CTC Assam and State of the Uni...Blog

Drinking a nice cup of CTC Assam, one of the lower grade Assams offered by Harney and Sons. CTC stands for "Crush, Tear, Curl", a cheap method of automated tea picking that often results in broken bits of tea instead of whole leaves. Normally, I'm all about the full leaf and single estate teas but, as I've said before, there is a time and place for blends et. al. The CTC Assam is the stronger parts of an Assam. My favorite, the Mangalam, has a wonderful body to the liquor. It is strong and assertive and classically "black tea", but it also has a malty sweetness as well. CTC Assam is all "black tea" flavor. It brews dark and astringent, with a wallop of a body and a rather muted nose. The nose smells slightly of the wonderful maltiness but the taste is straight up black tea in your face. No frills, no layers of flavor, nada. Just good old fashioned straight tea. I'd throw a picture up here but you're really not missing much. They look like brownish BBs, curled up into tiny little balls that release this pungent tea upon hot water's command. Why am I drinking this tea?

I have food poisoning.

This and soup have all been thrown down the hatch successfully after waking up to a wonderful morning puke. Missed all of my classes, have to turn the homework in tomorrow. I feel significantly better now and tea, soup, and massive quantities of water have been input and not output, so it looks like we're in good standing.

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In other news, I've been pondering about this blog and what I want to do with it. So far I've seen some interest in the topics I've addressed. This makes me relatively happy. It's always nice to wake up, check my Google Analytics, and see how many sheep I have shepherded to my ideas. This said...I'd like to expand further and increase traffic. I want the world to see what I have to say, damn it, no matter how crude and blue I work. I'm currently sifting through how to operate Dreamweaver in order to fill out the website and domain I've acquired and I'm always actively searching for anybody who is curious enough to contact me about anything I've written as well as what I should write about. I'm also extremely open to press samples. Really, I am. I had quite a few up on bat over the past few weeks that I've perused through and, dare I say, it was a rather entertaining endeavor for all parties involved. In the coming days I still have to do a review of Pocket Shots (they sent me a vodka in a "sturdy" package, expect Hammer Time), but other than what press releases companies graciously (and quite mysteriously) send me, I am extremely limited by my own personal funds. I'd like to continue reviewing beverages at the rate I do, but its getting...costly. In the coming months, I may shift a bit more to tea as samples of tea are significantly cheaper to acquire than beer ($7 for 40 cups as opposed to a $2-$3 beer). Either that, or I may start dipping back into the cheap beers, a la the Malt Liquor Adventures. I do suppose most of you enjoy seeing me suffer.

Regardless, if anyone has any questions, comments, concerns, snide remarks, off-the-cuff remarks, crazy remarks, or fish, please email me. The email is drinkreviews AT gmail DOT com. Sorry spammers. I love email, but I only like emails from people that aren't trying to extend my pen 15 or make my non-existent girlfriend/wife/spouse/mistress a lot happier in certain places of sleeping (or...well...not sleeping, be that the case). I'm talking about a bedroom. Sorry, not good at subtlety.