Kusmi Tea

This is another sample that I got from Angrboda! :) This is soooo smooth! I really enjoyed it. I think that I would steep it at a much lower temperature next time. I thought that the flavor would be more in the background of the brew, but it’s right there in the forefront. It’s an interesting mix of different fruit flavors. It is not at all too sweet which makes it really pleasant. Great mix!
edit as I sipped this I realized that it actually has such a wonderful raspberry flavor. It’s in the background but it’s soft and amazing!

Had this tea in Denmark for the first time. The dry leaf nose is so prevalent with spearmint that is does remind you of a pack of Wrigley’s Doublemint gum. The nice thing about this tea is that you can prepare it several ways and get a completely different profile each time.

Super hot (not boiling) steep gets you the most green tea notes and color.
Just bring down the temp depending on how much mint you want.
I like 190 degrees (F).

I was not a mint tea fan until coming across this blend. Still not a fan of the black teas mixed with mint. But this Kusmi Green w/ Spearmint is a taste changer.

Awesome when made as a sun tea too… you really get the spearmint flavors.

I’m so excited to be drinking this for breakfast! I have come to really love this blend. I have been waiting to make any more tea orders/purchases until later this year and some of my stock goes down. When that time comes I may be getting this in my cupboard. I really loved it and am excited to try even more of Kusmi’s blends. Their tins are really pretty and I love the two that I’ve tried. Who could go wrong! I also saw recently that they have mini tin sets with an assortment of teas. SO CUTE!!! I couldn’t ask for a more gift-able product.
As for this tea, I love the base of this tea. It is apparent in the flavor of the tea without overwhelming it. I do not always enjoy plain black teas; but I love flavored blacks more than others for some reason. I think that certain blends have this hardy/strong base that helps improve the flavoring. This and 52 tea’s Pancake Breakfast are great examples of this.
Overall this is a great tea. I would recommend it wholeheartedly to any lover of dessert/flavored varieties.

Amazing. When brewed at the lower temps. it makes a big difference. I find that around 180 F is right for me. This tea is bold and great for cold days! I love Kusmi for this tea!

:) I thought this would be a good wind me down. I went out to the store and have noticed that the shops are carrying a lot more vegan/vegetarian foods. Now I’m not a total meat abstainer, but I’m glad I’m getting some more options! On to tea!
It’s actually been awhile since I got to sit down and enjoy this one. The smell is mellow and that wonderful burnt-sugar smell is shining through! I made this at a much lower temp. than other blacks so I’ll see how it stands up.
There is one thing that I really enjoy about this tea: mouth feel. Call me weird, but this one is just right. It matches the flavor really well and it is a great substitute for something fattening and heavy without feeling like you’re really missing out.
I really would recommend this tea for anyone who is craving a sugar substitute with sustenance.

Mmmm I brewed this to try an combat my inability to get temperature correct in my house today. I kind of overdid it this time! I added a few too many leaves/too long brewing/too high temp and somehow this still turned out nice. It is incredibly smooth; despite the temperature issue. I think that I need to watch my stupid pan like a hawk so that my water doesn’t do this again. This is darker than some coffee I’ve had, but so much nicer!

I just made a 2nd steep of this and realized something. The base for this must be very similar to the one used for 52 teas’ Pancake Breakfast. It has a burnt sugar flavor and some kind of almost vanilla going on. Very nice. It also somewhat reminds me of the flavor of the buttercream mixed tea I have from Adagio.

I was able to try this tea due to a very kind gift form Angrboda. :) This is the very first tea from Kusmi I’ve tried. I’m kind of anxious to try the cinnamon that I have on hand since this tea turned out so so well. But I’m having a special tea and pumpkin carving deal in a few days and that’s when I’ll unveil it.
I wasn’t hit as hard as I thought I would with caramel when I smelled the dry leaf. When steeped this stuff is so very smooth. It has a very sweet note to it that is very pleasant. I love how this tea is so, well, mellow. It’s not punching me in the face with flavor like some of the other teas I’ve been tasting recently. But it’s a good thing. It is perfect for warming up on these cold fall mornings.
I’ve not had very much black tea recently because of my sudden interest in mate, but this just brings me back down. It’s calming in a very good way. I especially enjoy something that I’ve come to notice with black tea; the thickness of the flavor. It is almost heavy tasting to me. I don’t know how many other tasters would describe this. But there it is! This elusive quality to not overpower or underwhelm my taste buds.
This is a great tea from Kusmi and would be a great starter into their line. I would be hard pressed to find a friend who didn’t enjoy this tea.

