Roasted Pumpkin Mate

Thanks again Fusion for the inspired blends you create! I had to try this one based on the list of ingredients alone. I love pumpkin. I woke up wanting to try this one mainly because it was the last sample I had to try from Fusion, and I want to place an order from them. I figured that three ounces of each tea is a lot for me to commit to right now, since I have so many teas, BUT I realized I’m participating in two swap boxes, so I could always share with those boxes or other Steepsters! Also, by coincidence, I had pumpkin pie this morning to go along with the tea. I made sure to try the tea before taking any bites of the pie, so it wouldn’t taint my taste of the tea. (And yeah, why are pies only for the holidays? Pie is a perfectly acceptable breakfast food.)

To the tasting! I steeped for seven minutes and it’s a nice orange color! The taste is mostly a mild pumpkin with cinnamon. Cinnamon isn’t an actual listed ingredient, but there ARE cinnamon candied peanuts! The cinnamon flavor can’t just be from that? I can’t really taste any of the other ingredients in it (though I’m not sure what the mace should taste like.. or pumpkin seeds.) I wish the flavor was stronger, though it isn’t like there is fake pumpkin flavoring, so it tastes pretty good for just having a couple chunks of pumpkin in the infuser. Maybe more pumpkin chunks would help? Maybe I shouldn’t have waited for the water to cool as much. I tried a second steep with just boiled water but I think most of the flavor was in the first steep. I like that the roasted mate is blended with the rooibos. I really want to try more blended teas, especially black teas with rooibos. Another good tea from Fusion! Now to choose what to order from them….

CTTB!

I opted to try this one even though i’m not a fan of yerba mate. Turns out this may be one of the few blends that it actually works for me. This is a really nice pumpkin blend and if you don’t mind yerba mate i can see how this could sky rocket to near the top of pumpkin blends. For me though, the yerba mate makes this less desireable. The spices are really nicely balanced in this though – so i recommend folks give it a shot if they’re looking for a good pumpkin blend. I’ll hold off rating this since i know i don’t like mate but for me this would sit around a 65 – so still decent.

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!

I’m not sure if this is the best pumpkin tea I’ve had, but it’s right up there. I really like how well the pumpkin and spices work with the mate base. The spices are present without being overwhelming, you can taste pumpkin (I might like a little more). The ingredient list says that there is rooibos and honeybush in here, I’m not really tasting them (I think that’s a good thing).
All in all this is making me happy tonight, and that’s really what the whole tea experience is about.

Wow, today was hectic… there’s nothing like having a broken finger, helping someone with a broken foot repot dozens of plants while trying to keep several dogs and many cats from eating/burying the plants or tipping over the half filled pots.
A pot of tea is definitely what I need now after so many plant pots.
Thanks, Fusion Teas for the sample!
The flavor is great – it smells exactly like pumpkin pie. I don’t taste a ton of pumpkin though – mostly I taste sweetness and vanilla. It’s a pretty smooth relaxing cup though. The rooibos gives it a nice smooth mouth feel.
To counter some of my other posts where I quoted modernist poets, I should note here that I am enjoying this tea while watching Tommy Boy with Chris Farley and David Spade.
Perfect almost-Fall combo <3

What a wonderful mate! Nuts, cinnamon and pumpkin…to me that is always a wonderful combination. I think the pumpkin blend flavors are much better suited to a roasted mate base, as the roasted flavor adds that extra touch to the overall flavor (as opposed to the honeybush/rooibos sweetness, which is good too, but not as good as the roasted mate).

I am enjoying this very much (and already getting nervous that my pouch is running out)

Oh I do like this one! It is my first mate tea ever too… That’s probably not good since it means I don’t know what the base mate tastes like. I feel like it will always be associated with pumpkin flavor for me from now on. This tea is creamy and yummy. A wonderful pick-me-up with a dessert quality to it.

