What to do with samples you don't love but don't hate
I’ll often share them with friends of mine who like tea, but for a variety of reasons, don’t try as many different teas as I do. They enjoy going through the package and trying different teas, and i like that someone else is enjoying them.
These are all great suggestions. Thanks guys! All good options
1) Try it again yourself!
2) Give it to not-so-picky people irl.
3) Throw it into a swap package as an extra.
4) compost
5) Get creative, yo!
some people might get a little bit upset if they sent you a tea they liked and you composted it – if you must do that at least never ever confess to it. Passing to others is far better than wasting tea, even if you can not force yourself to try the tea again.
I am perfectly willing to compost things, but I would never sent to anybody in a swap a sample I thought fit only for compost.
Also, and I mean this gently, maybe slow down a bit on swaps and samples? If you are feeling overwhelmed already maybe focus on quality, both of sampling and tea itself, rather than quantity? Because if you judge a tea only by one sampling and one way of brewing you might be misjudging it and risk striking off things that you might potentially like, you might not be learning about the teas you have just once.
I can’t imagine most people would actually care what you do with the tea once you get it, especially if you’ve tried it and have come to a conclusion about it. And respectfully, people are fully within their rights to come to a conclusion after brewing once. I actually think that the beauty in swapping is that there isn’t any associated implicit pressure once you receive a tea. Some teas I am tempted to try more than once, others not so much. And I’m sorry, but I don’t feel I’m slighting the person who sent it to me by not exhausting all possible brewing options for every single tea I get.
As to suggesting I slow down, that’s actually a good idea. It really would make me feel less pressured to rush.
If I’ve been sent something I will try it and post about it. (Well, sometimes I don’t post, but the vast majority of them I do) After that, they’re fair game. If I don’t like them at all, I have no qualms sending the remainder on to someone else. If I really really don’t like it not one tiny little bit, I still have no qualms sending it on to someone else. Lots of people enjoy things that I dislike, so just because I don’t like it doesn’t mean that the recipient won’t either. Think of it as ‘giving someone else a chance to discover it’ rather than ‘foisting it off on someone’
Most often though, unless someone specifically asks for it, I’ll drink them myself eventually. Or feed them to Husband. They’re usually small enough amounts that this isn’t too difficult.
If I’ve had something around for a very long time, like years, and still can’t see my way out of it, I toss it.
Heh. There’s a Super Secret TTB that I just sent out, filled with teas that fit this description.
I like using them to mix up my own random blends. Makes me feel like a tea scientist in a lab :) lol what a weirdo I am.
Come back to them and try them again at a later date. I tried stuff months ago that I didn’t like, came back to it again and enjoyed it more.
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