I have gone through 1/2 dozen Assams all with stellar reviews and they do nothing for me. Flavor is barely detectable, I like strong tea maybe my taste buds are muted. The last one I got from Upton called Mokalbari had reviews like this:
"Classic Assam of phenomenal power and depth. A wine critic would say the aroma "leaps from the glass" (cup). Complex, vigorous, malty; value for money here is the best of any tea I've tasted."
This tea to me tasted like nothing. I brewed the first cup for 4 minutes as instructed and it was very bitter, so I tried 2-1/2 minutes still bitter but drinkable. The best black tea I have had so far is PG Tips which I get from the local Indian market. I'll bet I lot of tea drinkers think of this stuff as mass produced low end tea. The best tea ever I had was at a friends house, it had a very intense tea flavor and not bitter at all. He bought it a local Indian market and he showed me the box, it was a hard clear plastic box with a red label with Indian text on it. I can't find it anywhere and have not been able to locate the store he got it from. It must be CTC because the tea was small round balls.
It sounds like you would like CTC teas better, as they typically have a stronger (but less complex) flavor. I am surprised 2.5 minutes made a bitter brew with an Assam, though, usually I find 2.5 minutes (with about 5g leaf, 12 oz boiling water) to be on the weak side and rarely bitter. How much leaf and water are you using?
I've tried about six of the Assam tea samples from Upton, and liked all but one. But what I want from an Assam is a get-up-and-go morning tea; nuance comes later in the day. The Assam I didn't like was Banaspaty FTGFOP1 and I didn't like it because of a pronounced cedar/ pine taste; maybe that's what you're looking for. The catalogue says it has sweet raisin and lemony flavors which I didn't taste. Also, maybe what you're looking for is a breakfast blend, which are the most popular Upton teas- I prefer the straight Assams. Later in the day I shift to a Ceylon. Toci
I tried a few assams and wasn't really crazy about them myself. They all just seemed sort of "blah" to me, that is until I decided to add milk (which I don't normally do). For some reason, it just seemed to bring out the best in the tea, though I don't use milk or sugar in any other tea I drink. I sometimes will use sugar in assam, but really it is just about the milk for me. Certainly worth a shot.
had given up on assams because of the astringency, but just got a box of PG tips, which also produced highly astringent liquid, after 2 cups about to throw it out, i said ...lets do it English style, put a little milk in it, almost completely erased the astringency, left the assam-malty-winey flavor (which combined nice with sugar).
I always add milk and honey to PG Tips, can't really enjoy without it. The good thing about PG is it is consisent, you don't have to worry much about batch variations.
Milk [sorry]. A while ago I told a friend of mine about an -sorry again- Eastfrisean [Assam] blend I remember having drunk when I was 15. It´s not so much the tea itself but the name of this blend that got stuck in my mind: "Stoertebeker", a famous northern germanian freebooter from the fourteenth century. Yesterday she surprised me with 2 pounds of that wonderful tea, which I haven´t been able to find anywhere and well, I happily prepared a big pot for us. She too usually drinks her tea plain, until yesterday that is. I practically had to urge her to take at least some few drops of milk but those drops had their effect. There they were, those notes of malt, honey [wow], exotic woods and nutmeg. She simply couldn´t believe it. While a drop of milk or cream helps with both, flavor and aroma, to me [and old Mr.M.] just a liiittle sugar can bring up nuances of flavor that would be entirely lost without it, e.g. in some if not many Darjeelings and of course Assams and ? knows what else.
As for CTC being made from waste leaves, I've been to a Dooars garden where the factory only made CTC tea. Beyond that, isn't it true that the majority of tea manufactured in India is CTC? That's a lot of waste!
As for the impossibility of drinking CTC tea without additives, admittedly that's a decision for the mouth to make. But I sometimes drink it happily straight, having brewed it for one minute or even less to prevent it from getting harsh. It's hardly the ultimate in complexity, but for me it can be a good wakemeup.
What water temperature, what kind of steeping, and are you drinking it with milk or not?
Yes, it's an entirely respectable mass-produced tea. You may also want to try some of the rough-cut orthodox process Assams from the same source. Look for a big box marked "kalami tea" from a brand like Sharzad or Gulabi or Tea India. Cheap Assam, continuously harvested rather than harvested in flushes, and an excellent everyday cup.
i have only spoken what i think is right - i dont mean to hurt any persons feelings or sentiments but its the truth. if you are aware - in china people only pluck from a tea bush during a certain period in a year - unike in india we pluck from march till december - the reason is because we want to produce more without keeping the quality characteristics in mind. many gardens during the main spring time and summer time switch to the orthodox method instead of CTC because the best quality leaves or the right material allows them to make good tea. in the other months the gardens do not want to waste the leaf that is available so they found out a way of making teas from the ordinary leaf by making a paste of the tea leaves - the method is called CTC.
the current production of orthodox tea in india is approximately 15% of the total produce - the % of orthodox teas has gone down due to the decline in exports from india. CTC teas are preferred by the normal public due to a cause - a reason - the cuppage of CTC tea is double - the cost of production is less - the manufacturer and the consumer both benefit but at the cost of quality. normally while producing orthodox tea a labour will pluck a bud and two leaves but when the production is of CTC tea - they pluck upto 6 leaves and a bud making the stems come into the tea and the bigger leaves which are meant to make food for the plant land up being processed - those leaves arent the right material.
