Tea India CTC Assam Loose Leaf Black Tea Strong, Full-Bodied Flavorful Blend Of Premium Black Tea Made with Natural Ingredients Traditional Indian Tea Caffeinated Iced Tea Breakfast Tea (32 Ounce)

When I first learned about CTC, or the cut-tear-curl method of processing tea, it sounded downright destructive. "CTC must produce an inferior grade of tea," I thought. This Tea India purchase proved me wrong. Not only is this a big package of tea, which can easily supply one person for 10 months or more, but it tastes great and is sold at a bargain price. I've been buying large amounts of exotic teas from overseas for a decade or more, so I consider my tea standards to be rather high. I am very pleasantly surprised by this tea. I'm glad I have the 2 pounds (and dwindling) of it in a jar in my cabinet, available whenever I need some nice, fast, tasty black tea. Despite the fine, almost powdery texture, I think it will retain its flavor for a year or more. "Fast" is certainly applicable to this tea and is one of its virtues. The fine granularity of leaf produced by CTC makes it possible to have a rich, dark cup of black tea after steeping for a mere minute or two. Don't use too much tea (it's concentrated) or steep it much longer than 2-3 minutes, or it may get too strong and bitter. Nonetheless, these features make for convenient brewing--Just steep for a few seconds, and pour! I find the flavor to be very comforting. It brings me back to my early memories of drinking Lipton or Tetley tea, the kinds I grew up drinking as a kid. But that doesn't mean it has a mundane or supermarket taste. It's very rich and full bodied. It calls to mind a warm and cozy kitchen. It has a smooth taste when prepared right, which is not difficult. At first I thought it might be too strong a tea to enjoy without milk, but later I accidentally drank a cup of cold Tea India tea with no milk, and it was great! I do think this tea pairs perfectly with milk, however. It's not labeled organic, but it certainly tastes clean and natural. Regarding the question of whether the tea has a "malty" taste, associated with its assamica pedigree, I'd say, yes, it does have a mild malty taste, and that contributes somewhat to the comforting character of the drink. I continue to buy more exotic and expensive teas while enjoying this one at the same time. I like to maintain a collection of teas, so I'm happy I bought this product and would do it again.

This is by far my very favorite tea! I do not use cream, but I do use honey with it and it is so good! The flavor is fabulous and never seems to get bitter, which is surprising because I make my tea strong. If your on the fence, don't be! It's fab!

No complaints about the tea itself (it's strong and there's a lot for the price), but I wish the tea leaves weren't chopped so small. There's so much tea dust and tiny bits of tea that will escape the strainer.

This tea is not too bad! For the money, you get an unbelievable amount of it. I seriously underestimated how much tea would come in this bag - it's SO much. Opening it up, it smelled relatively fresh, although it was pretty dry. The leaves have kind of a strange cube-cut shape to them and they're very small in comparison to the longer-cut tea I was used to. My personal favorite is the Ahmad Earl Grey tea, but after a pretty significant price increase lately, I decided to try this one out as a cheaper but still decent option. It definitely fits the bill, but I wish it was stronger. Several of the reviews I read mentioned how strong it was, but in comparison to the Earl Grey I was drinking, I wasn't super impressed. I make a pretty large quantity of tea in the morning (about 1 quart) and drink it throughout the first half of the day, and my infuser wasn't big enough to fit enough tea to get that bold flavor I was wanting. If you like it strong, be prepared to use smaller cups or buy a bigger infuser. Overall, this is a pretty good tea. You get a massive amount of it for the price and the flavor isn't bad, it's just not exactly what I was expecting according to all the other reviews. Make sure to store it in a nice airtight container, since I can imagine this tea would dry out and get weird fairly quickly if you aren't careful.

A purchase inspired from my late night binge watching of a British TV miniseries. As an American, I know very little about drinking tea. Who better to take direction than from that of our British cousins in the U.K.? So, I was watching the "Slow Horses" miniseries on Amazon Prime, a show about a dysfunctional team of MI5 agents and their obnoxious boss, played by Gary Oldman. When the show came to a scene where a character offered to brew her guest a spot of late night TEA, she asked him to pick his choice of "Builder's" or "Assam" to which he enthusiastically replied "Assam!" She looked inside her canister and said "Sorry, (I'm) all out of Assam, you'll have to settle for Builder's. Suddenly, I, too, was craving a hot spot of tea! But what of this "Builder's" and the preferred "Assam" of which they speak? I knew only of Lipton & Nestea. Immediately, I'm on my Amazon Prime account searching for "Assam Tea". My search led me directly to this magnificent find, which I ordered & received in mere days. All I can say is "WOW!" This tea is a game-changer for me and what I knew about tea! First off, the bag was HUGE, much larger than anticipated! (using my FoodSaver vacuum sealer, I subdivided this enormous bag into roughly ten smaller packets of various sizes, I stored some and shared the others with my family members. My sister was most enthusiastic of all, she loves this tea every bit as much as I do. She commented "great tasting, and this tea is VERY STRONG!" I said, "Well that just means you USE LESS!" as the strength is a direct result of your measure. She said she had been re-brewing the tea leaves for a second cup, I said "Well don't do THAT, just use a smaller measure!" Overall, I think you'll love the flavor and sheer value of this Assam Tea, a real game changer for this American tea drinker!

A very delicious clean, brisk, black loose leaf tea. Very strong due to the cut-tear-curl processing so I cut back to about 60% of the leaf I usually measure out. Makes a perfect and classic iced tea.

I ran out of black tea from the India Market and was too lazy to drive all the way to the store so I tried out this brand on Amazon. The tea tastes pretty much exactly the same to me. However, I noticed a few people have rated this product poorly and a lot of them seem to not understand that this is CTC tea. CTC stands for Crushed Tea Curl. The process of CTC creates these small pellets that are much much stronger and bolder in taste. It is not, I REPEAT, it is not the same as the orthodox loose leaf black teas that most people are used to seeing. So when there are comments like "looks like dirt" or "this tea is so bitter", this is why. With that in mind, you should not be putting multiple huge spoonfuls of the tea leaves in your drink. Best way to make this tea: If I'm making an 8oz cup for myself, I heat 4oz of water on the stove in a small pot. Once the water comes to a boil, I add 2 teaspoons, I REPEAT, 2 teaspoons (NOT TABLESPOONS) of the CTC Assam Black Tea and then add 1-2 tablespoons of brown sugar (depending on how you like it sweet you can add more). After mixing the brown sugar and black tea, I add 4oz of Vanilla Almond milk (you can use plain milk as well, I'm just lactose intolerant), and right before the mixture comes back to a boil, I turn the heat off and I poor the tea through a small sieve (to filter out the ctc leaves) into my cup. Takeaway: Point is, you don't want to use so much of this black tea as it is strong due to how CTC is processed and for a nice balance try 1:1 ratio of milk and water. Hope this helps!

It is fine, this is what I would expect for an Assam CTC in this price range. It is a step above grocery store black tea. Packs a nice caffeine punch, definitely gets the job done in that department. Unremarkable in the aroma/flavor department, I would describe the flavor/aroma as "A boring Assam", as expected. Medium malt/body as expected. Brewing it more than 3 minutes is a detriment. This is a good basic black Assam for milk and sugar tea drinkers that are looking to buy in bulk.