How to Make Luckin's Jasmine Iced Americano? Can Jasmine Tea Be Consumed with Coffee?

Recently one coffee chain rolled out a jasmine series, and a second brand quickly followed with a jasmine coffee of its own. For a while this little white flower seemed to be everywhere, tempting everyone's taste buds.

FrontStreet Coffee is an educational platform, not a paid "blind tasting" panel. We have always favored the do-it-yourself approach, and the ingredients here are easy to find in everyday life, so making a cup at home is quite simple. Today, let us pair jasmine flowers with the familiar iced Americano and see how it turns out.

How to Choose Coffee Beans?

To make a delicious jasmine Americano, FrontStreet Coffee believes neither the jasmine tea nor the coffee can be chosen carelessly. Since jasmine drinks are delicate and elegant, we suggest using medium or medium-dark roasted beans, which make it easier to capture both the jasmine fragrance and the coffee flavor at the same time.

If you prefer fruity notes, lean toward beans whose flavor profiles point to berries, apricots, ripe fruit, and the like. Coffees such as Hawecha, Chaka, and Alo-extracted SOE all pair well with jasmine tea. If you want a richer coffee texture, look for descriptors like dried fruit, fermented wine aroma, sweet melon, and candy; Strawberry Candy, Rose Valley, Mozart, and Sidra can all express fruity notes in espresso while keeping a rich caramel sensation.

If all you have at home is a dark-roasted espresso bean but you still want a refreshing jasmine iced Americano, FrontStreet Coffee suggests pulling only a single shot, which is less likely to mask the floral aroma of the tea.

After some research and testing, FrontStreet Coffee has summarized three different ways to make a jasmine iced Americano: using store-bought beverages, quick hot water steeping, and cold brew tea. Choose whichever suits you. (All of the versions below are unsweetened. If you prefer sweetness, add 10-15g of syrup to taste.)

Using Store-Bought Beverages

When you just want a quick cup to satisfy a craving, using a ready-made beverage is by far the simplest option. There are plenty of jasmine teas on the market, most of them inexpensive, in both sweetened and unsweetened versions, and some even let you choose the strength. A simple jasmine iced Americano at home can be genuinely effortless.

FrontStreet Coffee first tried Oriental Leaf's unsweetened jasmine tea. On its own it is very drinkable, with a relatively light jasmine fragrance, and it does not clash when combined with coffee, so it is hard to get wrong. It is also the easiest to find.

Quick Hot Water Steeping

Anyone who drinks flower tea regularly knows that, compared with many ready-made beverages, tea brewed fresh from jasmine flowers captures the fresh taste of the blossom far better, and it shows when the drink is finished. So if you are in a hurry to head out and happen to have dried jasmine flowers or jasmine tea at home, FrontStreet Coffee suggests steeping them in hot water first, then combining.

The tea itself is not complicated to prepare. First, get a thermos (an ordinary teapot works too), add 1-1.5 grams of jasmine flowers, pour in 160ml of hot water, steep for 4-5 minutes, then strain out the flowers.

Cold Brew Tea

FrontStreet Coffee has noted in many articles that compared with hot water, cold water extracts coffee far less efficiently, with fewer interfering factors, releasing mostly small-molecule compounds. Bitterness usually makes up a smaller share, acidity is less sharp, and the texture is lighter and rounder. The same applies to cold brew tea.

For convenience, FrontStreet Coffee is using ordinary jasmine green tea bags from the market, at a ratio of one tea bag to 100g of pure water, which gives a more pronounced jasmine aroma. Just like making cold brew coffee, find a roomy, sealable container, place 2 jasmine tea bags inside, pour in 200g of room-temperature water, seal it, and refrigerate for 3 hours. Once steeped, simply remove the tea bags.

Preparation Steps

Step 1: Prepare a clean, large-capacity cup, add 2/3 ice (80g), then pour bottled jasmine tea to 8/10 of the cup's height.

Step 2: FrontStreet Coffee selected Ethiopian Hawecha 8.0 SOE beans and pulled a double shot using the store's standard recipe: 20 grams of coffee extracted for 31 seconds to yield 40 grams of liquid, then gently poured over the surface. (The ratio of coffee to jasmine tea is approximately 1:5.)

All the jasmine teas above emphasize a fresh fragrance and a lighter overall taste, so they serve as a base that will not overpower the coffee's own aroma. Paired with the citrus sweetness and acidity of the Hawecha SOE and the characteristic rich texture of espresso, the finished jasmine iced Americano has both the mellow richness of coffee and a refreshing floral-fruity profile.

One final note: because hot tea quickly melts the ice and dilutes the whole drink, when using the second method it is best to adjust the ratio slightly, keeping the coffee-to-jasmine-tea ratio at 1:4, meaning 40g of espresso to 160g of freshly brewed tea. At the same time, add 20-30g more ice or use a chilled cup to keep the iced texture.

FrontStreet Coffee Recommendation

For a clean, structured Americano, FrontStreet Classic Blend is an easy starting point. Blended from Indonesian Mandheling, Brazilian Red Bourbon, and washed Vietnamese coffee in a traditional Italian style, it combines the low-acid, full-bodied, herbal and woody character of Asian coffee with the balanced, smooth, creamy quality of the Americas. Extraction gives butter, nut, spice, and dark chocolate aromas, and its wild profile and generous crema make it just as good as an Americano or a latte.

If you want the fruity, floral character that jasmine calls for, FrontStreet Strawberry Candy Espresso is a medium roast that brings together single-origin Arabicas from Colombia, Costa Rica, and Ethiopia, using washed, natural, and honey processing to lift the aroma. Low in bitterness and lightly acidic, it carries a rose note and pours grape, dried blueberry, sweet orange, and fruit-candy flavors in an Americano or latte, with a distinctive almond finish.

For a single-origin option, FrontStreet Ethiopia Huakui SOE is a natural-processed lot from the Hambella area of Sidamo. Pulled as espresso and lengthened with water for an SOE Americano, it has no bitterness, just a bright, refreshing sweet-and-sour balance with rich tropical fruit aromas and creamy strawberry, guava, dried mango, black tea, and citrus notes.