I am a little stress ball lately with a million things due at work right before the holiday. Not to mention this morning I woke up with a sore throat. UGH. I was looking through the samples I had and considered a Black Currant, but then decided what I really wanted was the last of this medley of red fruits sample. This really is a very nice blend, and I enjoy the black tea base they use as well. I really need to try more Kusmi teas!

I did a cold steep of this one overnight for lunch today, and it was definitely a winner for that. Still well balanced, nicely fruity with a solid tea base.

Back at work, and back to my collection of teas. This one comes to me thanks to Angrboda! I was deciding between this one and the black currant from Harney, but I decided I wanted more different kinds of berries in my cup this morning. I’m not a huge fan of strawberry or cherry flavored things on their own, but mixed up with other fruits I do enjoy them. The dry leaf on this one smells intensely of berries and those “red fruits”. The Argentinians love the “red fruits” flavor in jams and teas, and this definitely smells like some of the things I had in Argentina.

I brewed it at a lower temp like the Kusmi Caramel, which resulted in a very flavorful and very smooth cup. I’m a little too out of it from my cold to try and distinguish individual berry flavors and aromas, but suffice to say that they all meld very well together. It really is a true “red fruits” flavor… no individual fruit overwhelms the others and sticks out, and they all blend to form a fruity, berry-y, “red”, delicious taste. I was a little worried when other reviews called Kusmi teas “lightly flavored” since with blacks I prefer fairly bold flavoring (though not usually to the point that it overwhelms the tea completely), but this tea is very well flavored (perhaps because of the low steep time) and the black tea base complements the flavors well. Definitely a nice blend!

Drinking this tea almost back-to-back with Talbott’s Chocolate Almond Allure really makes me appreciate how much caramel is in that tea. Anyway, this is a tasting note for this tea, not for that one! I really enjoy this tea and it’s super delicious caramel flavor. It’s kind of one of those teas that I like a lot but I don’t know if I would need to keep it around all the time. Of course, I really don’t think I’m ever going to get down to some hypothetical pared-down cupboard of only essentials, and if I was in the Kusmi store in NYC I might pick up some more of this anyway. It really is a lovely tea.

I’m drinking my afternoon cup of tea a little earlier than I usually do today because I want to have not one but two afternoon cups! I just have so much tea that I can’t wait to try it all, and for some reason today I really want some.

I’m thrilled to get a chance to try this one, sent to me by Angrboda! This is definitely one of those teas that gets raved about so much I really wanted to try it. The caramel smell of the dried leaf is very nice… I could just smell it all day, I think. It’s caramel but not a very buttery caramel, but I can’t quite put my finger on how to describe it. The brewed tea has much more black tea in the aroma, with a burnt-sugar caramel aroma behind it. I feel like the caramel makes itself known a bit more in the flavor, and it’s definitely a roasted-sugar type caramel as opposed to a buttery-creamy caramel. It actually distinctly reminds me of some kind of burnt-sugar candy I bought in London once. It pairs pretty flawlessly with the black tea base, which is pretty smooth but it still has a bit of a kick to it, by which I suppose I mean it’s fairly bold. I was surprised by the low suggested steep temp on this one, but upon drinking it I feel like the black tea might have overtaken the caramel at a higher temp. Overall a definitely delicious tea!

I thought this tasted odd earlier today! It was stacked with the Troika tin which is nearly the same colour. I must have made the Troika instead and never realised it.

GOSH do I feel dumb now! LMAO! :D

When one woman’s ick is another woman’s nom, it’s awesome that we can share. fleurdelily didn’t care for this one, and although it’s far from my Perfect Vanilla Black, I can guarantee that it will get legs to walk on in this house. :)

Return parcel will follow. Eventually. Please be patient with me…

I poured a few mouthfuls of this on the table.

Because I missed the cup.

And Charm is trying to make off with the contents of the bin.

It’s been that sort of day, really.

Hi all.

First of all, I had a little accident buying Kusmi the other day, so if anybody out there is fond of cinnamon flavoured black, I have a proposition for you. I shall post this on the boards as well. (Basically, I just grabbed a brown tin that looked exactly like the caramel… It was not caramel.)

Secondly, this tea is from aforementioned ill-fated Kusmi purchase and this one was not a mistake. It’s one I’ve been wanting to try for ages. Actually ever since I had that fantastic vanilla Nilgiri that Chi of Tea had and I became really interested in finding my perfect vanilla tea. Well, my second favourite anyway, as I’m giving up hope of the Chi of Tea vanilla ever getting back in stock.

