Tonganagaon SFTGFOP1 2nd Flush

yum, another sample from the Rare Tea Republic. This time it’s an Assam.

I steeped this for 3 minutes at 200 F with an infuser ball and am drinking out of a glass irish coffee mug – guess what? It works great for tea too! ;-)

This tea brews up to be a beautiful dark reddish color. It’s a delicious assam. Normally I would take these with milk but today I am trying without. The thing that predominately hits your nose and your mouth upon tasting is MALT, glorious MALT! Then you get chocolate followed by a bit of fruitiness with a bit of tannins in the finish. A very good assam indeed. I think I prefer this with milk (or in my case, soy milk) but it is quite delicious.

Another sample from the Rare Tea Republic, and again inspired by Amy Oh.

This is my second tea of the day, and this was very different than the Temi I had earlier. The aroma of this tea is very pleasing, with interesting spices dominating the aroma. The first sip of the tea was interesting, because I’m not very familiar with Assam teas, so the malty taste was very different for me (but in a good way). It was also interesting, because this tea is sweeter than I’m used to for the first infusion of a black tea, but that seems to typical for Indian teas.

The second infusion is very mellow, and there are soem fruity undertones present in the taste now. The tea has also developed a bit of an aftertaste which reminds me a bit of a Wuyi Oolong, but it’s a bit faint. The tea is also a bit sweeter now, which has improved how well the different flavors balance each other, making for a very pleasant cup.

More to come later.