Kusmi Tea

This year’s gift to myself was the Kusmi sample set of russian blends and this cup http://www.roykirkham.co.uk/images/images/m/577.jpg which is the same series as my favouritest ever teapot. I love how it’s standing there all full of tea and baaa-ing at me.

Anyway, this is the first one out of the sample set, chosen by ippy-dippy.

My nasal membranes are dried out today. I can’t figure out if I’m on the verge of a cold or something or not, but they definitely aren’t working, so I didn’t get much out of smelling the dry leaves. I could smell them, but not well enough to tell anything beyond ‘citrus’ and after a while it just started to feel weird in the nose.

Enough about my health, you’re not interested in that. Let’s just skip to the part where smelling the steam coming off the cup of finished tea went much much better. It’s definitely citrus-y. Primarily bergamot with the others coming in on top. Like Earl Grey With Friends.

I was expecting sweet citrus, but this isn’t really it. Again, the bergamot is in the forefront and it’s got that slightly bitter bite to it. I’m glad the other citruses are there too because without them I’m not sure I’d have liked this as much. As it is, it’s nice but not a favourite. Maybe it’ll change later. It’s been known to happen that I completely fall in love with something I initially didn’t think that much of. The much beloved Tan Yang being a good example of this.

I do wish it was sweeter though, so I tried adding some cane sugar. Didn’t work either. Oh it’s sweeter alright, but not in the right way. The sugar doesn’t really merge with the citrus flavours like I wanted it to. The tea flavour is unchanged and then the sugar sweetness is there sort of next to it.

This is an enjoyable blend, but I’ll keep looking for a favourite, I think.

This tea is spicy w/strong licorice flavor and sweet undertones. As I am a fan of licorice, (can’t resist Sambuca), this could turn into a favorite of mine. And who could resist the welcome caffeine boost from the guarana?

Delightful balance of spicy chai and chocolate. The chocolate flavor tempers the chai spiciness making this a wonderful dessert tea. I am looking forward to trying more Kusmi teas….

I ordered this tea from the online Kusmi store. Delivery was prompt my tea arrived at my door in less than a week. They also added a couple of tea samples….

This turned out to be a very smooth tea today, brewed without the astringency of the last tasting. I think I used a bit less leaf, 1 tsp instead of a heaping teaspoon, and I set a timer this time….wooohps. I also looked up the temperature recommendations on kusmi’s website and they recommend a bit less than boiling (185-190) so I shot for that.

I can’t taste the individual berries, but kind of a berry melange, which is more like berries n’ cream as I added a splash of cream. Great with just the cream and no sweetener, as I don’t have any (husband used it all in his tea, and keeps forgetting to replace it)((and by all I mean an entire 100 packet box of splenda in which I used 3 packets myself, gone in 2 weeks)(((I’m angry))) :)

I brewed up a large mug of this as soon as I got home. Either I wasn’t in the mood for black tea, or I possibly over steeped this, as it just wasn’t my thing. It was very bitter without any additives and just didn’t taste great with cream and sugar added. Will hope for better results with less steep time.

Thanks Ricky for the chance to try this tea. I got the package today.

I don’t have too much to say about this tea – it didn’t really do much for me, good or bad. The smell of the dry tea is awesome – spicy and citrusy and clean and exotic – and I was hoping it would taste like that but… meh. It was a bit too strongly floral (though not quite perfume-y) and doesn’t have a strong enough bergamot or citrus taste for me. It’s definitely not the worst EG tea I’ve had but it’s nowhere near the best either. I really wish it tasted a bit more like it smelled because then it would be pretty spectacular.

Good evening Steepsterites.

This is our after dinner tea on this last evening of 2011, and I am attempting replicate the mysterious circumstances that led to such an ultra yummy cup last time we had it.

It seems fitting to end the old year on one of the most favourite of favourites, and I am already plotting which tea we shall see the new year in with tomorrow morning.

There are 2 hours and 15 minutes until 2012 here in Denmark, so this shall be my last post this year. There is a fair bit of fireworks going on here already, which bodes well for the display at midnight. As I moved from the town center to a smaller village, we were not sure how much there would be. We never buy our own, but prefer to look at other people’s displays instead. The cats, on this their first NYE, are aware of the noise but seem to be taking it in stride.

Happy New Year, Steepster, and if you are lighting fireworks later, don’t forget to protect your eyes and fingers.

Sometimes you brew a cup of tea exactly the same way that you always do, and the stars align just so, and the outcome is extra-nommy.

This happened with this tea this afternoon for no apparent reason. I think it must have something to do with moon phases, karma and the magnetic field of the earth. Maybe cloud formations and whether or not there’s a bird sitting on the roof as well. It certainly can’t have anything to do with the brewing parameters because they were unchanged.

So I was sipping quietly in my room and thinking, “cor, what a good cup today!” when in ticks a message from the other half thanking me for extra nommy tea today. Two souls, one thought, it seems. (And yes, we do occasionally MSN each other from opposite sides of a wall in the same house. It’s easier than shouting when you don’t know if the other person is wearing headphones. Also, less noisy.)

