JohnTea said

Newcomer to the wonderful world of tea. Help?

There I am. It’s been about a year since I said goodbye to the concept of ‘just a cup of bagged lipton’ and ventured into the world of loose leaf tea. Sure, it was a big improvement going from bagged tea to low-end loose tea from the store around the corner, but I feel it’s time for the next step. I’d like to try better tea, from better shops and learn more.

I’m 18 years old, I live in the Netherlands and am on a tight budget. I don’t drink tea every day but it’s a great way to calm down really.

If you feel like doing so, please throw some tips for me below. Where I can get tea, etcetera. So far I’ve been drinking red and yellow mostly. I somehow can’t seem to like green.

15 Replies
SarsyPie said

I found these two threads to be very helpful. I like knowing which companies people really love. We don’t have much of a tea scene locally, so I pretty much just buy online. I think it also really helps to know which sales are going on, if budget is a concern!

http://steepster.com/discuss/7321-you-can-only-order-from-three-companies-for-the-rest-of-your-life

http://steepster.com/discuss/365-miscellaneous-sales

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Welcome to Steepster JohnTea, happy to have you around :-)

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Welcome! In addition to the links Sarsonator posted, there is also a list on Facebook of stores you can purchase samples from:

https://www.facebook.com/notes/tea-drinkers/tea-companies-that-sell-sample-sizes/610722495690494

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boychik said

Welcome to Steepster!
I recommend sampling. Teavivre offers very affordable samples.
http://www.teavivre.com

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Welcome! I too am on a tight budget. I like the brand Bigelow and Traditional Medicine, and Yogi tea because its always affordable. I can’t afford Teavanna. But I got a Teavanna Japenese tea pot from my mom for my birthday. Buy whatever is in your local store. I have a huge stash and I don’t need to buy tea for awhile. I will friend you. Going to a Japanese market is a good place to get white tea, and Oolong tea.

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JohnTea said

Thank you all for the replies! Will be browsing through these later!

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JohnTea said

I have been browsing around and it seems that most of the favourite shops of the people on this website are located in America and China. The smaller tea stores as Mandala and Whispering Pines also happen to charge quite high shipping costs. Could someone maybe point me towards some european shops with cheap/fast shipping? (around 6€ like TeaVivre is fine enough)?

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darky said

johntea, if you want to talk about this in dutch, be my guest. Living in Belgium and drinking pretty good high end tea from 2 uk websites, and sampled a lot on steepster

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JohnTea said

We’ll see, let’s stick to English so all the americans out here can understand :) What websites are you ordering from? I’ll have a look at them!

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darky said

i got a yearly subscription on jing tea http://jingtea.com, for the third year in a row. They send out 2 bags 50gram each out. So its each time a surprise what u receive and also very cheap compared to loose orders because u pay one time shipping costs and with each subscription u get a free tea infuser.

Over the years i tried most of the tea’s from them and every one off them is very good. I like some more then others, but thats normal.

i also order a lot from http://cantonteaco.com i find them overall a little bit cheaper, especially if u watch when to order, they send a lot of discount mails and got a few times a year a great sale of the tea’s from last season.

If you like green tea’s i can recommend dragon well in my opinion by far the best green out there :)

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