Butiki TTB - Finished

I’ll add you to the list.

Thank you! I’m excited!

Added

Only if there’s someone in the US willing to pay to ship the box to Canada, and vice versa. So far no one has volunteered.

I volunteered to ship it to Canada…And I believe there is at least one Canadian on the list…

Totally didn’t notice that. Thanks.

Yes. It’s my understanding that this box is to be completely unflavored teas. I don’t believe teas like genmaicha or chai would be allowed since jasmine or lapsang teas aren’t allowed to be included.
This way there’s also no worry of a strong scented tea cross contaminating other teas in the box because of insufficient wrapping.

With only one exception, I did add a Rose puerh but it doesn’t really have much of a scent.

Shiny! This is quite helpful. Now I’m even more excited about the TTB! Thanks for writing this up and sharing it.

Hi Stacy! Thanks for posting that. I actually have a question. When evaluating different teas for sale through Butiki, do you tend to brew all teas of a specific variety using the same parameters, or do you take the supplier’s suggestion and/or experiment with brewing the teas different ways? How many times do you typically taste a tea before you decide if you will carry it on your website?

I am curious how someone in the industry tastes tea samples vs how you think we should approach tasting different teas of the same type.

Oh wow, I just noticed how many grammar errors there were. They are fixed now. Sorry about that. I wrote that with 3 hours of sleep.

Kaylee-Glad it is helpful! :)

CharlotteZero-All teas of similar categories are brewed the same way. When doing tastings, we typically do 40-80 teas at a time (more than that and I personally get very tasting fatigued). Tea is measured out by weight. We do tastings a bit differently (don’t take this as an industry standard). I like to brew the tea very heavy at first. That way, we can see what the tea is capable of and taste the full range of flavors. Then we dilute the tea with water to a medium point and taste it then dilute it until it is weak. This way we experience a nice range of the tea. The tea is re-steeped as much as needed, especially with oolongs which can taste their best after the first steep. Puerhs and aged teas are always rinsed. When we are tasting one type of tea, our current tea is always measured against it. For instance, if I’m tasting Assams all of our current Assams are tasted along with the samples. For certain categories, we offer multiple teas. For instance, we offer a number of Darjeelings. Each year we look for the best Darjeelings but also we want the Darjeelings to be different from each other. No tea is guaranteed a pass just because we offered it last season. In fact, we just dropped our popular current Bi Luo Chun for one that is far superior. During the tasting we take notes and grade the tea. We taste with a spoon and then push back the teas that don’t make the cut and sample the top teas together. I almost always know right away whether it is a tea we want. It has to wow me, I have to love it. It should fill a hole in our product offering but if it is amazing, then we will probably pick it up anyways. The most recent exception to this is when we just tasted puerhs. We found 2 new puerhs to pick up for our website. During the initial tastings, there was such a variety and so many were really fantastic that we needed to do 2 tasting sessions before deciding.

When we receive the tea, that is when we really experiment with it. We brew it as many different ways as possible. We do this to understand the tea, set parameters, and write the description. We set our brewing instructions at a point where there is a lot of flavor but before it hits any type of astringency (we tend to go even a little lighter since overleafing is common). We do this since we feel that a customer that is averse to astringency will more likely not retry a tea that comes out astringent than a customer that finds the tea to be too weak. Before the tea hits the website, it will be tasted 10+ different ways.

Thanks for the tasting guide! And I’m excited to hear about your new puerhs :)

Stephanie-You’re welcome! :) I’m really happy with the new puerhs. I hope they generate some interest. If so, then we might move into acquiring more.

Thanks for answering my question! That’s really interesting how you do the tasting and that you taste so many teas at once. I guess I’ve seen (on film, of course) tasters slurping just a spoonful of tea when they evaluate it. It’s interesting to know that you do that as well. Going back to your beginners tasting guide, it was really enlightening when you described the difference between smell and aroma. I’ve been using them interchangeably…But it’s good to have different words to describe the smell of the tea in the cup when your mouth is closed vs the aroma you get when you are taking in the tea with your mouth ajar.

Happy to answer any questions. :)

The spoon really does aids with proper slurping. I find it to be very beneficial.

Your mouth doesn’t need to be ajar for the aroma to rise up and go the back way to reach the olfactory gland.

I always use those words interchangeably as well. Glad the tasting guide was useful.

I’m poking in here despite not joining in with the TTBs just to say I really appreciate the evaluation write up and your detailed explanation of your testing process, Stacy. Really informative!

ifjuly-Thank you! I’m glad that was informative! :)

I hope the rest of the day goes better for you. If you have to hide in bed, be sure to bring a nice mug of tea with you. :)

I hope your day perks up!

Yay! This makes me happy! Thanks for taking the time to organize this! And thanks, Stacy for making this possible too! :-)

Excellent, thanks for taking care of all of the logistics, Shadowfall. :)

CharlotteZero-You’re welcome! :)

I’m in! Awesome. thanks for making this possible, Butiki & Shadowfall!

High fives!

This is bad though… because I feel like I don’t have enough unflavored teas to add to the box and I’m itching to order some. I’ll try not to. I probably have enough. :D

Tea Sipper-Definitely don’t feel like you need to order more unflavored teas. There are plenty of samples in the box. :)

So beautiful! Thanks Stacy for putting this box together and Shadowfall for organizing. I am already plotting the best approach…

Hooooooray! Thank you Stacy and Shadow fall. I’m really excited for this :)

Glad you guys are excited! :)

That’s awesome. I am sending my address and info right now!

alright, I won’t order more teas at the moment.. I probably have enough for the teabox. :D

Not sure how many people didn’t make it but we could always start another box with guaranteed spots for people who didn’t make the first box if there is enough interest.

I know that Shadowfall wanted to keep it to a small number of people to make it easier to manage. I was disappointed that I wasn’t picked, especially because there are’t many boxes with straight teas in them.

I don’t know how the decision was made who is in and who isn’t. I am curious if it was just random or if there is something I should be doing to improve my chances of making future boxes. Shadowfall isn’t following me so I could’t send a message asking.

And yes, if there was another box starting, I would very much be interested.

Yeah, there were some people who didn’t make it since there was something like 22 or 23 people who were interested, but I was only doing 15 to be easier to keep track of.
And I used a randomizer to make the final list that’s on the first page.

Thanks! I figured it was random, but not knowing for sure…and having one of those days yesterday where I was feeling less than adequate….I just wanted to know for sure. I can completely understand and agree to keeping the box to a smaller number. Logistic-wise, it’s much easier to organize and keep track of. =D

Since there are almost enough people to start another box, if there is someone that would like to curate a second box, feel free to let me know. We have plenty of samples here that we can share.