And if you post 12 posts in one go, I have discovered that you get to wake up to a bajillion notifications! GOOOOOOSH! O.o

How much do I love this one?

T_________H_________I__________S_________________M_________U_________C_________H!

Normally I make this with a water temperature of about 90°C, but on a whim today I tried lowering it even further to 80°C. I’m not sure why I did that. It was just one of those things.

I was craving this one today for some reason. My day went a whole lot better than yesterday, and I just figured some truly awesome tea would be a good thing to add to it.

Actually, that’s a lie. It was the vanilla from yesterday, really, that I fancied, but then I decided to do that thing with the temperature and thought it would be better to do that with one I knew inside and out and sideways so that I could really compare the results.

The result is that 80°C is too low for me. The tea seems a bit watery and weakly compared to my usual experience, as if it has not been able to fully develop during steeping. It lacks a lot of creamy-ness that it usually displays so prettily.

Okay, then. That’s useful knowledge. 90°C really is a very good temperature.

I have attempted a cold brew of this one.

It’s erm… exactly the same tea, only chilled.

This surprised me. With other teas I’ve tried to cold brew the flavouring have really stood out and the tea taking a more background position, but not with this one.

Interesting.

It works quite well as a cold brew, but I think I prefer it hot. I shall attempt cold brewing it half and half with a good vanilla black as well later on, which is also a blend that works well hot, and see how that turns out.

Yummy yummy yummy, I got tea in my tummy…

This was actually inspired by Alana237 who had the Sticky Toffee Pudding from Whittard of Chelsea, which sounded mightily interesting. Her description of it made it sound rather like one I would enjoy, so I’m going to try and remember that the next time I find myself in the UK and near a WoC shop. I started wondering how it might hold up to Kusmi’s Caramel, which, as you all know (and if you don’t, you shall learn very quickly) is one of my all time favourites and currently holds the spot as my Perfect Caramel Tea. Standard Panel Tea and whatnot.

So I made me a cup, which has now cooled to perfection. The caramel is coming out as rather dark today and prickly, and I was actually thinking of something a little smoother. I know this tea, in spite of being a black, really responds better to not entirely boiling water in order to bring the flavour out. If boiling water is used the tea base shines through and it’s already pretty subtle flavouring to begin with.

Unfortunately, I’ve got that base tea flavour mostly here. I can’t really find that caramel yummyness because my water was too hot. I can just taste that it’s a nice Chinese black with something added.

Lucky I tend to prefer the Chinese blacks, really, isn’t it?

As it cools a little more, however, the flavouring is rescued somewhat. It’s still not entirely the same as a cup brewed to perfection, but it’s definitely got more distinct flavouring coming out and it seems to develop just a hint of texture, which is more what I was looking for.

So, yeah. A fairly mangled cup of an otherwise wonderful tea, and I’m wondering how the sticky toffee pudding might hold up to this.

I saw a good tip in a comment just now, and it inspired me to make me an evening cup of my Perfect Caramel Tea.

Apparently, those of us who are intrigued by flavoured pu-erhs ought to keep an eye out for sweetly flavoured ones. Like vanilla or caramel. I think that sounds quite interesting.

Now I’m even more tempted by some of the things from Chi of Tea, from whom the tip came, than I was before. (The bank account remains adamant to wait though)

Mine.

Mine!

You can’t have any! Go’way!

kisses tin

I can’t believe this is very nearly gone. Again. Only a little left to cover the bottom of the tin. And this is the 250g tin. Which followed the 125g tin.

So am I tired of it yet?

NO!

Now I’ll just have to figure out if I can save money on getting a refill bag from their webshop or if I might as well just buy a new tin. Depends on what their shipping rates and such are like. Or maybe I just don’t want to wait that long.

Splitting headache is splitting and I’m feeling generally poorly. Comfort tea is in order.

What better comfort tea than this? It’s got everything. Sweets and tea and fluids.

I don’t know if it’s pure dumb luck or if I’m affected by the chocolate I was eating earlier (that I shouldn’t really touch, really), but I’m getting caramel flavour in spades today. Not just on the swallow where it usually shows up, but all over the place.

It lost all it’s frenchness somehow, but thankfully without becoming overwhelming. I don’t think I could bear it if I got this turned into some sort of heavy liquid toffee concoction. Talk about abuse of tea.

There’s a touch of butter-y-ness in the flavour too which is a bit surpr-oh forget it. I hurt and I can’t brain any more.

EEEEEEH HE HEHEHE HEHE HEEEEEE

I HAZ IT! I HAZ IT! I knew I’d seen it on the shelf. Went to my absolutely last hope this morning and there it was in a great big 250g tin!

Yoink.

What’s worse, the shop lady told me that they only make it ON ORDER so if I’d had to resort to the webshop it would have taken three weeks before I could get it. Three weeks! Not sure I would have survived that.

I’m boosting the rating on this one now. The sheer desperation with which I’ve searched for it and the awfulness of the prospect of having to wait nearly a whole month must surely be worth a handful of addtional points.

manic laughter

This tin is nearly empty. I bought it in the beginning of April. A 125g tin. And all that’s left now is just exactly enough leaves to cover the bottom.

