Tea Review: Thotalagala Black Tea

Oh my! Three weeks without a new tea blog! Where did all the time go? I have a mountain of teas and topics to write about! I must needs write like the wind 🙂

Today we are back with Tea #3 from the Trader Joe Thotalagala collection, a single-estate Sri Lanka tea set in tea pyramids (but the tea leaves can be easily liberated and brewed loose leaf style). We are talking about the Black Tea of this set, which is black tea leaves and nothing more!

The tea takes well to oversteeping or grandpa style, it does not get bitter the way classic Assam and breakfast-style CTC teas do. With this tea I may have accidentally discovered a food + tea combination that makes a tea taste more …lapsang souchong but I’ll save that for another post since it is not specific to this tea.

With this being part of a gift set you cannot purchase separately, it’s a good idea not to fall in love with it, but like it well enough to keep drinking it until you finish your ten pyramids. And that’s a good way to describe it!

And here are the tea leaves after they were spent, post-Grandpa style infusion, liberated from the tea pyramid:

INGREDIENTS and INSTRUCTIONS

There is only one ingredient in this tea, organic black tea leaves and nothing more!

The instructions on the package are 3-4 minutes in 8-10 ounces of near boiling water for all four included teas, but this being a pure black tea, it is fine with boiling water too. Depending on how long the first steep is, you can re-steep it, but it’s no oolong or puerh [in terms of never-ending resteeps].

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