Tea Tags for New Tea Entries: Pu'erh

To be honest, I’m not sure I agree with “flavored” being a type, to me it feels like it doesn’t belong when what we’re really specifying is the type of tea/tisane base. I get we have no other way to represent it currently though, and the same thing could be said of flowering and chai, which are already types.

But as far as your question, I think if we’re going to have flavored, it makes sense to have scented as well. To me, straight would be equivalent to the lack of the other two things, not its own type.

I would agree that the abscence of either flavoured/scented tags should indicate a tea is straight… if there weren’t already THOUSANDS of teas missing either.

It would be a similar problem as the pu’erh debacle where you have to go back and categorize past teas, but it seems like way too many teas for that to be realistic manually.

Personally, I agree that I don’t know if I think having any of the three is necessary – to me that seems like it should be an entirely new data field instead of an addition to type (which, as you said, it more of a “base”). I don’t think we have the capability to do that though, without Adagio stepping in and doing more back end work.

Added them in for now – we can always remove if someone feels strongly they shouldn’t be there.

Yeah, I asked about Spice in the Poll/Next Steps thread. I think the thought process was that Chai implies a blend of 2+ spices whereas “Spice” could be used for singular – but I do agree that it’s a little confusing as spices are encompassed within the definition of herbal tea/tisanes.

It’s so hard to concretely say what “deserves” to be there though. You could make the argument that Chai shouldn’t be included either because it’s not a “tea base” or because culturally some people use Chai to mean all tea (and not just spiced tea) – but IIRC that’s always been one of Steepster’s OG tea types, and to a lot of consumers Chai is a “tea type”.

Some people would die on the hill that heicha isn’t pu’erh or that teas that follow the exact same processes as traditional pu’erh but come from, say, Laos aren’t pu’erh either – that they’re dark tea instead.

And don’t get me started on maté vs guayusa vs yaupon…

It’s messy to map it out, and probably whatever happens will result in someone being angry – but personally I would rather have too many options than not enough given that the OG Steepster team already opened that door with someone of the original options several years back…

We definitely have to be the “bad guy” and draw a line for people. I’m taking this more from a Design Standpoint:

We cannot control how users will interpret and use these categories. Keeping that as the core principle, when you have “Chai” versus “Spice”, users aren’t going to know that we interpreted those differently, “Spice is like Flavoured but with a couple spices, but not as many spices as a Chai tea, which is different”. What will likely happen, is everyone will check both “Chai” and “Spice”, making it redundant, or they’ll see that there’s too many options and might check neither.

The other side of that is over-moderating, where we constantly monitor what’s categorized under “Spice” and check that it’s to our definition, but since we also don’t make Mod reports or otherwise contact users to explain our choices, we’ll probably end up in a tug-of-war where we uncheck “Spice” because it only has two spices, and then the user or another user adding that tea to their cupboard looks at it and goes, “Oh, but it’s a Chai, so it’s also a Spice” and re-checking it. That ups our Load.

For “adding herbal teas because they’re a base”, we make the entire Ingredients section redundant. Why add Yaupon to Type, and then to Ingredients both time? Or again leaving it to Interpretation—“You only check Yaupon in Category if it’s used as the ‘base’ of the tea. What constitutes ‘base’?” Let’s say “more than 50% by weight”. Users won’t know that. At most, they’ll notice that their tea has Yaupon sprinkled into a larger herbal blend, and check it to “Type”, and then not even think to start typing in the “Ingredients” section to add all of those in.

And then at what point do we stop for Types, if we are no longer considering “Herbal Tea” a type, and instead adding all of them?

-Fruit-Based Teas (not currently on the list)
> Should further be broken into Apple-based teas, Peach-based teas, Hibiscus-based teas, Pineapple-based teas, Lemongrass-based teas. Those being the most popular ‘bases’ I encounter for fruit-type blends.
-Butterfly Pea Flower has made a huge comeback as its “own tea”, such as “blue matcha”, and is now the base, or a large proportion of, fruit teas and other herbal blends.
-A tea that uses ‘Darjeeling’ as its base is significantly different than one that uses ‘Assam’, but this isn’t broken out

I know a large portion of the argument for having these under ‘Types’ instead of ‘Ingredients’ could be solved if Adagio is able to include ‘Ingredient’ as a searchable tag option.

