Lochan Tea Limited

So I opened the package I noted the nutty/malty aroma that I have come to notice with most assam teas. I have to say I love the smell of this one. I set the kettle to just below boiling and began prepping my tea. Today I was using a tea sac bag in order to prepare my tea as I was in the shop and we’re a little short on proper infusers at the moment. By the time my tea was ready for the water, well the water was ready! While I waited for the steeping to be done I really noted the malty aroma come out. My mouth may have also begun to water at about the same time.

The result? Well there is a beautiful amber colored liquid in my cup! So, so far so good. The taste is very crisp and malty – just the way I like my assam teas. I also am noting a slight hint of bitterness coming through that lingers for just a moment.* I’m also enjoying how smooth and rich this tea is with each sip. Again thank you Vivek at Lochan Tea Limited for this and the other samples (more reviews to come).

This is another keeper from Lochan Tea Limited. It smells & tastes a bit more green than Upton’s No.1 Tippy Orthodox GFOP Darjeeling (which I’ve been drinking the past few months), but has a sweet finish. This may be blasphemy, but I really like it with milk & Stevia. I will definitely keep this one in my cupboard at all times. I highly recommend Lochan Teas. It’s the only tea leaves I love to inhale when I first open a bag. Like I used to do with good coffee grounds. :)

Mmm … malty good and so rich! I love a malty Assam (made with milk & Stevia) and I was really pleased with this one. I must never, never, never run out!! EVER!!! :))

I normally dislike the slight bitter quality that most first-flush Darjeelings have, but this one is light, smooth, and entirely agreeable. It takes honey beautifully!

Lots of flavour. Bitter, but in a good way. Goes spectacularly with food.

really one of the better tea’s

Been busy recently, finally managed to make a cup of tea this morning… Well this tea before shipping costs were added on, came out to be about 4USD for 100g. I don’t know but that’s insanely cheap for a first flush darjeeling. Honey brown brew, slightly astringent if oversteeped and more malty than fruity. I would have more to say, but my thoughts are currently eluding me. Overall, great value from Lochan teas.

At 195*: Well blended flavour profile. Muscatel fruitiness, but not as blatant as some of the other FF. Overall, I love it, but I think I prefer the Giddapahar, just because it gave me more of a wow sensation. This is nice and mellow, yet still interesting. Not very sweet. Robust. A good first flush, and I look forward to Thurbo’s second. I realise a lot can happen in between flushes, but something about this one makes me think their second may really shine.

It’s too demure to really get me excited, but I would buy this tea and drink it consistently. I just wouldn’t find myself with the urge to weep when I used it up, like I have been tempted to do sometimes with other estate flush teas.

…Later: 205* Demure is definitely not a word I’d use to describe this baby when you up the temperature a little. It’s got great notes of muscatel and hay. Really aromatic and quite spectacular.

I needed something comforting this morning after waking up with the news of Jack Layton’s death, and nice strong Assam with a hefty dose of cream was it. After watching some great but sad tributes to him, this and reading his last letter (http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/story/2011/08/22/pol-layton-last-letter.html) helped perk me up as much as possible. So very heartbreaking, though. It’s rare for there to be a political leader, especially a Canadian leader, that the people can so unanimously look up to. At least I think we can be confident that he’s left quite the legacy of hope and change.

A+++ breakfast tea! Managed to get me out the door for a weekend of suburban family functions. This is malty and rich and it absolutely loves milk.

Alright. Way behind on my paper, feeling lethargic, left eye is swollen and sore, would rather be in bed. I need a serious kick in the pants, so I brewed this up nice and strong. And then I realized that I had no milk. I’ve told myself to stop buying milk, so that makes sense. But, I really like milk in my breakfast tea and this looked hazardously dark and strong without it. As a result, this is my first experience with coconut milk in tea. Not bad! It doesn’t taste coconutty at all, actually, just a little lighter.

As for the tea itself, this has been my preferred breakfast tea since it came into my life. Malty and rich but really nice and smooth. Delicious!

Yep, I ordered tea from India on a Friday and it arrives Tuesday morning as I’m trying to decide which tea to start the day with.

This smelled delicious and appropriate for helping me get productive after an unofficial long weekend of lounging and birthday celebrations. It’s quite tippy and brewed up a lovely dark ambery brown. It’s nice and deep and malty and very smooth on its own but I couldn’t help adding a little milk a few sips into it.

Fresh tea straight from India! I’m actually pretty impressed it only took three days to arrive here. Before I begin, my experiences with first flush darjeelings is quite limited. I browsed around, curious to find somewhere to start. Most vendors have most of this stuff relatively high priced and depending on the garden it comes from, price fluctuates a lot.Out of a few websites, Lochan offered the cheapest available, so i went ahead and grabbed the cheapest and most expensive one they offer. (In truth though, i can’t say $8 for 100g is anywhere near expensive) Sites such as Thunderbolt and Tea Emporium charge up to and around $30 for a Thurbo first flush. Figuring I didn’t have much to lose, I put in an order. Story goes, that the wonderful folks from FedEx opened up the package from Lochan and opened up the tea too! Thankfully they only one they ripped open was the free masala chai they threw in with the order (a generous 50g too I must say) but I really didn’t care much for the chai at all so I was glad it was the only one they opened.