I copied this directly from my blog. :)

I recently asked Fusion Tea if I could try some samples of their tea to review on my blog and Steepster because I wanted to try their teas out before I bought them. They generously sent me 4 of their sample size pouches (each has 10 cups of tea in it) of teas in flavors I asked for.

I had the privilege of trying their Roasted Pumpkin Mate – which they told me they waited to ship until a fresh batch had been roasted. I can usually tell just by smelling a tea how well I will like the taste of it. When I opened the pouch, there was an aroma of pumpkin, nuts, and cinnamon. It smelled heavenly.

I brewed the tea as specified on the label and added a small amount of maple syrup to sweeten. The flavor is wonderful. It’s unintrusive, light, delicate and perfect for a morning cup of tea. I usually like strong tea, so drinking something so light and enjoying it was quite a surprise. I do think I’ll probably brew it with a bit more tea in the future to get it a little bit stronger. There was a light tea flavor with nutty notes and the maple syrup paired with it well.

One thing I noticed when checking out the ingredients list is that mostly everything the tea is made with is natural and many of the ingredients are quite beneficial. The few ingredients that weren’t natural (i.e. caramel bits and candied peanuts) weren’t harmful or chemical. The downside (for me) is that because I eat a Primal diet, the buckwheat in the ingredients along with the caramel bits and candied peanuts don’t fit within my diet very well. Thankfully, it’s such a small amount that it wouldn’t hurt for me to drink a cup of tea with it in it.

Be sure to check out my blog again for a review of the other three teas. And check out www.fusionteas.com for more of their flavors. They have a wide variety of flavors in multiple sizes and their 10 cup sample pack is only 3 dollars!

Quick note: I did request these samples from Fusion Teas and in return promised a review. Fusion Teas did not ask me to give a favorable opinion of their tea and all of my opinions are my own.

I got a sample of this from Mastress Alita! Thank you!

This seems like it’s going to be an interesting one. I usually strongly dislike mate, but this smells intriguing. Pumpkin spice with nutty toasted notes. I can smell the puffed rice and pumpkin seeds especially, paired with this scent I don’t have a name for, but smell often in Asian grocery stores. Hmm. Dunno what that is.

I didn’t realize this had stevia in it already. Oops. I added some before I saw that. Luckily it’s not a lot, so this didn’t get too crazy sweet. The flavor is surprising! It just tastes like pumpkin pie to me. Smooth, savory pumpkin with cinnamon and ginger’s warmth. But I also taste unmistakable graham cracker crust. There is a bit of rooibos flavor, which I’m not usually a fan of, but in this blend, it works. This tastes like it was baked in the oven in the best way. And I’m not getting a single mate note.

Here’s hoping the caffeine kicks in soon. (Unrelated: I unfollowed a ton of followers who haven’t posted in 3 years or longer… so now my Followers/Following looks super unbalanced. Hmm.)

This is one of my favorite yerba mate blends that I’ve tried and a staple for me on mornings when I need an extra caffeine boost! I love anything and everything pumpkin, so I was very interested to try this one out, and while it didn’t have much of a pumpkin flavor, the pumpkin spices were so strong and flavorful and the tea so robust that after I finished off my sampler I restocked this one in my cupboard. The tea is best to me when a little heavy on the leaf, but it’s really economical so I don’t particularly feel bad about making a really strong cup; I usually use two teaspoons for a standard size 10 oz. mug or a tablespoon for one of my extra large size 12 oz. mugs. The base of the tea is this really nice blend of toasty roasted mate and sweetness from the rooibos and honeybush, and each sip is filled with a lot of tasty spices, namely cinnamon, clove, and mace (which tastes like a more robust nutmeg). I find that I don’t need to add sweetener, as the natural sweetness of the base and the stevia in the blend balances the spices well. The blend has a very rich, toasty, pumpkin spice feel, and I find it gives a very warm and toasty appeal. This is an excellent autumn blend that can be enjoyed any time, and it works well as a latte as well.

Full Review: https://teatimetuesdayreviews.wordpress.com/2017/10/10/tea41/