Personal tea drinking as opposed to sharing all that you consume...

The first time I’m having something, I try to always make at least a short post about it, but after that, especially if it’s something I know well, I don’t always write about it. Then I merely enjoy. Sometimes it’s because I haven’t got anything addtional to say about it anyway, and don’t really want to write the same post again, but sometimes, I just don’t want to have to pay that much attention to it. If I don’t feel like writing a post, I deliberately avoid those that I haven’t tried yet. Luckily for me, in those circumstances, I’m generally drawn towards my more familiar teas.

I rarely post about teas online, whether here or somewhere else, but I do sometimes keep notes for myself when I’m trying new teas.

I tend to make a note on Steepster when I try something for the first time, or if I get something new out of it (or occasionally if I just want to write a post) but the majority of the tea I drink does NOT get posted about. If I wrote a note for every cup there wouldn’t be very much time left in the day. I also frequently write notes just after drinking, so that I can spend the time enjoying my cup.

I suppose at some point drinking tea is not at all new and interesting as first introduced to someone new at constantly consuming it everyday of their lives. Its just becomes so engrained in habits that it becomes an extension of instinct to make tea and gulp it down and move on. Personally its a niche and obssesion for me to love tea.

I have had a lot of teas that I have not logged, mainly because I am lazy and do not want to add them all myself. I did post several teas when I was in Japan, until the earthquake occured and kept me busy with other more important things.

The vast majority of the cups I drink are not logged. I generally log a tea the first time I drink it, and again if I have something to add to my previous observations about it. If I am drinking one of my favorite teas and it tastes as good as it always does, I just enjoy it.

I don’t log everything for a variety of reasons. For one thing, I often either have too much to say or nothing to say. If a tea impresses me, I’ll usually try to log a tasting note after I’ve had 3-4 drinking sessions with it and feel like I’ve gained a reasonable familiarity with it. I don’t want to waste my time writing about middling teas, as I really feel that it isn’t worth the energy. On the opposite end, I would only feel compelled to write about a tea that deeply offended me, like so bad it’s criminal. But I do my darnedest to stay away from teas like that, so you won’t hear much about these from me. There are other teas in my cupboard that I’ve acquired through personal connections, and I probably won’t ever write about them because they’re not available on the commercial market outside of China. For me to praise inaccessible teas would be of no use to anyone here.

The world is a blunder and here we are discussing tea and not posting since the illegal teas are not readily available to the rest of the world. Is that a good summation of sir Geoffrey?

I like wording best of bad teas as being ‘criminal’. I must remember that.

When first reading sir Geoffrey post it read as that saying ‘kiss and tell or don’t ’ or ask don’t reveal’ but it is my mind, sick I tell you all.

Thank you for all responses.

I guess I’ll be the outlier and say that I log (almost) everything I drink. Certainly every hot tea; lately I haven’t been bothering to log my cold steeps unless they are really good.

I like having Steepster as a record of what I drank when, especially as my tea collection grows. When I have said all I really want to say about a tea in previous tasting notes, my notes are more about the circumstances under which I’m having the tea or why I really felt like I wanted that one, etc. Usually those posts are really short, and not meant to be a true tasting note as much as a log.

And actually writing about a tea is one of the ways that I really focus and appreciate it… if I wasn’t writing a review, I might be distracted and not really paying attention to all the subtleties that the tea has to offer.

I log everything I drink, or at least I try to. I do try to keep from “reviewing” with simple things like “backlogging” or such, but I try to jot down a quick note. I enjoy reviews where the person tells a bit of a backstory, whatever was going on in their life that caused them to reach for that tea. I also put little notes about the tea in the review for myself. If it takes me a month or two to go through a package of tea, I can look back at my notes when deciding to restock or not.

I agree with Dinosara, taking the time to review a tea forces me to focus on the tea a bit more and not just brush it off as “something I drank with dinner”. I’m trying to focus more on the review aspect of the tea, describing the flavors and such, but with me, there’s always a story to be told. For instance, Alpine Punch from DavidsTea. A tasty tea, yes. But the reason it’s earned a special place in my cupboard is due to the memories it brings up of my late grandmother and her cookies. And I feel that’s important to note when I’m reviewing that particular tea.