Sort of tea service brought up at beginning of afternoon (5)
I believe the answer is:
assam
'sort of tea' is the definition.
(I've seen this before)
'service brought up at beginning of afternoon' is the wordplay.
'service' becomes 'mass' (church service).
'brought up' is a reversal indicator (in a down clue, letters go up).
'at' is a charade indicator (letters next to each other) (I've seen this in other clues).
'beginning of' suggests taking the first letters.
The initial letter of 'afternoon' is 'a'.
'mass' in reverse letter order is 'ssam'.
'ssam' put after 'a' is 'ASSAM'.
(Other definitions for assam that I've seen before include "Indian tea region" , "part of India" , "Tea state of India" , "Indian state known for tea growing" , "place associated with tea" .)