Assam Numalighur Second Flush CTC BOP

Mmmmmm…this has a heady chocolate assam aroma.

plain – would steep for 3 mins if having plain, astringency present but much less than anticipated, similar levels to Darjeeling. Very light floral undertone. Malty.
w/ sugar – astringency enhanced by sugar. prefer without
w milk – astringency still present, creamy malty deliciousness.
with milk and sugar – still good, but prefer without sugar.

My sample is gone, otherwise I would retry at 3 minutes.

This tea is a black basic tea. Nothing special about it but nothing awful. I can tell it will tend to get too strong or bitter if you oversteep or overfill. I managed not to do that. Not a bad tea at all for those who want a strong, basic black, but there are no special frills. I will drink the rest of the sample I ordered, but I don’t see myself ordering a full bag.

This was one of the free sample size teas Zen Tea had (and may still have) on their website. It even says on the package that, ‘yes, this tea is not the pinnacle of refinement.’ I agree. This is not an amazing tea. But, I took that with a grain of salt.

I have an espresso machine at work and I wondered to myself, ‘what if I made tea espresso out of this?’ The leaves are certainly fine enough. Presto! That is how my Teapresso was born!

I prepared this tea by packing it tightly into the portafilter (espresso-shot-puller-thingie) and tamping it into a tightly compressed cake. Pulling the shot as I normally do for a doppio espresso, I got a similar color as the coffee, but without the thick, caramel colored crema you typically see on top. It smelled strong and very… tea-like. I suppose this is what ‘tea smell’ means for the rest of the non-tea-obsessed world.

With a pump of vanilla and steamed milk, I was able to transform this ‘unsavory’ leaf into three amazing tea lattés from the 20g pouch I received. Hooray for sipdowns!

P.S. I did not give this a rating because I know not many of you would not be able to recreate my same brewing parameters.

Off-topic, but regarding my cotton candy pink hair, I feel like I kind of got swindled. It’s not nearly as pink as what it should have been (about five inches of my roots didn’t absorb any of the pink dye at all), they did a horrible bleach job (lots of peachy chunks everywhere) and they double charged me for it. That said, I got some Joico Colour Intensity pink dye, just blended some in with conditioner, and now I’ll be hanging out like this in the apartment for a few hours. Right now my head looks Barbie pink but we’ll see how it’ll turn out!

Onto this tea. I wasn’t expecting much since CTC teas and I don’t really get along well, but seeing that this is an Assam, and Zen had a killer sale earlier this year, I thought it wouldn’t hurt. Eh. Quite astringent. You can definitely taste that underlying classic maltiness that Assams have but the liquor just seems to thick and sludgy compared to other Assams. I had to brown sugar it up and top it off with half and half to make this drinkable. Their other Assam is lightyears ahead of this one.

I had just over 1tbsp left of this, so it’s all in my little pot for this steep.

On its own, this tea has a grassy and slightly malty taste. If I take a small sip, it almost seems overstepped despite its short steep time. If I take a larger one, this doesn’t show up as much at all. Adding milk and honey mutes the grassiness and makes it taste more malty. In all, a nice, standard cup.