What is it with Assams

Some 60% of all black tea production in the world is CTC, 91% in North India is CTC and 86% in South India. As you say Lew, that's a lot of waste leaves! Truth is that you can use older heavier shoots (four leaves and a bud) for CTC manufacture which gives higher yield and more profit with an inferior cup though that can be rescued to a large extent by shorter oxidation and using milk fpr palatability - the Orthodox processors just cannot manufacture this older leaf - believe me they would use it if they could. The Soviets in Georgia devoted much design effort to achieve it, without success but it spawned some interesting machinery. Yet a CTC tea made from really tender fine plucked two leaf and a bud is sublime - but it's rare to get the opportunity to try that unless you travel with your own CTC machine (I do occasionally) - the CTC boys know they can make a profit even at USD 1.50 per kg. Orthodox production needs about USD 2.00 just to break even.

Nigel at Teacraft

DogMa and SN, thanks a lot for the inspiration. How scientific it might sound from one or the other perspective, it actually helps me to expand my definition of "art", as art in terms of technique or "style", or even "religion" with the original meaning as a point to start from. I don´t even [want to] see any contradiction when I fumble around with digital thermometers, scales and other tech gadgets - to the point where I had to stop serving Darjeelings to friends of mine, too often I got totally lost in the process.

I more or less carefully touched this issue a couple days ago in another thread. If you include some other regions of the brain, and all those nasty multi-sensorial influence factors it gets really interesting. After all I´m pretty sure that even a multi-million dollar investment into my tea research kitchen lab wouldn´t result in that perfect cup of Muscatel I´ve been trying to brew for ? knows how many years ............ hopefully.

K8 [some blue-white "Spitztüte" Eastfrisian blend in tazza]

i still dont really like drinking indian tea without milk. my body is just not used to it. I prefer it with milk and sugar..

;)

Joel,

My experience of the past 8 months largely parallels yours. I have tried quite a large number of Assams and they have just not done for me what I think they should do. Many of those Assams were from Upton. PG Tips has left me even less impressed, the flavor way too light. (I almost never use milk).

In the last couple weeks I got several Assams from Tfactor (all from the Satrupa estate, but some very different from each other) and one from Lochan Teas. Initially I was again mostly disappointed. This week, however, I've tried using about 20% more leaf and a 4 minute brew time (a minute longer than my typical Assam time) and several of these teas seem to have really blossomed. My revised brew parameter is 3 grams of leaf in 6 oz of boiling water for 4 minutes. I'll probably try some of these for still longer times, and for at least one Assam this seemed like a little too much leaf, but the point is I've upped the ante across the board and the teas are working out better for me.

I suspect that early on in my experience I was brewing inferior or old examples with -- predictably -- astringent, brothy, bitter results when I brewed strong enough for my tone deaf palate. To avoid the roughness, I probably reduced brew times and leaf till there wasn't much character left. With these fresh, high quality Assams I have been drinking lately, I can brew for a strong flavor without sandblasting my mouth.

It seems to me that the point of the milk in Assams is largely to protect your mouth from the effects of an inferior grade of tea, most CTCs falling into this category. I'm also wondering if some of the most expensive Assams that I have bought in the past may actually be either old or improperly stored stock or even just inferior tea to begin with. The ones I am enjoying lately are not expensive at all, but they do come from more or less directly India-based sources rather than from US merchants.

I had pretty much stopped drinking Assam. For that range of effects I had turned to cooked puerh, hei cha, and hong cha. Now I am very happy to be adding Assams back into my regular mix of Chinese teas, sencha, and darjeelings.