at Whisk Premium Matcha did garner the most interest. What do you do with it? What does it taste like? Is it better than matcha? Answers: whatever you want (drink, use in baking, smoothies, etc); I’m going to get to that; and no? yes? I guess that really depends on if you like matcha or not.

Organic Hojicha Powder comes in a big shiny black pouch that is sealed and resealable with lovely black printed labels on the front and back. Whisk Premium Matcha describes Organic Hojicha Powder as a roasted and ground Japanese green tea, it’s single-origin and farm direct, USDA organic and from Uji, Kyoto, Japan.The power itself has a warm brown cocoa-like appearance. There is a strong roasted tea aroma that seems much stronger than a typical hojicha that hasn’t been ground into a fine powder (which I also like).

Preparation

Whisk Premium Matcha recommends whisking Organic Hojicha Powder with some warm water. No temperature suggestions were given, so I simply went with the lowest temperature setting on my Breville IQ Kettle (still my best purchase 4 years later and going strong every day!) – which is 175°F (79°C).

I did prepare Organic Hojicha Powder much like I do matcha – I scooped some of the powder up and sifted it into my matcha bowl, added a bit of water, whisked it, and then added further water to thin it out. I went over the basics of preparing matcha a while ago, but linking it here for easy reference!

First Taste

Organic Hojicha Powder easily whisks up to a dark almost chocolate brown. It has a really strong roasted and nutty aroma to it – reminds me of a steeped hojicha tea, but amplified. The flavour is very strong – roasted, toasted nutty flavours, just a soft and mild floral note in the background. I found the strong nutty flavour really lingers on the tongue. Organic Hojicha Powder is intense compared to a regular hojicha in terms of flavour.

A Second Cup?

Like a matcha, Organic Hojicha Powder is a suspension so there are no second steeps with the same powder.

My Overall Impression

I loved Whisk Premium Matcha’s Organic Hojicha Powder. There’s just something really great about it that just punches you in the taste buds with all of those intense flavours – roasted and toasted flavours, the nuttiness throughout, the sweet that just peeks through the flavour profile to make itself known. I can definitely see myself utilizing this in a hojicha latte, or using it in baking in place of cocoa or matcha – I think it’d be pretty tasty!

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Teakan’s Laoshan Green

Laoshan Green by Teakan
Green Tea / Straight
$25.00 for 70g

Laoshan Green is part of the Teakan’s Spring 2020 Exploration box, which I purchased at the 2020 Vancouver Tea Festival back in March. This Exploration Box consists of 5 teas and Laoshan Green was 15g of the 70g.

First Impressions

Laoshan Green is a green tea that was a 2020 Vancouver Tea Festival purchase. The tea comes in a sealed, resealable kraft paper pouch with the minimalism white and black label on the packaging. I still appreciate the simplicity of the label because it just really allows the tea itself to shine. No fancy packaging, no glitzy illustrations – just simple.

Laoshan Green is a Chinese green tea from Laoshan, Shandong, China. The leaves were harvested in autumn 2019. The leaves are thin and wiry. The colours vary from a light grass green to a deep olive green. Such variation in shades of green! And it has a sweet, grassy aroma – which I find both inviting and tempting because I love a good green tea.

Preparation

Teakan offers two different steeping recommendations. With the gongfu method, Teakan recommends 80°C (176°F) water for 5 seconds and the western method at 80°C (176°F) water for 3o seconds.

Because 5 seconds was just a wee bit too quick for me, I opted to steep Laoshan Green in the western method.

First Taste

Laoshan Green steeps to a beautiful pale yellow-green colour. The aroma is grassy, with hints of honey sweetness in the background. The flavour of the tea has a mix of grass and vegetables – it has a nice crispness to it that reminds me a lot of green beans – which I like. There’s a sweetness to it that reminds me of honey, but it’s not overpowering the other flavours in this green tea.

A Second Cup?

I did four resteeps of Laoshan Green (five steeps total). I added an additional 30 seconds for each subsequent steep. The green bean and grassy notes are most intense in the first resteep, and slowly begin to wane after that. I found that the flavour stayed really nice throughout each steep, and I think I could have gone further if I had wanted to put in more time into steeping it. It’s pleasant and tasty though, so I quite enjoyed it.

My Overall Impression

I loved Teakan’s Laosha Green. I really enjoyed the flavour of the tea, I found the grassy and green bean notes to be delightful and be a treat to steep because of how well the tea resteeped and how much I liked the flavours. The honey sweetness that was present was enjoyable, and didn’t overwhelm the grassy notes. I love the flavour profile found in this straight tea, and found the sweet balanced really nicely against the green bean and grassy notes that I found in Laoshan Green.

Curious about the cup rating system? Click here to learn more.