Gourmia Fusion Tea Loose Leaf Tea Maker REVIEW

I love a good cup of tea. It takes the stress out of busy day while providing some added health benefits, too. The only thing I don’t like is the process you have to go through to make a fresh cup of tea with loose leaf tea. I prefer to use devices that are ‘all-in-one’ options and after hunting for a better, more fluid way to make a quality cup of tea, I found the Fusion Tea Maker from Gourmia. I did not want to settle for something that would make fast tea but the quality of the tea would be degraded. Gourmia makes high-quality kitchen appliances so I felt confident that the taste of the beverage would not be sacrificed for the convenience of how it is made.

Details

The Gourimia Fusion Loose Leaf Tea Maker is designed with Gourmia’s exclusive iTea Boil-to-Brew technology. Users can automatically brew loose leaf tea without having to constantly monitor it. There are four settings on the maker — light, medium, and strong brews plus a refresh setting for prepping your tea. The tea maker includes a glass brew chamber and carafe along with a stainless steel brew basket. Gourmia used these materials to ensure that the tea leaves are kept as pure and natural tasting as possible. The Fusion tea maker heats water to a precise temperature that has been determined to optimize tea brewing. It will fill the brew chamber and then release the brewed tea into the carafe below. The built-in water tank holds 800ml of water and the Fusion will brew approximately 400ml at a time. The tea maker is designed to only brew when the carafe is in place. If it is missing, one of the LED lights will illuminate and pause its operation until its replaced.

User Experience

The Fusion Tea Maker — or Tea-Square — arrived in a very nice box. It is mostly white, but with a lovely picture of the product on the cover. Some basic details are outlined on the packaging, but it’s mainly utilitarian as it’s designed to keep all the parts of the tea maker in tip-top shape until a user opens the box to use brew some tea. Set-up of the tea maker is very easy. You take the main unit out of the box and set it where you intend for it to live. I was immediately taken with the design of the tea maker. It looks like something right out of Jony Ive’s design lab. The tea maker has suction cup feet so it will stay in place when you set it up. I’ve found these to be incredibly strong suction cups and if you want to move it after its initial set up, it takes some doing. After you have the main unit placed, the instructions suggest that you wash out the other parts (carafe, strainer, and brew basket) before use.

Making tea using the Tea-Square is actually easier than making coffee, in my opinion. First, you fill the tank with water. Then, you add your favorite loose leaf tea to the brew basket. Next, you turn the tea maker on and select your brewing mode. In just a few moments, the carafe is filling with brewed tea. The Refresh setting is designed to help ‘brighten’ up your tea leaves before the actual brewing process. This step does end up making some tea, but not a full brewing cycle’s worth. One brewing cycle will use approximately 400ml of water and you can use your leaves more than once. On more than one occasion, I immediately brewed a second cycle after the first one and not only did the tea turn out perfectly, but the carafe was used completely.

When we made our first few cups of tea, we were surprised that the water in the tank didn’t go farther. For example, the water tank on a Keurig coffee maker lasts for several cups of coffee and it seems that this 800ml tank on the Tea-Square only brews around 3 cups of tea. If there was one suggestion I had for this product it would be to increase the size of the water tank. I would also suggest to other users that you play around with the settings. They aren’t a ‘one-size-fits-all’ solution. Depending on the type of tea you are using, you may want to use a lighter setting. One of the first teas we tried using was just a plain black tea. We set it for ‘strong’ and boy was it. We discovered that when using black tea, we prefer to use the lighter setting since the tea leaves are already stronger than others are. It took us a few tries, but we finally found a good balance for the various teas we were brewing.

Conclusion

As someone who hates the process of making tea but loves the way tea tastes, the Gourmia Fusion Tea Maker is a no-brainer for me. It takes all the hassle and excess time out of making a wonderful cup of tea. I don’t think I could recommend it enough. The look of the tea maker is so clean it even fits in with my office as it looks more like a high-end tech product than a tea maker.

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Originally published at macsources.com on April 13, 2018.