Assam Banaspaty

I used 1.25 tablespoons of dry leaf for 375ml of water.

Far too bitter. This tea likely has to infuse for a shorter amount of time and could maybe use less leaf.

Withholding my rating for now.

Sipping on this one as I organize my notes for school. My fiance pointed out I spend more time organizing my notes than actually studying my notes. How lovely.

Smells great dry, just like the other blacks today. Let’s see what’s hiding in the taste. This one is pretty good. I think between this and Nepal Black is most reminding me of English Breakfast. I’ll have to do some more experimenting. For now I’ll just sit back and enjoy this cuppa.

1.25 tsp for 250mL water @ 98C. Steeped 5 minutes. Drunk bare.

Sipdown.

A very acceptable Assam. Tippy leaves. A leathery note if steeped too long. Some distant rose and bread notes. Not as malty as some. A sweet finish, something cheaper Assams lack. (I avoid Twinings Assam for that reason.) Liquor is reddish brown and a bit murky. No real depth or complexity, though. I won’t be buying this one again, not when I can have Kopili or Gingia instead.

The tea brews to the colour of a lighter cherry wood and smells of malt, cocoa, and a citrusy fruity note.

A lightly bitter malt dominates the taste, along with notes of cocoa, something vegetal and a powdery floral. The tea is smooth with no astringeny. This batch had very little natural sweetness and tasted a little thin compared to some assams I have had. The leaves were pretty broken, perhaps this batch is slightly old.

Tough to get it to brew strongly enough. That’s my short review of this one. I expected robust, malty, and typically Assam, but this tea fell a bit short on the robust side of things. The leaves are not as large as some other “full leaf” assams I have tried, so it surprised me a bit that this one did not brew up as richly as I expected from an assam variety. That said, it has a smooth maltiness to it and is better than David’s Tea’s English Breakfast, which I found to be quite weak. Maybe this is indicative of many of the mega-chain tea stores that have popped up — I thought the same thing with the Teavana brand English Breakfast. For me, I would have liked a darker, richer brew… and I guess for the money I spent on this loose leaf tea, I would rather buy a couple of boxes of bagged Punjana or Barry’s Irish Tea.

This tea introduced me to the world of straight teas. I bought it in David’s Tea’s “Straight Tea Discovery Kit”. It is a delicious black tea with a smooth taste. I like it either as a breakfast tea, black, or as a tea latte, with some agave nectar and steamed milk.