Tea Is Hard

Hello fellow FP lover! The learning curve can indeed be expensive! The best advice I have is to always buy samples, and not stock up on huge amounts of anything, even if you think you’ll love that tea forever. So many of us have done that in the beginning and ended up with 6oz of a tea we grew out of. Tastes tend to change quickly, especially in the beginning.
I would recommend going somewhere like What-Cha and picking up a variety of samples. Try a Darjeeling or two, a Dian Hong, Assam, Keemun… roasted oolongs and greener ones, Chinese greens and Japanese greens, and so on. You should get an idea of what you enjoy and would like to explore more.
Also, I would be more than happy to send you some samples of some of my favorites if you’d like.

I know what you mean. I started drinking tea in March of last year and I still feel like I’ve barely scraped the surface. There are so many different styles that I want to learn about in-depth and I sometimes find myself shopping around for another order before I’ve received my last one. At least it’s a great journey of discovery, so don’t worry about how long it takes.

Hehe! It’s funny because I thought I had a grip on tea. I was a happy camper. I know what my favorite kind is (oolong), and I’m a simple person (sorta). So when I used to go looking for tea, it was just pleasurable browsing and picking up this or that as it interested me, no fuss, no muss, no stress.
Then my body betrayed me… Chili, spaghetti, onions, etc. have started giving me horrible heartburn. I was popping pepcid ac and zantac because I’m just too stupid to just give up food I like! And along came the Verdant puerh sample – the one I was least interested in, and I read that puerh can help with heartburn, so I tried it… and for me it DOES!! Woohoo!! Seriously soo happy! I LIKE tea, it’s pretty much all I drink! This is awesome right??? So I started looking into puerh.. and yups I totally get your “tea is hard.” Puerh is hell!!! Especially since I think I’m going at it backwards, instead of something I like, that I want to learn more about.. I’m just trying to find something I want to drink. Not that anything that I’ve tried is bad, but it’s not been good, it’s been.. drinkable. UGH! So far I’m not excited about it and I hate that I’m not excited about it, because I like tea that gets me excited! *grins *

I find if something is really overwhelming to purchase for the first time, ask the tea seller what you are looking for and price point. Most are pretty good to help you out.

Early on, I would just go to YS and just buy random sample that sounded good. All fails and you don’t like something, usually straight teas have good swap value.

for me it started with stash peppermint tea bags which i really liked, yet i thought nothing of the tea world. so i kept drinking coffee for years and after while i rarely drank tea.. then one day the world opened up and devoured me. im now only a few years into this and am branching more and more.

just try anything really (in samples! or you’ll die!) based on your current knowledge of what you like and choose a method for sampling. such as tea type or seller.

When I took the plunge into artisan loose tea, I was lucky to have Shang Tea in my neighborhood, and spent many visits to their store sitting down to have various types of tea served to me Gonfu Cha style by the very knowledgeable and enthusiastic staff. Finding other tea nerds to meet and share tea with will accelerate your knowledge and experience with tea very quickly.

Beyond that, yeah, there is the sad reality that you’ve just gotta buy lots of tea and look for any deals on samples or shipping where you can. If reading is too dry for you, you can always check out tea videos or online classes.

One thing I will say is experiment a lot and don’t brew your tea the same way every time. Try different water temperatures, amounts of leaf, timing, and brewing vessels. I think that is the best way to learn what tea “should” taste like, as you’ll start to understand what underbrewed and overbrewed tea tastes like, and you’ll pick up on the subtleties (some quite heavenly) or the negative qualities of teas by doing this. Of course, whether a tea is brewed too strong or weak, too hot or too cool, is subjective, but you’ll find what you like, and if you like it, then that’s how it should taste!

I also recommend not sticking with one company to buy all your tea from. Try teas from different companies as well as different countries and regions. That will open up a lot of things for you! I will say another handy thing to know is that most good tea is not expensive. If you see teas claiming to be good that are asking you to drop a lot of money… they are probably curios and collector’s items for the more seasoned folks to speculate over (and are rarely objectively better than affordable teas). At some point of course your curiosity will probably tempt you to try these teas, and you should when you’re ready for that, but there is really no need to be a big spender in your pursuit of great tea.

Definitely start by looking for inexpensive samples. Once you have some idea what you like, you can start buying larger sizes. Traveling Tea boxes are great. You really need to watch the discussion board since sign-ups aren’t especially frequent, but I’ve usually been able to try a couple dozen different things with each box.

I’m with you! But I tend to like the overwhelming nature of new worlds. I sink deep into them, soak in all the confusion and noise, surface, evaluate, dive in again.

In the software world (which I’m neglecting because I’ve just been reading about tea for 3 weeks straight), folks say “fail early, fail often.”, which although may be problematic for some, is an interesting way to approach things. Iterate, iterate, iterate! But not without reflection. I’m trying to take notes, but also sometimes just ignoring the details and just drinking…paraphrasing Mark Twain, “not letting my education get in the way of my learning”…

There’s a world of great advice in this thread, so I don’t have too much to add. Just wanted to say I’m walking the same path (we all are), so you’re not alone out there!

Tea Is Easy
Tea is among the easiest of drinks to brew.
Take a pinch of tea, add hot water, drink after a couple of minutes.
That is about all you need to do with the vast majority of teas.

The hard part only comes when you want to master tea.
Tea, like coffee/chocolate/wine/whisky/etc. has a large number of types and flavours. As others have suggested, start by slowly sampling the types of teas that you find interesting for now.
Master various brewing methods. Gongfu tea (literally – making tea with skill), as the name suggests, requires a lot of time and patience to perfect. This is the preferred method for oolongs and puerh. Spend time studying the effect of varying various brewing parameters like the amounts of tea/water/temperature/time.

So, while learning all about tea may be a lifetime task, as with most full time hobbies – picking up the basics just enough to enjoy your favorite cuppa will not take too long. It is not particularly expensive either, if you just purchase reasonably priced samples of your favorite teas and brew with minimal teaware.

My advice is: take your time…try not to let any kind of tea you want to try intimidate you, (I admit puerh did for a loooong while.) Check the places tab at the top of the page put in a country, state, zipcode…you just might find tea stores nearby…as well as being on the lookout as there is often tea at grocery stores, fruit markets, and various ethnic markets.

Lastly, but not least…there are various companies that have free samples (often in return for reviews on here or tea blog.)or relatively cheap.