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I'm new to many kinds of teas since I started branching off Taiwanese Oolongs and it is such a long road for me to learn about each tea and their specific qualities. This brought up a question of mine, how would you teach yourself about tea in the best way possible? Would you buy the best of the best or start out small and go budget friendly?

Knowing what you guys know now, what advice would you guys give your former self?

Buy 3 gaiwans from twl
Dont Buy modern pots
Stick to 1-2 vendors per region of tea.
Dont trust new companies
Dont Buy any shou
Dont trust the recommendations of anyonr who mostly drinks shou, young sheng or enjoys any tea that you've personally found undrinkable
Dont judge tea from just 1-2 sessions
Dont binge Buy shincha
Check tds of water

@LeoFox
Did you have a lot of negative experience on shou?

2 advices from people who drink tea much longer than I do are buy less tea and sample more. As for pots, look more and buy less. Hope that helps

Been fortunate enough with my water source even before i got into tea but certainly it's the first unavoidable step: test & compare your water.

DailyTx already mentioned another rock solid usual advice which is/will be mentioned often for a reason ( sample-sample-sample ) .

And then... just to spice it up & in no particular order:

- Don't trust advice from anybody on the net ( me included of course ) despite their fame, name or supposed relevance.

- Compile as much information as possible ( you're in for life on this regard ), keep your emotions away & treat all that info/other people's opinions for what they: chunks of data... which needs to be cross-checked, validated, compared... again, again & again, add your own perspective as you keep growing as well, take decisions.

- Forget about anything esoteric, spiritual or the likes connected to tea. There's time to blend your own vision into it, just try to stay away from such concepts in the beginning. Needless to say, if it works for you it just works... forget about what you're being told.

- Sometimes breaking some rules & commons sense might work for you. Walking the same path as the vast majority will take you to the same destination, straying away is a gamble that could lead to surprises... or bitter fails.

- One i find crucial: the famous "path of tea" is all about painting a life-sized picture of your profile as a tea drinker. It's a slow one, there's way too many colors ( teas ) you need to test & draw your own conclusions... and you'll have to keep working on it year after year, and your picture won't necessarily have anything in common with anybody else.

As such, disregard opinions from other people's limits ( i myself don't feel attracted to greens nor young sheng, other people value more oolongs over puerh, others doesn't like shu, other people consider huang pian as some lower product they'd hardly bother with.... plus a long etcetera ... please, ignore us all ) and just move from first-hand experience with zero complex, assume you'll find lots of overly assertive people on the net whose opinions will be ... the same as anybody else's : information to be filtered & double-checked.

For all the "friendship" & "social drinking" associated to tea most of the time your inner path is something you can only walk alone, you can get tips & directions ... some will be helpful, some just smoke & mirrors... still... you'll have to walk on your "own two walking leafs".

- One tea-drinker profile and another one might not have anything in common yet both are valid as long as they've been built on actual experience & cup-travel ( i.e. : somebody drinking teabags daily for 25 years won't have the same weight as somebody else that has tasted as many different types of tea as possible from different areas & countries / ages / shapes & sizes ... over "just" ... let's say 8-9 years ) . If you're going to pay attention to some stranger on the net try to build a profile on this person first.

- The tea world is plagued by legends with the constant presence of some supreme version of some tea you'll never reach... and then another one and then another. In a way, looks like the next "supreme" tea will always be the next one you're told about.

If you're on the western side of the world and don't have access to any of those golden sources whispered around in the shadows then you'll probably won't have the "unique once in a lifetime" chance to buy some teas... you'll never taste those somebody-said-they're-legit 8-10 decades old puerh, the "real high quality" oolongs you can't buy now... , real JinJunMei, real... high-quality yancha straight from the inner-circle.... real anything... so just walk away from the Hegelian paradoxes, postmodernism reasoning leading nowhere and just keep drinking on your own. Walking forward is better than no movement at all.

- Remain skeptic, never forget we ( humans ) are just stupid creatures constantly convincing ourselves we are something we're not. We're easy to persuade, our senses doesn't exactly rank among the "best" among planet earth's living creatures...

Same as we shouldn't trust "golden ears" too much on the realm of sound nor "golden palates" on the world of wines... it's safe to say the same applies to the world of tea with so many variables applied to so many different key elements including the "human" on the receiving end.

