Fusion Teas

Backlog from last night. It must have worked. I fell asleep without logging it :)

I notice my first note on this was 8 months ago. In that time I have become rather fond of chamomile. I give credit to Fusion Teas for making the one that changed my mind. Now I’m the one that asks my wife if she would like a cup. You get the sweet honey apple up front with the slightly sour chamomile bite late in the sip but then the vanilla kicks in and washes it away.

Had this late last night to help knock me out. It worked – until 3:00. Should have made another cup!

For those who have expressed concern. My job interview was short and not so sweet. The owners told him to hire kids out of school so they don’t have to pay them much. So I am still searching.

Had this last night. I got the mugs out of the dishwasher just after it had run its cycle. They were really hot. They stayed that way a very long time after filling from the kettle. I can see how those who like it really hot would want to preheat the cup before using. Personally, I like my cup only warm. That meant I sat all sad eyed looking at the cup for a while. The smell while I waited was really nice though.

This is my third attempt to log this from last night. I am determined. This is chamomile and I still like it anyway. lol. Most of my wife’s chamomiles are too girly for me. This is tasty and not purfumey. Upping the rating a bit.

I started to take this to work with me yesterday because I have all the proper equipment and the experience with it to brew this correctly. Last time I got it too weak and not hot enough. My wife saw me heading out the door with the bag and asked what I was doing. I told her.
She said, “It will put you to sleep”.
“No it won’t. It doesn’t have that affect on me.”
“Well, you’re not taking it”
“Because?”
“It’s mine!”
I’m smarter than I look. I put the bag down and walked away.
So when I got home from band practice late in the evening, I put a pan on the stove – not using the microwave this time. Brought it to a rolling boil and poured 2 cups into my press. In minutes the water was turning a beautiful golden caramel. I think I got it right this time. The vanilla aroma mixed with coconut is really nice.

The sip is vanilla at the front, followed by a mixture of flavors I don’t recognize but can only assume is mostly the chamomile. Late in the sip it fades into a pleasant coconut/vanilla mix that remains in the aftertaste. I do like this. I can’t say I fully understand it, but then I am not the chamomile drinker. So I ask my wife what she thought – is this good?

She said, “Oh, yes. You need to thank Fusion tea for sending this and tell them how good it is.”
“Done. So is this something you would drink often enough that we should order?”
“Absolutely. I love chamomile and this one is really good.”
As for me, this is the first chamomile I even wanted to finish so it looks like this is one we will be sharing – because I can’t leave the house with it.

I got home from work Friday and awaiting me was an unexpected sample of this! My wife loves chamomile tea. I haven’t liked any of them because of the other ingredients. No rose and no spearmint in this one. Yeah! Hopeful, I steeped this in my press. It was really clear. I took a cup to my wife and said, “I’m not sure I made this correctly”. She sipped and said, “You got it right”. Woo hoo! So I took a sip of my cup. Despite what she said, I didn’t get the water hot enough. Also not sure I used enough leaf. I am holding off a rating until I try again.

For now I will say even made wrong I really like this. This starts vanilla then mid sip there is a bit of something different (a touch bitter). The late sip turns coconut. Even though I could drink this often I am convinced with a little tweeking I can get more out of it.

Additional notes: This one is older but still tastes amazing! Better than I remember actually… I love the sweetness from the raspberry and chocolate paired with the earthiness, slight tanginess from the yerba mate. Just many ingredients that mingle together to get this creamy delicious cup. I feel like I’ve been describing every tea as creamy lately. I was pleased that on an episode of Parks & Rec I had been saying “yerba mate” correctly… the dad from the Prancer movie said it!

I LOVE chocolate raspberry combos. The best dessert I ever had was a chocolate cheesecake with fresh from the market raspberries and chocolate sauce. ANYWAY, this is really good. It’s a mild chocolate flavor with a sweet raspberry with a base of a delicious earthy mate. The scent of raspberry seems more present than the flavor though. But all the flavors work really well together. It’s smooth and creamy and tastes like you’re eating a dessert. I didn’t add any sort of sweetener but it was still very good. Bonus: I’ve heard mate has brain boosting powers (and don’t I need it). Fusion Tea Room really puts a lot of effort in their blends, you can tell! (Their pistachio lime mate seems especially inspired.) I received this in a package of a few free samples from Fusion Tea Room, so track them down and they may send some to you!

