Sampler Sipdown September! Another from my T2 sampler stash, and since I had their Good Afternoon blend yesterday, and it’s Monday, figured I’d brew up their Good Morning blend. It’s another discontinued black tea blend. And my morning is already most definitely not good, because opening up the sampler packet, I dropped it on my kitchen floor and had to sweep up a bunch of black tea. And there was a small spider hiding in my broom. And I just wanted some caffeine. * cue lame Garfield “I hate Mondays” joke here *
Anyway, I do have on my spreadsheet that this is a Chinese/Indian blend which I can’t find anywhere else, so I’m thinking I may have recorded that info from T2’s website before they pulled the tea pages to oblivion when they discontinued the tea (yesterday I couldn’t even get good ol’ Archive.org to bring up the Good Afternoon blend page even though I still had the link to it in my info… such a shame). So I’m going to assume I was correct yesterday that the Good Afternoon was Ceylon with a Keemum or Yunnan, and this tea will be an Assam with a Keemun or Yunnan.
I didn’t really bother to inspect the leaf much or sniff it on account of the cleaning I had to do while not really awake (it was mostly CTC leaf, so I’m assuming heavily Assam), I just measured what I had left after a good deal of my sampler went in the trash and then made a very large cup (16 oz.) with what was left to take out the door with me to work in a thermos.
The tea is quite malty, with more of a baked bread sort of note, and I’m getting some slight smoky/peppery/citrusy notes on the finish that remind me a little of a steak marinade. The Chinese black tea notes are coming out a lot more subtle in this tea than the Good Afternoon blend I tried yesterday, with the thick malty notes dominating for the majority of the sip. The tea, thankfully, is not bitter (a problem I have with many Assams/breakfast blacks) but does have more astringency on the tongue than the Good Afternoon blend, as well. I like this much more than most English/Irish Breakfast blends I’ve tried, am able to drink it without adding milk fine (though admittedly wouldn’t have minded a dash of honey if I had that available), but prefered the Good Afternoon blend to this one.
Flavors: Astringent, Bread, Citrus, Malt, Pepper, Smoke
