XQS - The Peppermint | 10 Cans

XQS The Peppermint: The Mint XQS Should Have Started With

For its first two years in Britain, XQS was a fruit brand with a single mint, and if you wanted a plain, proper peppermint from the Swedish company you were out of luck. XQS The Peppermint fixes that. It is a bright, clean peppermint with a crisp cooling edge, 10mg of nicotine per pouch, and nothing clever going on: no fruit, no fizz, no gimmick, just the flavour that half the pouch market is built on, done properly on XQS's slim, low-drip pouch. The brand's own three words for it are "fresh, crisp, refined", and the fourth should be "sensible". Each can holds 20 slim, all-white, tobacco-free pouches, and NicotineBuzz sells the 10-can pack for £39.90, which is £3.99 a can, dropping to £3.50, £3.33 and £2.99 a can as more 10-can packs of any brand share the basket.

If you already use a peppermint pouch from another brand, this is the easiest switch in the XQS range, because there is nothing to get used to except the pouch. If you are coming from the XQS fruit cans, it is the first XQS mint that is not cold for its own sake: Arctic Freeze is built around the ice, The Menthol around the sting, and The Peppermint around the taste of peppermint itself.

Peppermint Leads, the Cool Follows

The opening is a clear, refreshing snap of peppermint, the sweet-shop kind rather than the toothpaste kind, and it arrives within the first minute along with the first of the nicotine. A subtle smoothness sits underneath it, which is the brand's word and a fair one: there is a rounded, slightly creamy quality that stops the mint from turning sharp, and it is what separates this can from The Menthol. The cooling builds behind the flavour over the first five minutes rather than leading it, and peaks as a crisp, tidy chill that never becomes a burn.

Then it settles and stays. Peppermint holds better than fruit on a pouch, and The Peppermint is clearly still itself at twenty-five minutes, with the cool fading a little ahead of the flavour and the nicotine keeping pace with both. The finish is clean, faintly sweet and short, which is exactly what you want from an all-day mint: no lingering sugar, no menthol hangover, and nothing to stop you putting the next one in.

Among the four XQS mints it is the middle child. The Spearmint is softer and sweeter, Arctic Freeze is colder and sweeter, The Menthol is colder and sharper, and The Peppermint is the one that tastes most like mint. If you only buy one XQS mint, this is the one.

One Strength: 10mg per Pouch

XQS prints its strength per pouch, on the front of the can, under a six-bar row. The Peppermint prints "10 MG" and four of six bars, and the brand's own site files it in its Strong band, alongside the 8mg and 9mg cans; on our site-wide scale it is listed as Medium, which is where every 7 to 12mg pouch we sell sits. Same can, two words, and neither is wrong: the brand measures against its own 4mg, we measure against Killa and Pablo.

Ten milligrams is a quarter more than the 8mg fruit cans and just under the 11mg of Arctic Freeze and The Menthol, and it lands where most people who already use nicotine want to be: level with a four-dot VELO, a Clew 10mg or a Nordic Spirit Strong, a shade below a ZYN 11. Because the bar row on the can shares four bars between 8, 9 and 10mg, the number under the bars is the thing to read; the bars will not tell you a Peppermint from a Tropical 8mg. The brand does not publish a pouch weight for the mint line, so we do not quote a per-gram figure; if it is the same 0.5g pouch as the fruit cans, 10mg would be about 20mg/g, and that is our arithmetic, not the brand's.

Who it suits: anyone on an 8mg XQS who wants a small step up, anyone on a four-dot VELO or a ZYN 9 who wants a slimmer pouch, and anyone who smokes ten to twenty a day and is switching. Who it does not: a first-time pouch user, who should look at The Spearmint at 6mg, and a strong-pouch user, who will find it polite and should look at The Menthol. The XQS strength finder on our brand page turns a habit into a rung if you want it done for you.

What the Label Says

The can is the 2026 XQS design: a glossy teal lid, "THE PEPPERMINT", "NICOTINE POUCHES", four filled bars, "10 MG", and "Deliciously Swedish, since 2006" on the rim. The brand's product page lists the flavour as peppermint, the format as slim, the nicotine content as 10mg per pouch and 20 pouches per can, and, in one field, the strength as "Normal", which contradicts its own Strong facet and is worth knowing about only because it explains some confusing search results. The ingredients are the standard XQS list: a plant-fibre bulking agent, water, nicotine, flavourings, salt, propylene glycol, an acidity regulator and a sweetener, with the UK nicotine warning and a batch number on the base.

