Russian Morning No. 24

There is a small family owned grocery in San Francisco called Bi-Rite; they just opened one in my neighborhood so I took a walk down there this morning. It’s definitely on the upscale side of things, very yuppifed, oh well. Probably won’t be making a lot of major purchases there but they do have a nice tea selection.

I’ve never tried this tea from Kusmi and decided it might be worth the splurge. The box says it is a blend of China, Ceylon and India teas. Note: this is the muslin teabag box and not the loose leaf. There seems to be something vaguely “citrusy” about this blend, both in the aroma and the flavor. If I had to take a guess, I’d say the Indian tea is a nilgiri which accounts for that brightness. Though it could be a darjeeling as well.

Anyway this is a good tea to sip on plain, not a trace of bitterness anywhere. I decided to drink this with a slice of lemon and that was a really good call. I can see it would be good with a splash of soymilk or milk, but it definitely does not need sugar. I actually like this blend a lot but I was thinking it would be more hefty than it is somehow. I would drink this in the afternoon too. Very enjoyable — might need to keep this in the permanent collection but at the price I probably wouldn’t drink it every day.

A couple of the other reviewers mentioned lapsang but I am not detecting any smoke in this whatsoever, how odd.

This tea will put some hair on your chest! I really like it. Russian Morning is lightly smoky but definitely full bodied. It would be a great intro into the world of Lapsang Souchong. Training wheels, if you will. This tea is smooth and slightly pine-y…not full blown campfire. The blend of black teas meshes nicely. The thing that surprises me the most about this tea is how clean it tastes and feels in my mouth. The smoke is there…some sweetness too, but clean, clean, clean. Quite tasty! TeaEqualsBliss sent me a sample of this back in the day. I’m glad I finally got up the courage to give it a go. Thanks chick!

I got a sample of this at the same time I found the great big tin of Kusmi’s Caramel. It was Lena’s recent post about it that made me want to try it out. I want to see how it holds up to Kusmi’s Samovar (which they also had a sample of btw. I didn’t have to go to France to get that one after all, apparently. Except I think I’d still have wanted a full sized tin of it).

It’s been standing around in my kitchen for a while because I wasn’t really in the right mindset to do a first post type post. They take much more thought activity to write than other posts. (I’m also, as you may have noticed, currently spectacularly rubbish at keeping up with the follow list these days. Sorry about that)

Anyway, I pried open the little tin with some difficulty and took a look at the leaves. They had that sort of dusty black look to them and looked just like your average tea leaves. They had a nicely fresh aroma, though. Kind of Darjeeling-y greenish grass-y fresh, nearly. Kusmi isn’t very forthcoming about the exact contents of the tin apart from black tea from these countries. Not even the district. So I don’t know if there is Darjeeling in it, but it definitely smells a lot like there is. Interesting.

Due to the nature of the cup I can’t really say for certain but it looks remarkably dark. Almost as dark as coffee. Interesting. It may have something to do with my brewing though. Lately my pattern has changed a bit in regards to steeping time and leaf usage.

The aroma after brewing is fairly far away from the aroma of the dry leaves. Gone is the Darjeeling-y character, and instead there’s a very very sweet note. Honey-y even. That rather smells a bit like Assam or Ceylon of some sort to me. It smells as if it has been sweetened with a generous amount of honey, to be honest, but I swear I’ve added nothing to it. Interesting.

Okay, this is a little bitter, which again brings Darjeeling to mind. It definitely has a hint of overdone Darjeeling. I need to mess with the leaf dosage here, I think.

I’m pretty sure there is some smoke in there too, but the bitterness is masking it somewhat. That’s a little annoying. It also doesn’t taste even remotely as sweet as it smells at this point, but I think that’s also there underneath the little mishap from above.

This definitely has the potential of being a really awesome tea, but I’m going to hold off on giving it a rating for now. I need to play with it a bit first and see if I can get that unruly Darjeeling note to step in line.