Oh no, trust me I get the rabbit hole it becomes – but we need to take into account BOTH technical accuracy (ex. Yellow tea is it’s own tea type defined by processing) vs broadly accepted “tea types” communicated through commercial marketing (ex. Chai, Kombucha, or Purple Tea). To only acknowledge the first isn’t accesible to the novice or inclusive of tea products that aren’t able to be captured by ingredients – ex. Boba may be an ingredient but “bubble tea” isn’t. If you abandon all technicality (the pu’erh/heicha argument) then we’re gonna lose the educated crowd too. One of Steepster’s best qualities is that it has always allowed the space for tea drinkers on the FULL spectrum of knowledge and tea preferences – whatever we decide on should continue to embrace that.

With that said…

I’m personally pro removing Spice and Flavored from the list – I think it’s just way too confusing (for the reasons discussed). But if someone feels VERY strongly about keeping flavored, then I think it follows that we need to address how that impacts “scented” and “straight” teas.

I could see an argument for Maté/Yaupon/Guayusa being merged into one tea type (not sure I totally agree though) – but I definitely think they shouldn’t be absorbed into a generic “herbal” tea type. It’s pretty common practice commercially for tea companies to separate them out from other tisanes (similar to rooibos) because of the caffeination even though some places still group them within herbal.

In regard to your comment on fruit teas though, I think that’s an extreme. Some things need to be split (like maté) because of the prominence of the cultural and commercial distinction. It is waaayyyyy more likely that a novice tea drinker is going to run across multiple tea companies that list “guayusa” as a tea type before ever coming across one that lists “apple” as the TYPE of tea.

I disagree with butterfly pea flower – it’s clearly cemented itself as an infusion that isn’t going away any time soon (either as a single ingredient or blended) but it’s NOT yet common place for it to be referred to as it’s own type. Even companies that sell exclusively butterfly pea flower products still general refer to it as a herbal tea or herbal infusion.

Though some people may disagree about Darjeeling teas being black teas (that’s a whole other debate), I don’t think your example of Darjeeling vs Assam is one we’re gonna see a lot of from people because while they DO drastically effect a tea in different ways as bases it’s really from a taste/texture perspective and I don’t think that’s what we’re getting at here – they’re still commonly accepted as black tea even by the most highly educated Indian tea drinkers. I’m having a hard time putting why into words, but it just seems viscerally different to me than the heicha/pu’erh argument which is NOT something that even the most educated consumers of those styles of tea agree on.

I wish we had a more clear way to segment than what we have, but I doubt Adagio’s gonna step in here in anyway so we’re just gonna have to hash it out for ourselves.

^ Also, I forgot to add in that fruit IS in the list of types, so that would in theory cover the argument of apple vs pineapple vs peach, etc…

Maybe that’s part of why spice was added, since surface level it seems equivalently relevant to list both fruit and spice? Though spice is a new addition and fruit has been an option for ages.

I believe fruit was originally added because it’s very, very common for companies to differentiate between fruit infusions and herbal infusions (even though both fall under the broader “herbal/tisane” umbrella). One solution could be to merge it as “Fruit/Herbal Infusion” as a tea type selection – but it would be a lot of teas to adjust on the backend since that tea type has existed as long as Steepster’s ability to classify tea types has.

Whelp, somehow when I scanned it, my eyes managed to slip right over Fruit, even though thinking back I’m pretty sure I’ve checked off that category for several entries. That might add to my argument that once it becomes too long it becomes difficult for people’s eyes to focus on the choices, but I might also just be Tired. Though I know ‘Fruit’ is also commonly checked off when people are adding true-teas with a fruit flavouring added.

I definitely stay out of the heicha/pu’erh debates, they’re big and I’m more accepting of having both categories to appease. I bring up Darjeeling/Assam more because, despite being less yelled about, the division’s similarly “arbitrary”, and sorta blurs where the line is/can leave new users confused as to the logic of the divisions.

I disagree with butterfly pea, but this might be a West Coast thing because I’m currently living in the explosion of “Blue Matcha”, thanks to a couple wholesalers. It’s hit it big in neo-Japanese tea shops around here, and blead into a large section of general specialty drinks and coffee shops; the “herbal tea” moniker has been dropped entirely for “blue matcha” or just “blue tea”.