The Peppermint is part of the mint line XQS added to its UK range in 2026 after the March redesign, with The Spearmint and The Menthol. XQS is a Swedish brand from Jämtland, on sale since 2006, owned since 2023 by Scandinavian Tobacco Group and sold in the UK by the group's own company; the brand's line is "Made by Sweden" and it does not say where the pouches are made, so neither do we. The rest of the story, and every XQS we stock, is on our XQS nicotine pouches page.

Why It Is Called The Peppermint

The definite article is deliberate. XQS launched its 2026 mint line with three cans named as if they were the only ones that mattered, The Spearmint, The Peppermint and The Menthol, partly to separate them from the older Swedish-market Spearmint and Cool Ice cans that still turn up in UK listings at 9 and 9.6mg, and partly because the brand had spent two years being known for Tropical and Black Cherry and wanted the mints to sound like a decision rather than an afterthought. It also means the search results are cleaner than they look: "xqs peppermint" gets you this can and nothing else, where "xqs spearmint" can mean two different products. If a listing quotes a Peppermint at any strength other than 10mg, it is not this can, and if it quotes a Peppermint Mini, that is the Swedish-market pouch, which the UK has never had.

Wearing It

Tuck one pouch under your top lip, slightly off-centre, and leave it for twenty to forty minutes; the brand says fifteen to sixty and the honest answer is that the peppermint outlasts your interest at about thirty. A tingle in the first minute is the nicotine, not a fault. Do not chew or swallow the pouch, never two at once, and put the used one in the bin. The slim XQS pouch sits low and drips very little, so it is a good can for a meeting, a drive or a flight, and peppermint is the flavour least likely to bother the person next to you.

One habit worth building with any peppermint: do not chase the cool. The crisp edge fades before the nicotine does, and the temptation is to swap in a fresh pouch at twenty minutes for the flavour rather than the dose, which is how a 10mg can turns into a 30mg afternoon. Let the first one run its course, wait half an hour, and you will use fewer pouches and taste more of each. Our how to use nicotine pouches guide has the fiddly bits, and how many pouches a day answers the next question.

Every Brand Makes a Peppermint

This is the most competitive shelf in the shop, and The Peppermint's case is the pouch rather than the flavour. VELO's Crispy Peppermint and Nordic Spirit's Mint are bigger, wetter pouches with more spread; ZYN's Cool Mint is drier and slimmer still but stops at 11mg here and tastes sweeter; Clew's Cool Mint prints 10mg on the lid the same way XQS does and runs a moister pouch. The XQS is the lowest-profile of the lot under the lip and the cleanest-tasting, and it is the only one of the group from a brand that sells single cans at £4.49 direct if you want to taste before you buy ten. Our mint nicotine pouches shelf puts them all side by side.

Within the XQS Range

Below The Peppermint sits The Spearmint at 6mg, the soft, sweet mint for a first can or a light habit. Level with it, on the fruit side, sit the 10mg cans of Tropical, Blueberry Mint and the other fruit flavours. Above it are Arctic Freeze at 11.2mg, the sweeter, colder peppermint on a heavier pouch, and The Menthol at 11mg and 17mg, the sharp one. If you like The Peppermint and want more cold, go to Arctic Freeze; more strength, The Menthol; less of both, The Spearmint. Blueberry Mint is the crossover if you want fruit with a mint edge.

What Ten Cans Cost Here vs Out There

A pack of 10 cans of The Peppermint is £39.90 here, which is £3.99 a can and about 20p a pouch. A second 10-can pack of any brand brings every can to £3.50, three packs to £3.33, four or more to £2.99. The brand's own UK shop sells singles at £4.49, £3.49 a can in a 10-pack and £2.33 a can at 30, plus a 4-can mint bundle for £12, which is the sensible way to taste the mint line before buying ten of one. Every pack clears our free delivery threshold on its own, orders before 3pm Monday to Friday leave the same day, and next day delivery is £4.99. Nobody has reviewed The Peppermint with us yet, and we will not be inventing stars before somebody does.