What I like in a vanilla flavoured black is clearly present vanilla, and preferably with some leather-y undernotes of something akin to coconut. And it must be SMOOooooooooth, with a captial SMOO. The Chi of Tea one had all of this. I have yet to find the same flavour profile, fulfilling all requirements elsewhere although I have found some very acceptable alternatives.

This one had the right sort of aroma of the dry leaf. Not super sweet and obviously vanilla-y to the point of near cloying syntheticness, but something more rough and wood-y and leather-y. After steeping the vanilla flavouring smells subdued and the Chinese base is coming very nicely through. It smells grain-y and I wonder if there is some Fujian black involved here. Since they don’t say anything about it other than ‘Chinese black’ I’m assuming they’re using some sort of standardised blend of several to ensure a consistent flavour. There’s just something about it that smells rather Fujian-y.

Full marks on aroma, then.

The vanilla flavouring is extremely subtle. I’m getting a whole lot of ‘black tea’ and only a smidgen of vanilla. The funny thing is, in the Caramel from Kusmi, this subtleness is something I really like, but here I’m finding it vaguely disappointing. I mean, I don’t want a vanilla flavoured tea to be only sweet, but I do want there to be some sweetness, and I really think this could have benefited from a tad more of that aspect.

It does have potential, though. This would be one of the few that I might bother experimenting more extensively with the parameters to see what happens. A full boil heat, for example, in spite of what Kusmi says, and shorter or longer steeping times and less and more leaf. I think the steeping time would be the best place to start. It tastes that way.

I’m giving it a relatively low score to start with, then we’ll see later on if it can redeem itself under different conditions.

Yesterday, we went to the zoo. When we got there, we went into their restaurant and had some cake and hot beverages of choice. They had an offer for coffee and cake, but uncharacteristically I chose to have tea instead. Primarily, because I saw they sold Kusmi as their tea, rather than the average mediocre super-market tea brand. Even more uncharacteristically, I chose one which wasn’t even tea.

I’m not sure what made me go for this, but as I looked at their selection it was just the one that was standing out to me the most.

It was actually quite pleasant. It was a bit subdued in flavour, but I put that down to the rather non-optimal brewing conditions, and also the fact that I probably could have let it steep for longer than I did. Just… I was thirsty.

I’m not normally much of a big mint-fan, but this one was minty without tasting like a mouthful of toothpaste. It was not a minty tisane as much as it was a tisane with a fresh touch of mint to it.

I’m not very familiar with verbena, though. I’ve had it a few times before, but have no memory of what I thought of it. In this blend I couldn’t quite pick it out as an individual flavour, but it seemed to support that minty touch quite well, giving an overall flavour of something quite impossible to pin down but still very nice.

I was really quite pleased with my choice and I might choose it again if having tea out somewhere where they offer this brand. I probably wouldn’t buy it for myself though, because I can’t quite see myself drinking it at home very much.

Points given not on a general scale of nom-ness, but in comparison to my usual attitude towards herbals.

(Of course then when we came home, my next stop turned out to be at the emergency vet’s with Luna for re-stitching. Stupid cat. She’s home now, with new stitches and wearing a green bodystocking which makes her look frightfully silly. Hopefully this will be enough for her to have a chance to heal up properly.)

I think this is the best chocolate flavored black tea I have had. It was very smooth, not too bitter, and more chocolatey than I was expecting.

I had low expectations for a bagged Darjeeling, even as nice a bag as Kusmi provides, so this was a very pleasant surprise. Maybe I just got lucky and steeped it properly, but this is a fine and delicious example of what a Darjeeling can taste like. Light but full-flavored, very aromatic with that fruity/winey/muscatel flavor. There’s just enough astringency to make it refreshing without being bitter.

If it’s consistently this good (and I didn’t just get lucky with the steeping parameters) I may even pick up a tin of this! Darjeelings aren’t my usual, but it is nice to have one or two black teas on hand that go well without milk.

Oh! I remembered what this reminds me of: Strawberry Zabaglione from 52teas! The flavor here is a little more subtle, a little less cream and more fruit, but the profile is quite similar.

I probably won’t buy a tin of this immediately, but maybe the next time I’m in the mood for a sweet subtle fruity tea.

Pretty tasty – fruit and caramel, yes – but I think I liked Prince Vladimir better. This reminds me of something I’ve had before, but I’m not being able to place it. Blue moon, maybe? Except that it really doesn’t have the apple notes, hmm.

It is very nice, and sweet enough to drink plain, but would probably benefit from a dash of sugar. I’ll try that next time, since Kusmi considerately puts 2 of each tea into the sampler!