It hasn’t turn so bitter at this point as to be undrinkable, and a dose of cane sugar helped immensely. (I have this nice sugar dispenser thing which is much easier and much more decorative to keep on the table than a bowl of sugar) With that sugar in it the bitterness is pushed way back and the other flavours are coming out to play.

There’s a fair amount of astringency in this actually. (I think. Could also be I’m just thirsty) I can definitely pick up the Ceylon-y parts of the flavour at this point. Strangely the hint of the honey-y sweetness hasn’t really been brought out by the addition of sugar like you would think they would. Instead they seem to have almost disappeared… Odd.

I don’t have any milk, but if I had, I’d definitely have tried it with a bit of milk too. I’m certain this is strong enough to be able to carry milk, even if it hasn’t been a little overdosed like this particular cup has.

Considering how it turned out once I added some sugar and the promises it makes if NOT overdone, I’m thinking somewhere around 75-80 points-ish. But without a better brewing, I don’t really feel comfortable giving it a ‘real’ rating yet.

I was sick for a couple of weeks starting about three weeks ago, and guess what. The 4 year old now has what I had. He’s getting better; today’s the first time in four days he hasn’t had fever. But as a result of his being home sick, and me just now being well after a pretty nasty bug, I’m pretty emotionally spent. I’ve been trying to work from home while attending to him, but I haven’t been exercising or paying attention to what I eat and I feel bloated and my energy level is like, nowhere, man. I haven’t even felt like making tea. Though if someone made some for me I’d drink it.

I thought this might be a good choice to break me back in since Kusmi tends to be fairly mild. I have a little sample tin of this, and they fill these to the brim. When I stick the spoon into these little tins I always feel somehow like I’m loading a pipe with tobacco. I have to use the fingers of the non-spoon hand to keep the tea in the spoon while I’m trying to get it out of the tin without boosting tea over the edge and onto the counter.

In the tin, the leaves have that spidery, Ceylon look to them. They smell slightly smoky, and mysteriously, slightly sharp like an oolong or a darjeeling. There’s no maltiness that I can detect.

The tea’s aroma, though, does have some maltiness. I’m guessing there’s some Assam in here. It also has a fruity smell, slightly berry-ish. But also some stone fruit notes? It doesn’t quite steep to the Ceylon red/orange color that’s so gorgeous, but it just needs a drop or too more red to get there.

The flavor is fairly mild, fairly smooth, and fairly evenly distributed between a sweet-ish malty note, a smoky note and a sharp fruity note. I wonder if there is oolong in this? This isn’t called “Russian Caravan” but the Russian nomenclature makes me wonder if that is where the sharp fruity note is coming from. The smokiness isn’t enough to seem like it comes from lapsang. It might be from Keemun instead.

The tea is medium-light bodied with a clean feel to it. I’m liking this just fine as a late breakfast blend. I really don’t know what to do about the breakfast blend problem, though. I like so many of them, I really no longer have any excuse to keep adding to the list. I have to come up with some way to differentiate between them and zero in on a few true favorites. Sigh.

Another awesome sample from CharlotteZero :)

I love my breakfast teas! Even though it’s 4 in the afternoon haha. This one is no exception. I’m just trying it straight and already love it. Yum. It can only get better with a wee bit of milk and sugar :)

‘Brews’ pretty quick! Love the color! Dark burgundy brown. Smells smoky but doesn’t lose it’s black tea scent. It’s a full bodied tea – that is for sure. Certainly a nice one for mornings!

Hm. It’s been a little while since I had a non-Chinese breakfast tea, so I’m mostly noticing the Ceylon in this one by contrast. There is a slightly smoky note, but it’s not very strong. There’s something sweet also, maybe malt or honey, but mostly the Celyon. I think the aroma’s being thrown off by it’s having sat next to the Spearmint Green in the sampler box – it smells kind of minty-sweet.