My first impression of the aroma was that it smelled exactly like fruity pebbles cereal. This really excited me but as I took a sip the hibiscus turned out to be a little too overwhelming for me. The tartness came on a bit strong and I think I’m starting to realize that I’m not a big fan of this flavor profile. By the way, I cold brewed this so I’m not sure if that has anything affect on it. It still smells nice but I don’t think I can handle the tartness.

I know that hibiscus has kind of a bad rep, but I love it. So when I opened the little pouch from the sample that Fusion Tea Room so generously sent me, I got super excited. I was also hit with a really strong apple/hibiscus/vanilla type of smell, and it’s just so tantalizing.

I knew I wanted to have this iced, since it’s currently about 80 degrees out and I’m laying in the grass writing a paper on the nature of truth (what a lib arts college student I am, ha) and I didn’t want hot tea. So I brewed it double-strength and then flash iced it. It takes me a full tray of ice when I do this, but that’s okay.

It’s delicious. This is going right on my wish list. The hibiscus hits the palate first and the apple sweeps over, sweeter and smoother in its wake. There’s a lingering hint of vanilla and something cinnamonny too. I think the warmth of the vanilla does a lot to knit the whole thing together. Very appetizing.

Just want to start this off with thanks to Fusion Tea Room for this sample!

I’ve been away from Steepster for a little while, and it’s because life has been busy! I’m still posting regularly on my blog and have a special treat for readers today (or early tomorrow, depending on some things), but I’ve also been out and about, enjoying my life a lot.

In any case, while I’ve tried Mate a couple of times and it’s alright each time, I always planned to taste the samples from Fusion Tea Room, but I wasn’t writing about Mate just yet, so I kept putting it off. Well, recently at work, our Media Team has been working on a recruiting video and one of the people interviewed talked about how he doesn’t drink coffee, but only Mate (“which has every nutrient your body could need,” according to him). After hearing that line repeated indefinitely as the Media guys edited the video, I got a hankering to try some more of the Mate I’ve got hanging out in the cupboard.

So here goes!

The smell of the dry Mate reminded me of the beginnings of a pumpkin pie, which I think is generally the point. Once brewed, the aroma is pretty powerful and actually caught me off guard at first. It almost is more coffee-like than anything else in the smell, but with the spices that were detected earlier for certain.

The liquor as-is was definitely reminiscent of coffee to me, just without the bitterness. It is hard for me to describe. So I added some sugar (as Mate instructions always seem to include “add sugar and milk to taste”) and it definitely sweetened and was a little nicer. But I remembered how much more I enjoyed the last Mate I drank once I added milk, so I did so here as well.

Once the drink was completed (in my opinion), the creaminess could lend itself to the task of ensuring the right mouth feel/texture to the drink so it really was just like pumpkin pie.

So far, with flavored Mate, I find that I like them best once sugar and milk have been added. We’ll see if this continues to hold true as I explore further!

Additional notes: Sample sipdown! Many teaspoons went into this cup, after I picked out the hibiscus (not much here actually), and a bit of sugar. I’m not sure WHICH berries these are, since there are a few in the ingredients list.. the tiny dark ones, but this cup is like a berry juice. The cup color is VERY dark. So good and the perfect amount of tart! This sample was old but tasted just as good as I remembered. This is just the perfect fruit blend. I wish I had ordered a couple more fruit samples with my order. The rating stands. I shall miss it!

Scooping this out to put in my infuser, it looked absolutely delicious. As usual with Fusion Tea Room, they put a lot of effort into the blend. It smells delicious too — a nice fragrant peach. The steep color is a deep red. The flavor is a little sour, which means it would be the perfect tea to add sugar to, but I think I already eat enough sugar, so I’d rather not. (The hibiscus is probably what is creating most of the sour and usually overpowers teas.) The flavor also has something a bit odd to it. The flavor makes me think that some of the stem of the peach was left in this blend or something or the pit of the peach… an odd flavor I can’t place. But I really like this blend otherwise. That may also be because peach isn’t even listed in the ingredients. The berry flavor is great. Most of the fruit blends I’ve had are much worse. It’s kind of tough to get a strongeer good flavor out of a fruit tea.

I can’t believe there aren’t any tasting notes for this one!

I have to say… this one actually smells like a pina colada! Like, it smells like the drink I had tonight tasted! DELICIOUS! Sweet and pineapply and coconutty and rummy and good. Definitely most excited for this one!

Steeped, it still smells like a pina colada, but I’m getting more apple than I would like.

Ohhh why did they have to add hibiscus. sigh It’s tart, but luckily not too tart. And… it definitely tastes more like pina colada than either of the other two, but it’s still not quite right. Pina coladas are not tart, and do not contain a bunch of apple.

