choices to make..

…i love tea people.

If I’m in the mood for anything in particular I’ll go with that. My tea is stored in drawers and sorted by type: plain black, flavoured black, plain green/oolong/white/etc, flavoured green/oolong/white/etc, plain puer, flavoured puer, rooibos/herbal/decaf, caffeinated herbal (mate, guayusa), then various samples. So sometimes I can narrow it down to a category and then just stare at the teas in that drawer until something catches my eye. Or I’ll just grab a sample at random (I have so many samples still to try, need to do that more often). Often I’m choosing (or at least narrowing down the options) based on context: am I in the mood for mug+steeper basket, or gongfu in the gaiwan? Am I making tea to drink while working, or to sit and savour? Do I want lots of caffeine, or just some, or none?

I have a specific black tea (Black Dragon Pearls from Adagio) on ice for breakfast. Then I move on to shou (until it gets too hot in the summer) and then to sheng in the afternoon. I’ve got a bunch of samples and other types of tea that I want to drink but have a hard time breaking my routine. I need to do the ‘put them all in a bag and randomly choose one’ a couple of times a week. I hadn’t thought of that before but I like this idea.

Three factors. Time of day, time available for drinking, and what the taste buds want.

I try to avoid having a lot of caffeine after, say, one p.m., and to cut off caffeine intake at four p.m. unless I need to stay awake for a particular reason. Otherwise I don’t sleep well. It’s not a hard and fast rule, but I generally try to avoid black teas and other higher caffeine teas after 1 p.m. I’ll have greens (though not matcha) or whites in the afternoon.

If I don’t have time to enjoy multiple steeps, I try not to drink oolong or pu-erh unless it’s one I don’t care that much for. Chai on the stovetop is sort of a production for me as well. If I’m short of time I’ll avoid these and drink something I can just dump in the Breville to steep and then stick in a travel mug if need be.

The last factor is really based on what I feel like on a given day. The other day I really wanted something coconut, which is odd for me. Other times I really want something hearty but unflavored, or clean but unflavored. Or cold.

I also have a bit of decision paralysis, so the things that are out in view tend to get more attention and the things that are stored away get less, just because it makes it easier to work with a smaller group of choices. Every so often I go through the stored stuff and pull some things out or put away some of the stuff on the counter to make room for new stuff to come into view.

By type first (do I want some caffeine or something caffeine-free?) and then by flavor.

Black tea in the morning.
Mate or guayasa or matcha in the late morning.
Oolong or green or white in the afternoon.
Rooibos/honeybush or herbal in the evening.
Possibly something sleepy in the late evening.