Long story short: Learn as much as possible, try to avoid being influenced by other people's opinions... and just drink as much tea as possible experimenting as much as possible .

Ask yourself the basics, not "How do I do this?" but "Why do I want to do this?" If you don't, you will get sucked up into somebody else's teatime.

There are a lot of strong-willed characters in tea, who will barge ahead and may take you with them through their own momentum. You may find yourself suddenly with a bunch of pu'er when you don't really like pu'er, because the idea that you wouldn't like pu'er isn't part of the discussion, just the various ways someone needs to improve their gongfu techniques, or identify counterfeits, or build a humidor, how to talk the talk to gain the access to get the goods, and none of it has to do with why you found the idea of tea appealing in the first place -- but this is surprisingly easy to overlook when someone doesn't stop to ask themselves the basics and instead dives right into how rather than why.

Take care not to become a tea-Gollum -- tea is a kind of collaboration. A common trap is to start out with a desire to use tea to connect with others, and then to fall back on the thing itself rather than how it is used.

Ask why, and it will be OK. If right from the start the goal is, "I want to start a local teapot museum someday so that people can know their roots-", OK, you go into it with a clear mind. If it starts with a fine old teapot and then a feeling that maybe the teapot is too fine for use with them, "they wouldn't understand it, they would only break it, or worse, you tell them about it, get them to appreciate it, then they want it for themselves-" now the transformation begins to take hold.

Tea-skills are a lot like plumbing. One plumber might envy another plumber's mastery of an advanced technique, but people who call plumbers dread the plumber having to do anything complicated, as it means there is a complicated problem. Advanced tea-skills are good because they can save a failing tea-time, but the best is if the tea-time goes great and they never need to be used. People have competitive streaks, though, so it is easy to fall into the trap of hoping for a challenge.

There are as many tea-cultures as there are languages. They can be approached from both ends -- through understanding a tea-culture one can understand those who participate, and through trying to understand a local group, one is lead to their tea-culture.

DailyTX wrote: ↑

Sat Apr 30, 2022 1:50 pm

LeoFox
Did you have a lot of negative experience on shou?

2 advices from people who drink tea much longer than I do are buy less tea and sample more. As for pots, look more and buy less. Hope that helps

Just that the stuff is mostly no good for me. I also hate wet storage notes, hahaha. This is meant as advice to myself, not to someone who likes the deep granny basement odorants. I wasted too much money trying to give this style of tea a chance.

In terms of what I'd say to myself in the past, it'd probably just be "don't touch young raw puer - it's poisonous".

blkgreymon wrote: ↑

Sat Apr 30, 2022 11:41 am

Would you buy the best of the best or start out small and go budget friendly?

If you're starting out (either in tea generally, or in certain kinds of tea), then I would suggest buying good (neither budget, nor expensive) teas within your preferred price range. Not too cheap because it'll probably disappoint you and teach you nothing useful, nor too expensive because it might not be worth it, or it might be that what makes it good will only become apparent with experience.

That said, once you've gotten a bit of experience with a particular category, then it might be useful to get just a few examples of 'excellent' versions of that style, to see what's out there, or just as a little treat for yourself. That, of course, is subject to the usual caveats about what constitutes an 'excellent' tea and how to find it...

DailyTX wrote: ↑

Sat Apr 30, 2022 1:50 pm

buy less tea and sample more

I think this is one of those things where 'it depends'. Sampling, of course, is important at the start to see what's out there and what you might want to pursue further. But once you find some category that's of interest to you (whether it be a general category like hongcha, or something specific like yancha), then I have found that it is very useful to get a large enough quantity of a decent example of the category so that you can drink it every day and learn about it in depth. A small sample can only whet your appetite - it won't really teach you.

Overall, though, I think that something to bear in mind is that learning about tea is a journey, and it can't be rushed.

I started out by sampling lots of different kinds of tea, none of which was a particularly good quality example of its style. Now I almost only drink old tea, yancha and the occasional Taiwanese wulong. However, it would have been pointless of me to have started out like that. I only formed my preferences and techniques through experience.

