Ceylon

Thank you TeaEqualsBliss for sending me some of this tea.

A nice, even-tempered tea. Pleasant way to start my sipping for the day. Smooth and rich. A very nice Ceylon!

The rest of today I will be RANDOM Tea Selections of the teas in my stash I haven’t tried yet. As for this one…it’s a really good, plain Ceylon! Plain and Simple. It’s stereotypically Ceylon but still tasty! Not much else to say about it, really.

Purchased “High Grown Ceylon Black Tea” in September 2022.
It’s mild, bland, and inoffensive.
Not sure how exciting a Ceylon can be. I maybe had high expectations after reading Amazon reviews.
For my first attempted brewing, I treated it the way I would make myself a high-quality black tea: Very generous amount of leaves, 30 second first brewing with 190º water, and then a second longer hotter brewing. The first brew was bland. For the second steeping I added even more leaves and used boiling water, but still couldn’t coax out much flavor.

I put that in the fridge for future ice-tea and tried again, this time measuring out two overflowing tablespoons of leaves into a tea pot, and adding only 10oz of boiling water, then letting it steep for a full 6 minutes. (This was maybe overkill, I might try 5min next time, or water just off a boil). At least I could get a sense of the flavor, and some of the briskness and tannin I expect from a Ceylon (EG: Lipton) tea.

A second brewing was only okay.

I’ll try brewing this one more time, as iced sun-tea, but likely will use the rest for Kombucha making, mixing with oolong or green teas to supplement the flavor.

I appreciate that they’re fair trade certified, organic certified, and kosher certified.
I especially love that they’re a member-owned co-op.
Still, I probably would not buy another pound.

Malty with subtle spice notes. Not much to say about this one.

Frontier stuff generally takes mistreatment well—actually does better with sloppy overmeasuring and overtiming, and this is a decent daily drinker Ceylon; just a little edge to it. But I was a little too generous with both this morning and let this steep to the strength of turpentine. It did get the eyes open, however, and that was the point. Little ice will gentle it down in a bit.

The sharpness, however, is a good foil for the rest of my breakfast—COTTON CANDY GRAPES. Yes, in all capitals because we could actually find them locally. There is about a three-day window when they are available in town and then they disappear. The reason they disappear? They really do taste like cotton candy.

Mostly I wanted to brag on my grapes, not my tea. Good morning to y’all anyway.

Very drinkable everyday black. Second steep is OK but not nearly as good as the first.

Warming and smooth with a sweet aftertaste.