TEA LOG QUESTIONS - How do you log

Steepster had a sort of change awhile back – it used to have a “log a tea every day” and it seemed most people used Steepster like a tea diary. An update or two ago it shifted to be more tea review focused as shows your first post as the main entry.

I do more review style, only reviewing a tea once unless I do something different, but I used to do more diary like entries – I shifted more talking about life along with tea on my own tea blog, which makes for a better platform. I find it also looks weird when you see diary style entries when looking up a tea review. On the flip side, I’ve been following lots of Steepster people for awhile now, it’s cool to see what they are up to in their logs! (though I think Steepster Chatzy is taking over that)

That makes sense. I enjoy putting the tea reviews into a little narrative about my day when logging as I have seen a lot of others do. I will probably only log the same tea twice if my experience varies greatly or I prepare it differently. :D I’m just grateful to have found steepster in general !! Will look into Chatzy

My feeling is that anything I put on steepster should be of interest to other people. I only review a tea on steepster when I have studied it carefully and feel I can provide an accurate description. I take notes on a spreadsheet for about 90% of the teas I drink, though these notes are often brief and cryptic.

I tend to review things once, and try to hit high points as well as any particular negatives, but mainly I write what I think will be most useful to myself when/if I revisit that tea later on. I use my own ratings to guide my future purchases as well. My cupboard represents full sized teas I have – I am too busy to keep up with the quick acquisition/consumption of anything smaller than an ounce, and I prefer to keep a closer eye on the quantity of tea I have in bigger portions, particularly as I aim to pare down my collection quite a bit. Sometimes I add other “life” stuff in there, but not super often.

As someone who is really, really new to Steepster, it definitely gives off the vibe of a review website. It took a while to get used to all of the older reviews that suddenly veer off into talking about the play they were going to see that evening or what their kid was doing.

I am just treating it as a review site for now. I’ll log it and review it, and only review the ones I say I drank. I don’t plan on adding new reviews, but I’ll update old ones. Can’t decide if I’m going to note every time I drink a tea. I’ll probably forget to do it.

So cool to see different perspectives. I’m also really new to this Steepster, joined this month, and when I found it I thought of it as more of social networking/ tea log to keep track of what you try and what you want to try. Then as I was browsing profiles I noticed some people have really specific rating scales and took reviews very seriously.

I personally don’t feel I have tried enough fine/high brow/ high quality tea to accurately rate/review in this community. Most of my exposure has been to celestial seasonings/stash/tazo/bigelow/ teavana etc. and I definitely haven’t found what I’m looking for if you know what I mean. I’m have MANY tea orders to be placed next paycheck w00t!

I hope to get there some day and I expand my tea universe!

I am willing to send you some of my tea closed samples and unused closed teas-just s&h-send me an email

I’m definitely one of those people who log nearly every single tea they drink every time they drink it, and what’s in my Steepster cupboard is everything I own (even if it’s only a cup worth of the tea).

I personally always try to make my first review/tasting of a tea especially relevant/focused on that tea but in general I aim for a hybrid of tea relevant information and personal stories/anecdotes. I’ve ‘reviewed’ some teas over a dozen times, and if there’s anything of note to write about I always do (even if it’s just pointing out that a tea has a consistent flavour) – but teas that end up being reviewed often generally deteriorate into more of a place to write non-tea related stuff about. If that makes sense at all.

For me, half the fun of Steepster is learning about tea through the reviews of others and using my own reviews as references, and half getting to know the community of tea drinkers here as people as well. So, I think of my reviews/logs as “a tea-centric journal”.

Ultimately, you’ll find what style works best for you – and I think most people end up (generally speaking) following people with a similar style anyway. So, if you wind up using Steepster solely for reviewing purposes I think you’re more likely to wind up following people like that and if you’re one to share/do ‘diary style’ reviews you tend to gravitate more to those sort of reviewers.

Regardless, welcome to Steepster!

since I am new to steepster I am happy you gave the brief explanation —
it is hard to find a good site for tea – I previously posted in egullet-mouthfulsfood-teamail

It’s really up to you, I think. The various changes in Steepster over the 4+ years I’ve been here suggest that the aim is to have more technical reviews but there are no rules against personal information. I know at least one person who never wrote anything about the tea, just logged that they had drank it and put a note about their day.

My usage has changed. At first, I logged every cup. Then I cut back to exceptional things but still very diary-like entries. In the last two years or so, that has changed to reviewing teas only once and trying to put all my notes on the tea in there for my reference, and for others if they’re interested. I definitely haven’t cut out the personal stuff entirely, and I won’t, but I only log teas once in a while, and usually if they were provided for review (because I rarely drink new tea otherwise). I know what I like, and how I like it, so there’s not a whole lot of new in the tea world for me.