as more and more people are realising that if they wish to succeed in exports and they wish to deliver a quality product to the consumers - they are switching to the orthodox method.
lew - i did not mean to pass an order that no one could drink CTC tea without additives - i had just expressed my views - i am sorry if it hurt you - will be more careful in my words.
normally the system that we follow for teas while tasting is - 2.5 g in 125 ml of water for 5 mins - compare a ctc, an orthodox assam, a darjeeling, a nilgiri and the taste will help you decide which tea you prefer.
this is not very healthy information that i am disclosing but i think i should let you know as you have been to tea estates in india while i have lived all my life in tea estates. all gardens making CTC tea are very marginal gardens that do not have any marketing setup outside the country to export their produce - they make CTC only because the auction system in india helps them sell their produce at a price sometimes above cost of production - normally the price is at par. CTC is the reason for so many tea estates closing down because the cost economics makes them sick and they have to shut down. all ctc tea producing estates are alway mixing various products with green leaves to reduce cost of production. somethings are better not told.
an advise - CTC is not a good option if you wanna live a healthy life. i do not wish to argue on this - it is just a friends advise to all those who believe that i have knowledge in this field f tea.
I accept this on the whole, and orthodox teas are more than 95% of what I drink. I'm just not sure that CTC is always bad. And I'm not sure the use of leaves far beyond two-and-a-bud is necessarily horrible, as it's done in the manufacture of the best Chinese oolongs. If a garden is plucking maintenance leaves, though, then it would seem they're killing themselves.
I hope so, for many reasons, including tea country labor conditions.
Please don't be sorry! My feelings weren't even nicked.
I wonder if many Indian tea drinkers could be convinced to switch from CTC to orthodox. India now has a large middle class, and this shouldn't bust their budgets, I imagine.
Count me among those who do not automatically reject CTC teas: everybody knows they are mass produced but they are sold at modest prices and fill a simple need and do not pretend to be more. Orthodox tea can produce a superior product but do not always deliver:
I actually think that a bigger problem is that very few tea gardens deliver consistently superior flavor despite orthodox production. If you search this newsgroup archives you will find that almost universally people are usually unimpressed with Darjeeling teas. This is despite the fact that Darjeeling is world famous. I do not believe that this is because of fake provenance of the teas. For example, someone on a recent thread said they were unimpressed with Castelton and Margaret's Hope from thunderbolt teas,(who writes with passion on his blog and like you is a Darjeeling native). No amount of marketing can repeatedly sell an average product at premium prices (and thunderbolts marketing is very enticing). Marketing can cause a sampling, but if product quality does not come through you are not going to have repeat customers. In this particular case, the teas in question were last years stock but nonetheless if they were truly world class would show some character. I personally LOVE good Darjeeling teas and they are the main tea I am interested in. But with every purchase I invariably feel burned - I very rarely get the quality of tea I am seeking. Out of say 20 teas I buy maybe one is worthy of any attention with the elusive muscatel character (both as aroma and flavor), and most have no distinctive character and frankly not much better than Lipton Green Label but at prices 20-50 X Green Label. All this is orthodox tea which despite labor and time intensive operations on what should be superior leaf from one of the best tea growing regions in the world really does nothing from a customers point of view.
On Chinese teas the quality comes through very consistently. If I buy
10 teas at premium prices from well known vendors 5 will be outstanding (multiple infusions with very complex & shifting aroma and taste profiles), 3 good to excellent and perhaps 2 middling.
I realize that Darjeeling has many unique problems: high production costs, frequent drought, old tired plantations, restive labor etc. etc. I am very sympathetic to all these problems and would love them solved because at its best I believe Darjeeling really is a unique tea. I do not believe marketing is the answer to Darjeelings problems - Darjeelings problems will be solved when people can sip its teas and taste Darjeeling muscatel character with the same consistency that say any premium Taiwanese oolong will deliver. This is likely to require a very capital intensive solution. I understand the Tata's and Godrej's etc. are buying up Darjeeling plantations and perhaps they have the capital to right the ship (I do not know if they have the desire to change things).
Sugar is often regarded as a flavor potentiator (like salt and MSG), enhancing the impact of other flavors even below its own sense threshold. I read about this as a teenager, and didn't quite believe it. But once when my wad of Juicy Fruit gum went flat, I tried adding a pinch of sugar. The "fruit" flavor came back at full original strength, consistent with the rapid dissolution of sugar and the much slower loss of oil-soluble esters, terpenes, etc. from the rubber base.
I drink a fair amount of EBT in place of coffee - not for serious sipping, that is - and have to add milk to keep the stomach happy. Gave up sugar years ago. But I now use lactose-free milk, and the affect on tea taste from the enhanced milk sweetness is startling.
the sugar molecule (sucrose) meets certain other molecules in the liquid [lets say the assam flavor molecule :) ] which it binds to and then they both end up on the taste bud receptor, sugar facilitating stimulation of the receptor (opening more ion channels = greater stimulation) or binding the sugar, the other molecule is able to better bind into the receptor (some 3d conformational spacial arrangements) or the sugary solution facilitates coating of the sugar molecule with the flavor molecule around it , like saponification
but then again, i have no direct info regarding this issue, ... someone else?
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