You people have created a MONSTER!

Congrats on falling down the rabbit! And welcome! Tea is wonderful hobby. And it’s great you have someone close to share your newfound passion/obsession with.

I’ve been into tea drinking for almost four years, and it’s been three since I became a Steepster member. I’m still very much into the Pokemon phase, as Amanda put it. It’s taken me months and months to find out what teas I really love, and I’ve only grazed the surface. You’d be surprised to see how your quickly your tastes change throughout just one year.

I started a tea buying hiatus support group thread a couple years ago, if you can believe it. It’s in here somewhere…. Restraining yourself from buying lots of tea/teaware is more difficult that it sounds…sigh. I find the budget thread helpful. Be careful of enablers here, there are plenty :3

Anyway, matcha was my first love, even before I seriously got into tea.

Welcome to the tea addiction. Steepster forums are at the same time like tea AAA meetings and yet enabling you to buy even more. I think there’s a thread for tea buying hiatus that’s been buried for awhile but tends to pop up close to sale times.

Sounds like my story :P The group on chatzy is a bunch of enablers (self included).. Soon, you’ll have a mountain of tea in your house.

#tealeafhoarding. I’m out of room. I have tea aging in pots and cassarole dishes. A slippery slope, this hobby is.

The upside is drinking the best damn tea in the world. Thank the gods for the Internet.

Take a look at the Pu’erh and Oolong compendiums at teadb: http://teadb.org/

Buy a ton of samples of everything.
Do not immediately buy large amounts of any sample you like – go through all your samples first.