That all being said, this is a flavourful tisane that I won’t mind finishing off. However, the quest for a pina colada tea continues.

ETA: Ohhhh, my bad. Thanks to Fusion Tea Room for the generous sample!

ETA again: Finishing the cold cup this morning (since last night I felt pretty gross after the Adagio tea, I didn’t finish anything I brought upstairs for fear it would come back up anyhow). I feel like if the hibiscus was removed from this blend, there would actually be a fairly authentic pina colada flavour. Who cares about the colour – I’d rather a gross looking tea that tastes great than a great-looking tea that tastes gross.

Hmmm… weird that I’m the first to review this one…..

Anyways, this is a backlog from two days ago. I had this one iced as that makes sense to me. It was….. weird. It wasn’t bad, but it definitely tasted different than I thought it would. The name suggests that it’s like a strawberry fruit tea, but the ingredients and the taste beg to differ. It definitely has a fruity flavor, but it’s more like a berry fruit-punch flavor. I could definitely pick up some strawberry on this one, but it tasted more like other berries than strawberries. It was all enveloped with this…. weird flavor. I can’t really place it. This was okay, but not excellent and definitely a little off putting.

Thanks to Fusion Tea Room for sending me this generous sample!

Wait, was this from Kristaleyn or Azzrian? or Bonnie? ahhhhhh, I’ve mixed up my packages!!!! SO sorry, I don’t know who to thank! well, thank you ALL then! :P

anyhow, this tea is lovely! also on the mild side, which I enjoy.
Just steeped, I got some distinct citrus notes, but as it cooled they were lost in the fruity void. However, when it had reached room temp, the tea became more grapefruit like with a hint of something else that I assume was the papaya.
This would be great iced I think!!
I didn’t resteep this but I suspect it’d be more of the same, only lighter… another reason why it will be in my tiny “to be iced” pile!
thanks again… to somebody out there!

So this is pretty good. I mean I don’t think it is exactly MY cup of tea but there is nothing bad about it. The pistachio and lime both come out well one not over shadowing the other. The flavors seem natural. Im not all that experienced with Mate yet – just sort of feeling my way around it but I am not picking up anything disgusting about mate here. I will say it is helping me fight my exhaustion! You know the kind of tired where your eyes feel like they are on fire? Yeah that kind of tired, this is helping a bit. I made this iced today. Well I made it hot then stuck it in the fridge. Its good iced.
I don’t think I would re-order this but want to not that is only because at this point for me to order ANY more tea it has to just knock my socks off and this is good but not THAT good – in MY opinion but hey if you are looking for nutty and fruity this is your tea!

Trying a re-steep from earlier today. I wanted so much to log more on this – write a real review – etc but I have felt cruddy all day – just don’t have the energy. Sorry. I don’t even know if Mates can be re-steeped. Need to look that up.

Thank you Fusion for this very lovely mate. Too tired yet to review or rate but I am very much enjoying this morning cup! Will make more notes soon.

One of the better chai teas I’ve had outside of homemade/from scratch. The peppercorn and star anise are definitely present, so if you’re getting used to the spices, I’d recommend sweetening it and adding some milk.

Finally got around to trying this sample! Upon opening the package, it immediately brought to mind caramel candies! After steeping, I could smell the roasted mate at the forefront. I added a little sugar in the raw and a tiny bit of milk (again with the caramel candy vibe, I felt it needed a ‘creamy’ texture).

It’s definitely not terrible. By the second cup, it’s grown on me. It also isn’t likely to be one I’ll order in the future.

I had the opportunity to try it as a sample (I have family who live in TX. They stopped by Fusion Tea’s table display, and thoughtfully picked up an assortment of samples for me to try!). This ended up being one of my favorites after a single cup! Now I regularly keep it stocked in my cupboard.

Full-bodied flavor that lasts through three steeps, and one of the few I’m willing to drink iced! I usually tend to stay away from bold fruits as they tend to be too sweet for me, but this blend’s balance works for me. Every one of my friends who has tried it has REALLY enjoyed it!

Personal prep: Boil water, 1st steep for five minutes, 2nd steep for eight.

I really like this one. Sweet and YUMMY! The blueberry tastes authentic, and it is sweet with just a little tartness. It tastes like sweet, juicy blueberries! The yogurt is a nice touch, giving it a little bit of creaminess and a delicious tangy note. I like that the rooibos isn’t an overwhelmingly strong flavor here, I taste just a little bit of earthiness to the cup from the rooibos, but none of those sometimes funky rooibos flavors.

Sweet and delicious!