How up-to-date is your cupboard?
The one here on Steepster. And how do you keep it updated? It’s been over a month since I came back here, and I’ve been meaning to update mine so I could swap, but I still haven’t gotten around to adding all my teas.
Edit: Forgot to add: Partially, the problem is that with some teas, I don’t know who to add them under – for example, my teas from the Shennong Tea Lounge, the brand under which they sell all their teas is the same as the name of the place, but technically, the name of the company is “TeeDeli GmbH” -but it isn’t used anywhere in advertising, only in their impressum and the “who is responsible for this product” bit at the bottom of the info label on the back of their teas. So, which to add them under?
I gave up on keeping my cupboard updated. I should really sit down one day and catalog everything, though that would probably take weeks!
Agreed, it can be difficult to determine which vendor to list a tea under. I wish we could clean up the list of choices.
Well, I am very appreciative of Steepster just for the cupboard function alone. As far as I know, my online cupboard is 100% updated. Steepster is what I call my “tea brain” so it is very helpful to keeping things organized. And then tasting notes help me remember how I liked a tea (or not).
I’m like tea-sipper, my cupboard is 100% accurate here on Steepster, including tiny little samples of less than 10g. I really rely on the cupboard function/tasting notes in general to help track what I’ve had, how often or recently, what the oldest teas in my cupboard are (using the ‘recently added’ filter of the cupboard), and if I just liked it in general. I tried doing a spreadsheet a few years ago; I kept it updated for a few months but ultimately I found the Steepster cupboard function was actually easier for me to maintain/keep up to date with.
As for which company to enter those teas under, I don’t think there’s necessarily a ‘wrong’ answer to your question – but personally speaking I would list them under the name of the vendor that you purchased them from since there’s no active advertising of the producer. There’s also the fact that vendor storage could potentially play into the taste of the tea if it was really bad/good. Like, I know for example that two tea companies within my city both carry the exact same vanilla Earl Grey sourced from MTC but one stores it in opaque tins and the other in glass mason jars across from a window, and having tried it from both vendors I can say that there is a flavour difference because of the difference in storage – so while it’s technically ‘the same tea’ it’s also really not…
Thanks for reminding me, there was a bit of spring cleaning I had to do. For the most part I’m on Steepster every day, not really posting notes though. It’s MOSTLY up to date… occasionally I forget to, and I have a separate spreadsheet so I can include my mystery/companyless teas without cluttering Steepster’s database.
I gave up on my Steepster cupboard a couple of years ago. I use a spreadsheet to track my teas. It’s much faster, and I have something like 500 teas (not counting samples of less than 10 grams, of which I have another 80 or so). Also, I can use color coding, copy the page, or add a column to update quantity and where it is stored (I have 3 pumidors, and about 12 cardboard boxes, so inventory takes several days).
I don’t use my cupboard on Steepster as an “inventory” but rather as my index of teas I’ve reviewed, because there is simply no good sorting feature in the tea logs to find my past specific log entries. Therefore, if I’ve logged it, I keep it in my cupboard, regardless of it I currently “own” the tea or not.
Therefore, I use Google Docs to inventory my tea collection, and I keep that up-to-date with every order and every sipdown. It is always up to date, and linked on my profile with public viewing access. I have a simple listing version, and a more “in-depth” information spreadsheet version. I also love that on my spreadsheet I can do in-depth sorting by multiple data fields if I want… something that tickles my librarian heart.
I personally add my teas under listings of the tea source if I can hunt it down, rather than an individual shop, if I know the blend is from a larger wholesaler. If I can’t find/don’t know that source (or, if it’s the shop’s original blend, of course), then I add it under the shop’s name. In the end, there really is no way to stop duplicate entries as everyone is going to have their own preference in this regard.
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