Tea Bloggers and Ratings

I don’t rate anymore but I am not going to remove the old numbers. They are my personal opinion at a moment in time. I came here a few years back in love with bagged tea that I rated highly. Some of it I still love (mostly memory association but not always). When I started drinking high quality loose leaf it was like my eyes were opened for the first time. Everything was a 90+. I still haven’t reached the point of becoming blase about teas. I still love most of it. It has to be really bad before I am unable to find something about it I like. I actually find it a challenge to figure out a way to prepare it to bring out its best. Even types of teas I don’t like (there are a few), I try to view by what they are and how they are supposed to taste. Not on my personal tastes – at least not intentionally. Blogging really has no bearing on the ratings for me at least. I think people who follow someone figure out pretty quick how to interpret their review. I guess it comes down to you deciding why you assign a number in the first place.

I agree that everyone has different taste buds. So we all taste different notes. I haven’t rated anything in a while because each of us is unique. Words convey more than numerics so I try to pick notes instead of numbers.

I use ratings on here unless I have a factor which will skew the rating. Such factors may include brewing the tea in a non-standard or non-recommended fashion. Also, if I don’t like the tea type in general I don’t feel I’m objective enough to rate it. Another reason might be astringency, I take medications which dry out my mouth, and if a tea comes across to me as astringent then I don’t feel qualified to rate the tea.

I get some free tea without forewarning, but generally I purchase the tea or the sample is provided with a purchase the same as any other customer. I’m not a fan of sample sizes from some vendors as they may be dried out, or damaged, or not the best representation of the actual tea I will receive.

My blog posts are Whack-a-Mole without the Mole, tea filth and tea satire so nothing really to do with teas half the time.

I have been fairly clear in my blog that I believe tea rating to be nearly entirely subjective anyway. So I’m not bothered by the rating scales here, most are self-defined which are, again, single subject ratings and thus qualitative data rather than quantitative. Qualitative data is a single case study or very small sample. We do not have a large enough sample size of reviewers for any tea in this site to meet the stringent criteria for large sample sizes and thus quantitative objective analysis. So all of it here is subjective and relative to the individual.

What we DO provide is a guide for shopping. So I defend the ratings as necessary and helpful if someone is using Google or on the fence about buying a tea. People also tend to “follow” a writer whose tastes approximate their own. This might be the best method for using the site to guide purchase decisions.

I personally love reading tea reviews ad it helps me understand the tea better. When i switched from tea bags to loose leaf tea and I relied on tea reviewers to find new teas to try. But as KiwiDelight said words are more concrete in meaning than numbers. A well worded review makes you crave for tea, which a numbering system will never achieve.

P.S. – Amanda, I have read some of your reviews and they are really good. Keep up with the good work.

Personally, I agree with the policy that tea blenders/vendors shouldn’t assign numerical ratings (because of the obvious conflict of interest), but I don’t mind if tea bloggers want to do numerical ratings.

I do believe that getting a tea for free can bias a person toward a more positive review, but I think that is just as true for any tea drinker who receives tea as a free sample or gift or in a swap. Other things that can probably cause bias are: reviewing a tea you know is highly-rated on Steepster, reviewing a tea you know your friends really like, reviewing a tea you paid a lot of money for, reviewing a tea when you’re in a good mood or just paying extra attention to the tea, reviewing a tea that has positive personal associations (eg. the aroma brings to mind a happy memory), and so on. Basically, the numerical ratings are extreeeemely subjective and should be interpreted as such.

On the other hand, I do think the numerical ratings are useful, particularly as a personal record (note to future self: I love this tea, buy more when it goes on sale), or as a general guide when buying tea online (lots of people seem to like this tea, so odds seem decent that I will too… OR, this one person whose tastes are similar to mine really likes this tea, so maybe I will too). The one thing that tea reviewers have going for them is that they are drinking carefully and mindfully, trying to give a fair and balanced review, and they drink a lot of tea so they have the experience necessary to know where a particular tea stands in comparison to everything else they’ve tried. So in that sense, I would consider tea reviewer ratings to be perhaps even more useful than those of the average steepster user. Though I can totally understand those experienced tea drinkers who lose interest in rating teas entirely, in favour of just writing a detailed description, and I respect that choice as well.

In summary, do whatever makes you happy. :)

It is up to all of us to keep Steepster reviews as honest as we can. I don’t even mind it if I see a low rating and the person brewed the tea in an undrinkable fashion as long as I can read the details for myself. I’ve bought teas with low ratings because I can tell it wasn’t brewed in a way that tea will taste the way I want it. The important part is not the number but the details the reviewer provides. This can work the other way too, a high rating on a tea brewed a way I don’t personally like may not recommend the tea to me, but it might to another person who brews it that way.

What really gets on my tats though is when vendors jump on reviews. As a tea drinker, I would prefer if vendors can show their confidence in their curation by selling the tea and letting tea drinkers decide.

I stopped giving numerical ratings a while back because I realized it was really hard for me to quantify how I liked a tea.

My tasting notes are pretty generic, but when I write dedicated reviews on my review blog (www.booksandtea.ca), I go into much more detail about my steeping parameters and the flavours I’m experiencing. Even there, I don’t give numerical ratings because I provide other information instead.

I use numerical ratings as a personal way for me to keep track of which teas I enjoyed & would purchase in larger quantities. Sometimes I may adjust ratings depending on when the tea was brewed again & if I liked it more or less. The time I haven’t used a numerical rating is when I couldn’t drink a tea due to the strong smell.

I have a system for numerical ratings. Sometimes I wait until I’ve had the tea a few times to decide on one. (Mostly, the rating is to keep track of fave teas.)