When to stop trying all the teas and just replace favorites?

I can’t stop trying new stuff sometimes but I’ve definitely slowed down a LOT from where I was a few years ago. Part of that is my own financial situation but the other part is knowing:

1. 70% of flavored teas suck so there is no point in trying all of them
2. Most straight teas from higher end vendors are similar. i.e. there is not that big of a difference in a bai mudan from vendor to vendor
3. Tea gets stale within a year (aside from puerh, dark roasted oolongs and straight black teas) so there’s no point in buying more than you can drink. Hope that helps ;)

I don’t see an end in sight for me. One part is I enjoy trying new teas – opening a new package is a “oh heck yeah” feeling. Another part that as long as I blog, I will be trying new teas.

Though I feel my purchasing is much more quality than early rampant sample buying – I make the teas I buy count and I buy more tea ware.

This is a big issue for me, too. I feel like I’m still at the stage where I want to try all the teas but I also want to restock on some favourites, and right now I just can’t with so many teas in my cupboard. I was sorting through my teas the other day and realised I have 80+ that I’ve had for ages and haven’t even tried yet. So my solution is to have four separate stashes (eight if you count my separation of caffeine/uncaffeinated). The first is a stash of teas which I’ve tried, and I know will keep for a while. I don’t drink from this stash unless I have a craving for one specific tea. The second is a stash of all of the teas I haven’t tried yet, and the third is a sipdown box. I try to have at least one from each of these a day. The fourth is a box of teas which I’d like to get rid of soon, such as samples in non-airtight packaging, teas I’ve had for a while and teas which are in danger of losing their flavour soon. This is the box I try to drink from most often. It might be a little over complicated, but it’s working for me! (:

ETA: my current goal is to get my stash below 100 before I allow myself to buy any more teas, at which point I’d like to keep it in double figures, and start to restock old favourites whiles still trying new teas, only less of them.

I am about five years into my tea journey, and have been in a comfortable groove for the last year or two. Part of this is economic – I hate ordering online, I hate paying for shipping, and recently the Canadian dollar has been awful. These factors mean that I would end up paying more than I want to get tea. So I tend to only buy repeats of teas I love (I stock from Teavivre, Verdant, and now Mandala on occasion). There are a few herbals/flavoured teas that I like to have on hand and we tend to pick them up in store at Davids when we’re near one.

I’ve never been big on ordering from multiple companies (because of the online, shipping, etc). A lot of the companies that Steepster LOVES I have not tried, or tried once and didn’t want to get back to. After a few years, I learned what I like and really learned to not go for something just because everyone is talking about it. I don’t even swap very often because I often end up not liking the tea nearly as much as everyone else and it seems a waste. So, really, I am lucky. Occasionally I want to try all the cool stuff like everyone else (Andrews and Dunham, Whispering Pines, etc) but I know that I don’t want to spend the money. So I don’t. I’m lucky, I guess?

Like someone else mentioned earlier, I also only restock with sales or coupons. I know what I like and I am comfortable buying 100g+ at a time. I prefer to do so with a sale – it works out to less expense but I still get the tea I want.

All this aside, it is obviously different for everyone. You might grow to only want a few re-stocks, or you might always want new stuff. Who knows! I might even get into green tea some day…but I hope not!

I agree with your sentiment and do the same thing, but more with puerh than with black teas. I have something like 400 puerhs now I am guessing. I have slowed down buying but there is still that lure to try more new teas. I also agree that it is time to stop.

I’m still trying new teas when I can. Have found a couple faves, and a lot of good tea. It’s nice to have lots of different black teas.

I’ve been on Steepster for less than a year, and am still in the “I want to try all the teas” phase. I’ve found a reasonable balance by having a limited budget and buying tea once a month. Last year I just bought from a few companies, this year I want to buy from a different company each month. I think buying from twelve companies will give me a good balance between trying new things and keeping my favorites on hand.

I’ve been on my tea journey for about a year I think? I’m still in the "try all the teas!’ mode, but I’m starting to slow down. I think most of my problem is that I can’t ever bring myself to really buy samples. I tend to always buy in bulk and the thought of having less than 50g as my starting quantity mildly freaks me out unless it’s a tea that I didn’t buy myself or in a subscription box. On the other hand those teas that I do buy I know are within my ‘most likely to love this’ categories. For everything else I’m pretty dependent on swaps and TTBs. There’s a few teas that I’ve separated out because I have a large quantity, but they aren’t my favorites, or used to be favorites and I’ve since outgrown them, so they get put on into the TTBs that come my way. But mostly if I have finished a package of tea, I know by then if I love it or not enough to reorder. To tell the truth though, if I’m really in love with the tea, I won’t even wait for what I have in stock to run out before buying more. (I do this with almost everything though, almost everything I have has backups of backups.)

I feel you. I’m a collector, and I tend to get into collecting with some pretty serious intensity when I find something I like.

I did this with nail polish – I have nearly 1000 bottles of it. I found that I was less inclined to buy so much when I stopped paying too much attention to what other people were buying and what new stuff was coming out. Having community is so awesome, but community can also be really enabling and make it hard to not think about collecting more.

I’m starting to hit a point with tea, where I’ve got a pretty good idea now of what I like, and I’ve tried enough teas to know that a whole lot of the stuff I really like is very, very similar to other stuff I like.

I’m starting to hit a point now where I’m craving favourites more than the experience of trying something new, and I’m really trying to go with that craving, and appreciate what I have, rather than always reaching for something new.

I’m also trying to pay attention to my likes through my tasting notes and a spread sheet. In any particular category, do I have a tea I’ve rated over 90? Do I have more than one? Maybe that’s enough then. (Easier said than done.)

My cupboard has also reached a ridiculous number, where I’m feeling pressure to drink teas before they lose their freshness, so that helps me resist the urge to buy more.

I’m also just really trying to move stuff that I don’t like out of my cupboard and drink stuff that I really enjoy (though less stuff in the cupboard does mean more temptation to justify buying samples.)

I have too much tea also, and my cupboard has to be self limiting based on my age and poor health. I will not live out the time some of my puerh cakes will need. I am thinking of a marble mausoleum with some decent urns. I’ve got two urns already. So that way if I rise up on the last day I can start it out with a cuppa.

Of what is drinkable, based on what I can drink, I have about 4 years of tea. That seems a reasonable amount once I take out what cannot age in that time, and my son will just have to deal with the rest.