Interesting, and pretty good, but this certainly isn’t making me desperate to buy more. Drinking plain, at the moment, but will add milk shortly and see if that brings out anything new.

ETA: I did like it better with milk, and better plain on the second steep. It might have just been too strong for me at first, somehow, though it wasn’t overly bitter. Peculiar.

My favorite aspects of this tea are its smoothness and its perfectly mild maltiness. I’m not getting smoke like a lot of y’all are. Also, I’m finding its flavor intensity more middle of the road, but maybe that’s because I enjoy stronger blacks. I agree with Joel’s take on the Assam predominance. Thanks to Crystal, for the sample.

I like it! It has something almost a touch floral and something very vaguely fruity, and a good tea flavour. It tastes good without sweetener, it tastes good with sweetener, it tastes good with soy milk and sweetener. I’m not that much of a fan of unflavoured black teas, and I’ve found the flavour can sometimes be a letdown. It wasn’t so with this tea. It’s not a very complex flavour or anything, but it satisfies.

Not bad whether you like milk in your breakfast tea or not. Just not special, either. My humans go into more detail here: http://lyt-tea-reviews.blogspot.com/2011/03/review-kusmi-teas-russian-morning-no-24.html

As of writing this I have two teas that are tied for the honor of “my favorite breakfast tea”. One is the Irish Breakfast from Adagio, the second is this one. The leaves have a rich earthy aroma with just a hint of smoke that can be a real eye-opener early in the morning. After steeping the brew has a nice dark color with a rich malty taste that really helps to fire up the senses and kick-start your day. If you like a rich full-bodied tea with complexity to use as a coffee replacement in the morning, you should give this one a try!

There is the slightest hint of smokiness in this tea, which is about all I can handle. The dominant flavor that stood out to me was honey – though I had added nothing to it. Such a tea stands out fine on its own or with a little milk.

This is a solid morning tea. The flavor is great by itself, strong with just a hint of sweetness that I can’t quite explain. Just really nice to sip on plain. Sometimes when I want to kick up some of my flavored green teas I’ll add a teaspoon of this. Don’t sure it I’m supposed to do that, but it still tastes great, so….

Great, plain black tea without big finesses.

It’s a blend of teas from China, India and Ceylon, and most leaves in it are about an inch long, very fascinating.
Dry leaves: Classic black tea smell (all tea enthusiasts know what I’m talking about), smoke, wet forest ground (!) and a hint of yellow fruits (mango and peach).
The fruity notes that were noticeable in the dry leaves are totally gone in the smell of the brewed tea, but the smoke, the wet forest ground and the classic black tea smell is there still. It would have been rather fucked up, if the black tea smell had disappeared…

It doesn’t taste bitter and/or anstringent, and it has a very characteristic taste. I could taste which tea, that were Russian Morning #24, if you placed 100 plain, black teas in front of me, I bet.
Plain, strong black teas do often reveal a malty taste when brewed, which also is present in this tea. It’s one of Kusmi’s strongest teas with a body between medium and full, but Grand Yunnan #21 is way stronger, in fact it’s the strongest tea I have ever tasted.
I suggest experienced tea lovers to check Russian Morning #24 out. If you don’t like that classic black tea taste, you definitely wouldn’t appreciate this tea, ’nuff said.

Another favourite!

Yum, this is a fine black tea! The taste is so mild — sometimes black tea is very overpowering. I found it to be a bit one-note, but perhaps following Kusmi’s advice of adding milk or sugar may help the flavor. I tried leaving the bag in the second time I steeped it because the tea was so mild-tasting, but this just resulted in bitterness. Do not leave the bag in for this one.

I’m really enjoying this tea. It’s a nice brisk tea, by appearance and taste it has a good deal of Assam in the blend, with a hint of Russian smokiness to it.

Love this hearty blend – a real get up and go tea

Just an okay breakfast tea.