Tea pilgrimage: CTC at Dooars
 

The Indians we encountered all seem to take an early morning meal
that's a kind of pre-breakfast, with just a few biscuits (I grew up
calling these "crackers") and tea. Later in the morning comes a
bigger breakfast.

Typically the tea at the first meal is CTC with milk, often hot milk:
basically, it's fuel to get you going. At the Soongachi bungalow,
though, it was different. The tea was CTC, all right, but it was
clear that we were going to *taste* it. No milk, and what startled me
the first morning, no cups: we drank the tea from glass tumblers of
the kind you would use for good whisky. The tea wasn't dark, either,
but an amber that came from not trying to cook all the color out of
the granules. (Sorry, I forgot to ask how long it had steeped.) It
was a pretty color, I must say, especially when held up to the morning
light.

I didn't think to ask SMC if this is the way he usually drinks the
first tea of the morning, or if he was trying to convince my wife and
me that CTC tea can actually taste good. If it was the latter, he
certainly succeeded; the liquor was mellow, with just enough bite for
the sake of balance.

So that is how my CTC snobbery died. I have some CTC teas from
Soongachi and New Glencoe that I'm going to give some close attention
once I'm done with the more fragile teas we got later in the trip.

/Lew
---
Lew Perin /
http://www.panix.com/~perin/babelcarp.html
BRO wisdom: GENTLEMEN PLY DO NOT FLY

Crymad, yes the secret of any tea is freshness and rest are proper
brewing. CTC tea need- 200-210 F water temperature and if the granular
are heavy(that means tightly curled) 2 minutes if the CTC balls are
light(loosely curled) you can brew 2-3 minutes. Try, you will find a
big difference. I am enjoying a lot of African CTC tea recently this
way.

Ripon
Maputo, Mozambique

Crymad, yes the secret of any tea is freshness and rest are proper
brewing. CTC tea need- 200-210 F water temperature and if the granular
are heavy(that means tightly curled) 2 minutes if the CTC balls are
light(loosely curled) you can brew 2-3 minutes. Try, you will find a
big difference. I am enjoying a lot of African CTC tea recently this
way.

Ripon
Maputo, Mozambique