Perhaps another thing to bear in mind is that the world of tea (like many other worlds out there) is far too complex for any one person to master. I like to focus on just a few styles, knowing that there are many amazing teas in other styles that I will never be able to try. Others may prefer to be a jack of all teas and master of none, so to say. Neither approach is wrong, so long as we're comfortable with what we're missing out on.

Andrew

LeoFox wrote: ↑

Sat Apr 30, 2022 5:03 pm

DailyTX wrote: ↑

Sat Apr 30, 2022 1:50 pm

LeoFox
Did you have a lot of negative experience on shou?

2 advices from people who drink tea much longer than I do are buy less tea and sample more. As for pots, look more and buy less. Hope that helps

Just that the stuff is mostly no good for me. I also hate wet storage notes, hahaha. This is meant as advice to myself, not to someone who likes the deep granny basement odorants. I wasted too much money trying to give this style of tea a chance.

Fair enough. I also don’t like my Sheng and shou too wet. Last year, I encountered a shou that was produced in early 2000, and it was stored in the West for the last 15 years. It was surprisingly good

Daily Drinker is something what you put in to your stomach every day
So keep that in mind when fishing for cheap tea!

LeoFox wrote: ↑

Sat Apr 30, 2022 12:16 pm

Dont binge Buy shincha

I would be curious to know what you mean by that :

• Do not randomly purchase miscellaneous shincha from a bunch of different vendors.
• Do not purchase more shincha than you will end up actually drinking.
• Do not stock up on shincha to drink during the whole year, even if there are products you know you like.
• Avoid shincha altogether, as it is not as good as sencha that was stored or is from other pickings.

faj wrote: ↑

Sun May 01, 2022 2:38 pm

LeoFox wrote: ↑

Sat Apr 30, 2022 12:16 pm

Dont binge Buy shincha

I would be curious to know what you mean by that :

• Do not randomly purchase miscellaneous shincha from a bunch of different vendors.
• Do not purchase more shincha than you will end up actually drinking.
• Do not stock up on shincha to drink during the whole year, even if there are products you know you like.
• Avoid shincha altogether, as it is not as good as sencha that was stored or is from other pickings.

A bit of all the above. Also, vendors sometimes choose to store the tea for some time to release at a later time to concentrate certain characteristics and/or diminish others. Also certain teas, esp higher mountain ones, even first picked are not available during the shincha craze time.

Andrew S wrote: ↑

Sat Apr 30, 2022 6:18 pm

\.... I only formed my preferences and techniques through experience.

Perhaps another thing to bear in mind is that the world of tea (like many other worlds out there) is far too complex for any one person to master. I like to focus on just a few styles, knowing that there are many amazing teas in other styles that I will never be able to try. Others may prefer to be a jack of all teas and master of none, so to say. Neither approach is wrong, so long as we're comfortable with what we're missing out on.

Andrew

The word "experience" is the difficult one. How much should one experience before abandonning some kinds of teas? Of course, all is a matter of an individual's pleasure & comfort. How long will one enjoy a quest? Does he want to put himself into a position of drinking something w/ great pleasure; or having a cupboard of teas & teaware; or,..... what?
Some people conversant w/ many types of tea, quite capable of enjoying many of them regularly, still may choose to drink only one type of tea. Some people may not mind struggling to master & learn about every tea though so many sessions go awry & they don't seem to master any catefory.
I'd say to my younger self, "Don't go crazy". E.g., a long time ago I had trouble accepting that I did not enjoy dong ding much. I knew many people thought dong ding could be so great.... I got many samples of DD from Origin Tea, a great vendor for tea from Taiwan. Later I realized that I did not need to sample so many dong dings to know that DD is would never be a favorite of mine, not even the very best.

I would mainly have made different teaware choices:

• Don't spend too much money on teaware in the beginning: you don't know yet what you want. Just get a 10-20 dollar gaiwan that you can use for any kind of tea, and start your tea journey trying at lots of different teas. Don't invest in large quantity of one kind of tea yet.

• One you're more experienced, invest in premium teaware, such as zisha teapots. Be prepared to spend a few hundred dollars on it. Once you know better what teas you love, you can invest by buying larger quantities, especially for pu erh which doesn't expire and only get better as it ages.

- Don't sample just tea, sample water as well. Water makes a huge difference.
- Forget about fancy teapots, get a good ceramics kettle for boiling water instead.