TA20: Tippy Orthodox FBOP Assam

This is my tea of the morning, one of the assams from the Upton Tea assam sampler. I’m still not used to the time change, I’ve been going to bed early the last couple of days and waking up feeling groggy. Anyway I thought this would help to perk me up.

I may have oversteeped this slightly but my first impressions still stand. A nice, hefty assam, very malty and with some floral notes. It is definitely a good choice for morning time!

I had a cup of this earlier and it was fairly tasty but I will tell you it sure does make a difference BIG TIME with the temp of your water, folks! This time around I’m having a 2nd cuppa and it’s WAY darker, bolder, stronger, and an awesomely loud morning tea!

It’s a more masculine type assam – woodsy and bold – and I really like that!

I’m drinking this tea with generic S’mores poptarts while my dog finds and eats all the stinkbugs in the house, cause we’re c-l-a-s-s-y.

I like my tea astringent, but following the brewing instructions on this one yields a tea that cools into some sort of paint-removing-acid. Don’t steep it for 4 minutes unless you need to have a chemical face peel or something.

This tea is nice, though unexceptional. It has a sort of dusty undertaste without sweetener or milk that isn’t great, but otherwise it’s a nice, full-flavored tea. With milk and sugar, it’s very good and has none of those pesky salad flavors I’m always complaining about. I have a relatively big can of this, and I’m glad because it will be a good tea for breakfast. I mean, it’s pairing with my fake poptart dinner smashingly.

As I’m new to serious perusal of tea, please take this review with a grain of salt. Or a couple teaspoons of sugar.

This is the first of my Assam sampler pack I’ve tried and I’m beginning to connect some dots. There is a sour tang in this tea that I have tasted in the Bond Street Blend that I reviewed a couple days ago — though thankfully much less in this tea than the Bond Street! This taste must be what is called “malty”. It makes the tea quite strong, and is a taste I associate with a similarity to coffee. It’s strong enough that my standard 2 teaspoons of rock sugar barely temper it. The tea is thick tasting, and after half a cup there is only a little astringency. This may change as the cup progresses, as I’ve seen it do so with other teas as they cool.

I also noticed a very faint hint of cinnamon in the dry tea before steeping.

All in all, I’d recommend 2 1/2 tsp rock sugar or cane sugar equivalent, to help temper the strength of it.

Smells very honey like. It almost smells like theres some spice notes in there, like cloves. Taste is malty and kind of earthy/mineral-esque. Medium bodied I’d say. Price is pretty good, would get again. Good hot or iced. Speaking of iced, when I sugared and iced it I’m getting faint notes that almost remind me of something like mint. Quite refreshing, good for hot weather or drinking after a workout.

I love Assam teas, even though I would have to rate myself as a novice as far as understanding how the tea is grown, cultivated, harvested, and packaged, etc. This is why ordering the four-pack Assam sampler from Upton Tea Imports was a wonderful choice for me. So far I really like the smooth, mellow, roundness of this tea. It is not quite as malty as some other Assams I have tasted, but nevertheless, it’s the sort of tea I can drink on an empty stomach in the morning without the tannins irritating my digestion. I use a coconut creamer from Trader Joes with a little bit of honey, or I drink plain. As a test, I drank straight the remainder in the teapot after it had steeped too long. It was still very palatable. I very much enjoy this friendly, unassuming tea.