That’s just not okay. It will need replacing. And I’m going to get the great big huge tin when that happens. I’m not mentally ready for running out of this one.

I’ve only posted about this one once, but I’ve been drinking it a lot. I like it more and more each time I have it, and it has wiggled it’s way into a secure position as a goodnight-tea. The tea that I sometimes make a cup of to take to bed with me so I can drink it while I’m reading about danish history before sleeping. (I’m not kidding, it’s my dork-project. I’ve come to the 1400-1500 period.)

It’s not even that I crave it, the hand just naturally reach for this tin at that time of night. In other words, I’ve had a 125g tin for a month, and half of it is gone. I will definitely have to restock this when I run out and the only reason I probably won’t go a tin size up is the fact that I own so much tea in total. If a second tin disappears as quickly as it seems this one will, I may consider the big tin.

Mmmmm nommy. It’s way better than the pu-erh chai fiasco from before, and tonight I’ve managed to brew it in a way that brings out a really sweet caramel-y note. That probabably sounds a bit weird, but for me the caramel in this one, although being caramel, hasn’t been obviously caramel-y. That sounds even weirder, doesn’t it? It was just different tonight, okay?

At any rate (hah!) I’ve raised the rating a fair bit based on how quickly I’m using these leaves.

The other tea I bought in Paris!

It’s not actually the first time I’ve had it since then, but now I sort of have the semi-energy to post about it.

I have come to trust Auggy’s taste in tea implicitly. Seriously, our tea tastes are so similar it’s amazing, so when I saw her posting about this a little while before I went on holiday, I immediately added it to the list of stuff to look for. Thanks for that, Auggy.

I had a caramel tea from Luka before and it had little caramel bits in it. This one doesn’t and it’s not really the same kind of tea at all. Luka’s caramel black had a sort of creamy taste, (as I recall anyway) where as this is more tea-y with a flavour of caramel than caramel-y with a flavour of tea.

I like that.

This one is also making me want to explore this brand a bit more. Hmmm… Yes…

Half a cup of this. Forgotten. Lukewarm now. Not really very nice in this state.

What a shame. What a waste. Bottom’s beginning to show in the tin.

It’s time to start trying to figure out if it’s a restock or not. If I were to restock I would have to order it online and it’s a long wait before it would get here. And then I might as well shop around in some of their other smokies.

I think it’s a bit like the Russian Morning. It’s good, I might get a sample tin now and then, but a full size tin? Not sure. Probably not.

That shop where I got the great big tin of Kusmi’s Caramel…. They had a ton of Kusmi sample tins. I should have a rifle through them one of these days.

(I am turning into SUCH a Kusmi fangirl! I’m getting a little ashamed of myself.)

That bouquet of flowers thing was vile!

Give me something better. Something I know what is. Something I can trust.

Staying brand-loyal though. You can’t beat a smoky. I’ve met smokies that were better than other smokies, but I can’t recall ever having come across one that wasn’t good.

This would be the second steep of the leaves from this morning. I don’t know if that’s the reason or if it’s because I drank it quicker, but it seems to have lost that ash-y flavour that I noticed the first time around. It’s still both smoky and sweet though, but I really think this one would benefit from a little milk. I’ll have to try that another time.

(Also, Paris trip report up at LJ http://iarnvidia.livejournal.com/773.html for those who might be interested in that. You don’t need a livejournal account to read or comment)

Greetings all! Some of you may have noticed that I’ve returned from the Wild Abroad (AKA Paris) where I’ve spent a weekend in nice company with friends and a number of scary moments in airports. I do not like airports no I do not. I meant to look for both Kusmi and Mariage Freres while in France but as it turns out, I got to visit a Kusmi store as one of the first things we did and then forgot all about the Mariage Freres. Oh well, sometimes stuff doesn’t work out like we’ve planned so I’ll have to satisfy my curiosity in that department in the old fashioned way. Internet shopping. :) If you want to read more about my trip, I will put up a trip report later at iarnvidia.livejournal.com (I just have to, you know, write it first)

Anyway, this was one of the two things I did get. We do have a selection of Kusmi fairly easily available in Denmark, but this isn’t one of them and I had been very curious to try it. The information from Kusmi says ‘slightly smoky’. Slightly? No. This is properly smoky. It has a bit of a bite on the tongue at first, a soft feeling of phantom milk and then a remarkable sweetness on the end of the flavour.

I let the cup cool off a little bit too much before drinking it and it has developed a sort of ash tray-y aftertaste which isn’t entirely pleasant. It’s a taste a bit like when you’ve just been in a room where you’re the only non-smoker and then go outside. I haven’t had that experience with any of my other smokies, so that’s a little disappointing for me.

The rating currently reflects my initial impression, but I think I might change it later.

Oh, this was very tasty! (Thank you, Doulton!) The bag smelled alarmingly of pine, but the tea itself was a wonderfully balanced mix of spices that did, in fact, remind me of Christmas food and drink. (Usually when a tea says this it just means “we have cloves!”, but this was a much more complicated blend.)