Fruit Infusions and Herbal Infusions I definitely get, I’ve seen that distinction too. Makes me wish you could click “Tisane” and get a few options in a dropdown somehow. It could be useful to have a “Herbal (Caffeinated)” “Herbal (Caffeine-Free)” division, but does rely on people knowing what those teas are. I just think it gets a bit much to over-list the main components in herbals. I definitely mentally class out Hibiscus, Lemon Grass, Chamomile and Rooibos because each is often used as a “base” and has a distinct taste, but Hibiscus and Lemon Grass are also commonly used as main component/bases of Fruit teas, but also not always/can also be blended into Rooibos-heavy teas… At that point, it feels like the Ingredients section should be used for that “level of fine-tuning”, not the Types section.

Herbals feels like it can be broken into some form “Caffeine-Free”, “Caffeinated”, “Fruit”, but I don’t know how we’d do that eloquently.

Personally, I think the most succinct way to deal with the herbals would be the following:

Fruit/Herbal Infusions
Yerba Mate/Guayusa/Yaupon
Rooibos/Honeybush

That is, generally speaking, I think the ways they’re most commonly separated out among the biggest North American tea companies while still making sure that all the “commercial types” are visibly named for novice tea drinkers who could be confused where something like guayusa or rooibos fall.

Hopefully tacking on the word infusion for “fruit” would help mitigate some of the people who click that when what they’re referring to is flavouring – but maybe that’s wishful thinking.

I almost feel like, in this case, it’s worthwhile to leave a generic “herbal” as the catch all term (similar to what I did with pu’erh) for people who don’t know what to click…

And if that’s the case, maybe the structure becomes:

Herbal
Herbal (Fruit Infusion)
Herbal (Yerba Mate/Guayusa/Yaupon)

I think you could probably leave Rooibos & Honeybush on their own or as a hybrid type (Rooibos/Honeybush) as they’re pretty commonly accepted as seperate – but maybe they also become “Herbal (Rooibos/Honeybush)”?

I realize that an important goal here is succinctness and ease of use, but I’m not sure that combining Yerba Mate, Guayusa, and Yaupon into one category is ideal. Sure, they’re all hollies, but they are sufficiently regionally, botanically, and culturally distinct that collapsing them together just doesn’t sit right. I get it, there’s a user experience element here that may ultimately win out, but I wish we had a better solution. Maybe even Caffeinated Herbal (Yerba Mate/Guayusa/Yaupon), to be clearer about why they’re being categorized together?

Yeah, it’s primarily the cultural differences that make me uncomfortable with merging them…

Maybe also worth noting (though perhaps we don’t care?) – if one of the goals is to keep the new tea entry page “visually clean” there is a limit to the amount of characters you can include in a tea type before the rows stop falling in line. I don’t know if this is a clear explanation – but something as long as “Caffeinated Herbal (Yerba Mate/Guayusa/Yaupon)” would cause the display formatting to look really jenked up, and may actually make the list of options seem longer. Especially on mobile.

Just took a look at how it is as of now, and right now it has Yerba Mate, Guayusa, and Yaupon separated out and I think that looks fine! Agree that it makes sense to remove spice and flavored – I’m not convinced that these categories uniquely add anything that isn’t already covered otherwise, and they create a lot of room for confusion. And thank you to whoever added food as an option! I know it’s tea-adjacent but personally am looking forward to reviewing tea-flavored snacks and being able to properly add them!

As for Spice (stream-of-consciousness continuing this from my last reply): I think the argument can be made that that’s better suited for the “Flavors” tags, not Tea Types. I can on some level understand the argument for having “Flavoured”… I also completely get the mismash of “what about Scented”. That’s it’s own weird trinity: Blended, Scented, Flavoured. Ignoring the fact that 90% of “Scented” teas on the market do use added flavours to boost them, and also that Earl Grey commonly also gets lumped into “Scented”, historically.

Re: Definitions of ‘Blended’ vs ‘Flavoured’, I agree 100%. I didn’t actually realize people might be viewing those as synonyms. I guess in my head I view it as “all flavoured teas are blends, not all blends are flavoured teas”.

I think ‘Blended’ teas can be implied the moment you check off more than one Tea Type though, and then hammered home when you add multiple regions in the ingredients. (Another thing we can then move onto—hammering down the Ingredients list better; it got daunting because of weird redundancies).