On to the brew, nice golden colour not getting much muscatel flavours. This one is really light tasting, a hint of malted barely sweetness and slight astringency. No spiciness from what I can tell (supposedly some first flush darjeelings have this flavour profile). It was not as fruity as I was hoping for, but still makes a nice cup of tea. The leaves are mostly broken but not dust like small. I’m actually currently preferring my Nilgiri Parkside from CS more than this, but as far as value goes Lochan has done fairly well. I cannot comment on how this would compare to a higher grade darjeeling and I am curious to find out really, how much of a difference it would make.

New review (this one was quite nice):

http://www.itsallabouttheleaf.com/2278/tea-review-lochan-tea-thurbo-ftgfop-1-cl-ex-5-2/

Enjoying this with red grapes the size of super-bounce balls…they complement each other nicely. I think Lochan is fast becoming one of my favorite purveyors of really good Darjeelings.

I’m going to go ahead and post my comments here, although my sample is labeled Thurbo FTGFOP 1 CH (SPL) EX4 (Experts, I know FTGFOP, but can you help interpret the rest of the alphabet soup)?

I’ll have a longer review later also, like Jillian, but this is really good stuff. My favorite feature is the aroma of the steeped tea—-smells like the tray of communion cups at my church, or the inside of a Welch’s unsweetened grape juice bottle. This Darjeeling has personality!

De-Cupboarding this tea – I’ll miss it. It was a great introduction into 1st Flush Darjeelings and I’d recommend Lochan Teas as a great company for anyone looking to try some of the finner-quality Indian teas.

I steeped the leaves for 4 minutes this time which brought out the muscatel flavours more strongly, making it taste a bit more like a typical Darjeeling – though not as bitterly astringent as I’ve found most 2nd Flush or Autumnal teas to be. I resteeped the leaves (@ 4:45min) and while the results were a little bit bland the tea still had the same recognizable flavour-profile as during the first steep.

This is another review I’m writing up for Mike of the ’It’s All About the Leaf’ tea blog. Check it out here: http://www.itsallabouttheleaf.com/

I discovered upon opening the package that the leaves of this tea were considerably larger and more ‘whole’ than the leaves of the First Flush from Goomtee Estate that I also sampled from this same company. These leaves were an interesting and attractive-looking mix of dark green and silver, almost as though they were the buds of a silver needle white tea rather than a black tea. But then supposedly Darjeeling teas get fermented less than most blacks, so it makes sense, I guess.

The smell was sweet and hay-like with some floral notes, though brewed it took on a toastier aroma. It had a more typical Darjeeling flavour than the Goomtee first flush did – resplendent with muscatel flavours, though with considerably less of the drying astringency you’d taste in a later-picked Darjeeling. It was sweeter too, which becomes more noticeable as the tea cooled, and it had a nice, full flavour that lingered in the mouth and kept me from forgetting about it. As it cooled it also took on some fruity characteristics, with an interesting nutty undertone.

Of the two First Flush Darjeelings I’ve tasted now I think this one is my favorite of the two, although in my opinion both are excellent, complex, and interesting teas.

Full review is up at http://www.itsallabouttheleaf.com/1639/tea-review-lochan-tea-satrupa-tgfop-first-flush-2010/

The 95-degree-afternoon mentioned in said review was several months ago! We’re UP to a blistering 5 degrees today. Wish I had more of this to enjoy from the depths of my favorite blankie.

Received this as a review sample for www.itsallabouttheleaf.com, so I’ll save lengthy comments for that - suffice it to say this is one of the best Assams I have ever tasted. Malty, biscuity … all the good words!

(Later in the 95 degree, zillion percent humidity afternoon … GREAT cold! My husband humors me when I stick tea under his nose to drink, but reverts to commercial bottled most of the time; however, he truly liked this one. Must be the malty freshness. Or the fresh maltiness.)

The Tale of Two Darjeelings, Part One

The leaves of the Castleton Darjeeling are very green and twisted. When I first tried one of these 1st flush Darjeelings a few days ago, I was thrown off by how similar the 1st flushes are to green teas. I don’t have any prior experience with Darjeelings, but I really thought that they were black teas and perhaps the later flushes are. I don’t know.

What I do know is that this tea is much more like a green tea. If you go into it, like I initially did, expecting a robust black tea that would take milk and/or sugar you will probably be disappointed. However, I’m going into this tasting thinking that this is a green tea.

The dry leaf had a very green smell, but not vegetal. Almost a bit musky, but not off-putting. This Castleton brews up a rich, golden hue similar to that of apple juice and has a medium floral aroma. The first sip begins slightly buttery, followed by a light floral taste. As the cup begins to cool slightly, the fruity scent begins to come into play. It is a bit hard to identify the fruity taste however that Darjeelings are famous for (well, from what I’ve read).

This tea is pretty good, but is best when drank before allowed to cool too much. A light, pleasant floral aftertaste lingers between each sip.

The rating is subject to change depending on whether I prefer this or my other 2010 1st flush Darjeeling. Stay tuned!

I’ve noticed that when I resteep this tea it takes on a toastier quality instead of the green notes from the initial cup. I’m also getting the traditional muscatel flavour more clearly and it’s lightly astringent but not too dry.