What I mean by hybrid is like mélanges like green tea & ginger, green tea & jasmine, etc.
I find they lend a nice upper/downer tonality, like in the previous example I’d go with ginger green tea if I really wanted to focus, and jasmine if I was trying to coax a more relaxed vibe.
Does Genmaicha count as hybrid, would be one of my favorite kind of tea. But usualy i rather prefer pure green tea than hybrids.
One of my favorite teas is Candycane Lane by Celestial Seasonings, it is green tea and peppermint.
Sounds Moroccan.
The name or the combination? I am still trying to figure this one out.
The combination of green tea and mint.
Oh I love all those wacky teas. Don’t recall seeing that one at the grocery store though. Will keep my eyes peeled!
Palais des Thés do a tea called Thé du Hammam which is what I have every morning after breakfast. Best green tea blend I know:
https://www.palaisdesthes.com/en/hammam-tea-861-en.html
They do many other fine green tea blends. Dammann Frères do a blend called 1 2 3, Je M’en Vais aux Bois which is also good:
https://www.dammann.fr/en/1-2-3-je-m-en-vais-aux-bois-.html
I love green tea and jasmine too.
It’s worth exploring this space. France seems to dominate, dunno why. I’m British and import these blends.
By hybrid, I think you mean flavored teas. Flavoring can be roughly divided in two categories: artificial and traditional.
Artificial flavoring includes use of different kinds of extracts, such as oils, and other kinds of flavoring agents. I’m not a big fan of this type of flavoring. It’s often used to mask the taste of low quality tea leaves, and the tea is often so strongly flavored that you can’t even taste the tea at all. Artificial flavors, especially the cheaper ones, tend to have one dimensional taste. They can have good strong taste and scent, but you might get bored of the taste quickly.
Traditional means the use of traditional flavoring methods. This can mean mixing some actual plant parts, like flowers or fruits, with the tea leaves. Tea leaves can also be dried in containers that give flavor to the tea leaves. This type of flavoring gives more complex taste and the flavoring is often used to enhance, not replace, the taste of the tea leaves. Rose buds, for example, are commonly used in flavored teas. Genmaicha is traditional Japanese green tea which is flavored with roasted rice. There are also stuffed tangerine tea, which are made by stuffing empty tangerine shells full of tea leaves and then drying them.
And then there are tisanes, sometimes called herbal infusions or herbal teas. Tisanes doesn’t contain any tea, or any other caffeine containing plants. They are nice option if you want some caffeine-free hot drink.
For myself I was thinking more in terms of actual blends, like 15g green tea with 5g dried ginger, although I’m not knocking other methods of getting the flavours / effects of multiple teas/tisanes into one brew.
I would still call it flavored tea. If the tea only contains dried pieces of plants, without added extracts, etc. it falls in the category of traditionally flavored teas, in my simplified categorization. Those pieces can also be called inclusions.
Ginger tea is something you could make at home. Buy some tea leaves and either fresh or dried ginger, and mix them together. Jasmine tea is more difficult, as dried jasmine flowers loses their taste. To make jasmine tea, you either need to use extracts or you need to use fresh flowers which are allowed to dry while mixed with tea leaves. Tea leaves are like sponges: they absorb scents/odors. In many commercial teas, jasmine flowers are used only for visual appeal. The taste is added with extracts.
I haven’t had any green tea hybrids but I did have a herbal that was a banger. It had just the right amount of ginger to hit the throat. Super good.
Personally I have yet to find a jasmine I like, it’s probably just the quality I’ve found but to me they always seem bitter for 95% of the stuff you can buy.
Horcha has been a recent love of mine, I love the smokey-ness of it. Horcha with a touch of cinnamon might be a hybrid worth trying. Who knows
Horcha with a touch of cinnamon might be a hybrid worth trying.
This sounds amazing. Might have to experiment…