Flavoured, like you said, can also be defined using those same options, though I understand the argument for keeping it; I could go either way. I suppose it could be used as a Type to imply the addition of anything non-tea related to a tea base, but I don’t know how widespread that thought-process would be for end-users. It can get murky quick.

‘Scented’ gets tricky because the ‘scenting’ is rarely added as an ingredient, just a tasting note (and then you get overlap of ‘tastes literally of the jasmine scenting it was subjected to’ versus ‘has a floral note reminiscent of jasmine’). I don’t have a good answer for that.

The more I think about it the more I want to remove flavoured and avoid introducing the blended/scented/flavoured/straight problem entirely. I just think the cons drastically outweigh the pros given that you can (mostly) address it through ingredients.

Right now the pu’erhs are formatted as Pu’erh, Pu’erh (Sheng), and Pu’erh (Shou) – so those ones do stay grouped together. The one that’s split off is Heicha/Dark Tea – but it doesn’t seem correct to call that “Pu’erh (Heicha/Dark Tea)” since the argument is basically that heicha isn’t the same as pu’erh.

…but I do get the confusion.

Side question – In the Available In section, how would you classify bulk? I’ve always been uncertain about what technically fits in that category so I don’t ever use it.

Yeah, I don’t love that one either and essentially never use it.

There’s a WILDLY big difference in perspective of what bulk is from both a consumer and an industry perspective, and even depending on the tea type.

Like, if I bought 250g+ of loose leaf tea for myself I would consider that a bulk purchase – and in my head if a loose leaf tea is sold in a size larger than 250g+ I would consider that “available in bulk”. But with something like pu’erh, 250g is less than the standard cake size and I wouldn’t say something less than a cake is “available in bulk”. To me, bulk for pu’erh would be something like a tong. With tea bags, if a company offers a “bulk” size it’s usually like 100+ individual teabags – but the overall weight of that could be less than 200g depending on the tea…

And if you’re a tea company filling out the entry for your own tea (as some people do) then you’re possibly thinking about bulk in terms of kilo sizing… In which case, depending on your operating size, bulk could be anywhere from 5kg to 100kg to 500kg.

I kind of hate it (and this whole thing is making my brain hurt).

Oh wow, that’s even more complicated than I had considered! Thanks for taking the time to type it all out. It gives me a better idea of how it might be used by different groups.

That’s actually a great point about Flowering… It’s definitely much better served under ‘Available’. I think (if we agree to move it) the best way to go about it is to add the ‘Flowering’ tag to ‘Available’ first, then you can one-by-one through the list and check ‘on’ Available, ‘off’ Type. Once There’s no teas left in the ‘Type>Flowering’ list, that tag can be deleted.

Helps save you from accidentally orphaning a bunch of teas by deleting prematurely, which has been my biggest fear when shuffling and organizing.

Edit: Bulk also makes my head hurt. I sort of argued it to myself as “if the company advertises their tea in a size they call ‘bulk’, it counts” regardless of if “bulk” starts at 1lb, or one tong.

Yeah, flowering seems like a no brainer to me – but probably good to wait a bit to see if anyone else chimes in and disagrees before shifting that.

Ironically, with bulk, the “if a company calls it bulk” thought process is the logic I’ve used with Chai. If a company calls it a Chai, that’s how I tag it (even if I personally disagree). Very rarely will I add something to the Chai tag even if it’s not called that if I think the majority of tea drinkers would identify it that way looking at the ingredients list or tasting it – but mostly I like marketing be the way I make that call :P

Sadly it doesn’t look like we have the ability to add new tables to the database, which would solve a lot of our problems.

Bulk is actually one of the original “formats” from when Jason (Steepster’s creator) and team first developed the site. For that reason, I’m a little torn on removing it. But I agree – it’s basically the only format in that list that doesn’t belong.

I’m not sure I agree on keeping anything that isn’t “true tea” (Camellia Sinensis) as general as possible – though definitely there’s work to be done on fine tuning the options. I think one of Steepster’s greatest assets has always been its near radical inclusiveness, and since there’s not really a commercial distinction of tisanes vs camellia sinensis as “tea” to a mass amount of the commercial population (especially fledgling tea drinkers) it seems important to incorporate them – especially things like Yerba Mate and Rooibos with massive cultural distinctions.