CTC Assam Exotic Black Tea (Blend)

Here’s Hoping TTB R5 #5

I just realized I haven’t spent a weekend at home for 6 weeks and January isn’t looking much better and I have this poor neglected TTB sitting on my kitchen counter that I need to start powering though in order to get it back out on the road and travelling again and so I’ve decided that I’m only drinking tea from the box for the next 5 days so I can deliver it safe and sound to the post office for its next journey early next week.

I’m (re)starting with the straight blacks, my third favorite tea type, and this morning a nice malty assam sounded pretty much perfect since its below freezing here at the moment which is very unusual for my part of the world….

This is a delicious breakfast tea, it would be perfect with toast or a slice of hot banana bread smothered in melted butter… oops, now I’m making myself hungry…. Strong, robust and super malty, this was a delightful breakfast treat and it worked perfectly with a splash of milk!

This is the Crush-Tear-Curl (or CTC) version of Golden Tips Tea’s signature blend Exotic Assam. For those unfamiliar, CTC is a method of mechanised tea processing, during which the tea leaves are passed through cylindrical rollers lined with tiny “teeth” which shred and roll the leaf into tiny pellets. The dry leaf smells very strong – malty with an edge of bitterness. It’s a smell I associate with the supermarket tea bags of my childhood. The leaf itself is a uniform black, formed into tiny balls.

I used 1 tsp of leaf for my cup, and gave it a scant 1.5 minutes in boiling water. This one brews FAST, and the resulting liquor darkens to a deep chocolate brown mere seconds after the leaf is added to the water. The scent at this stage is powerful, too – it’s readily identifiable as “tea” in the best builder’s sense of the word. Like the dry leaf, it’s malty with a bitter edge. I added a good splash of milk.

To taste, this one seems a little generic. It’s sweet and malty, as Assam typically is, and it has a thick, almost syrupy mouthfeel because of that. There’s a tiny hit of bitterness right at the end of the sip, although this intensifies as I continue to drink until it’s ultimately a little drying and astringent. My teeth actually feel a little “furry” after about half a cup, assumedly from the high tannin levels. This is definitely a full-bodied tea, but it’s a little one-note, and lacks some depth and complexity. It’s malty, for sure, but that’s about all I can really say.

See my full review here: http://sororiteasisters.com/2015/06/25/ctc-assam-exotic-black-tea-golden-tips/

One of the CTC’s I grabbed from Marzipan and her latest stash sale.
This Crush Tear, Curl style tea is surprisingly much smaller in size than the Jalinga CTC. It’s a blended tea, and I can tell by the varying sizes of the little balls of malty goodness. Although the Jalinga is a better cup, I think I like this one for making lattés at work. Yes, I still have a LOT of the Tea Guy’s Assam to go through, but I am confident that my lattes on the weekends will really help to deplete it and I can get some much nicer (If there is such a thing) mouse poop tea.
First serving of this tea had the awful remnants of Witches Brew Chai, and my gravity steeper made it taste like nothing but cumin. Blech. The next time I had it was a much better experience.

Coffee lovers will love this one. It is bold and malty, and even sort of looks like coffee as it brews. It is a bit strong for me without milk, but almond milk gives it a perfect wake-me-up without being too bitter or intense.

Ok, I’m on a CTC roll….. Since my exploring “nicer” teas began 9 months ago, I have given the cold shoulder to the CTCs I’ve received as samples, somehow believing I’d “been there” already (with tea bags) and shunning them from my coveted spot in the daily cup I look forward to. Since my surgery, I’ve found my palate is out of whack, and so I thought it might be the perfect time to return to the CTC stash to weed through them. Weed?? This isn’t weeding….this is ENJOYING!!

The mornings in Southern California have finally gone a tad chilly (hey, when it’s 90 during the day, 60 in the morning seems chilly!) and this CTC exploration has made it feel like fall. Assam Exotic Blend from Golden Tips Tea is a simple one note cup of wonderful maltiness. With a full, round mouthfeel and low astringency when steeped at 3 minutes, this is the equivalent of the “everyday cup of joe” that people grab as they run out the door to join the rat race. Hearty, reliable and satisfying, this is the flavor profile that the British love so much. Extra added bonus: if you were someone who created their own flavored teas, including chai, the versatility of this CTC would be perfect blank canvas for your creations.