Monday TeaDay 2/14/11 Journal this!

[Chip]

Good TeaDay everyone. Please stop in and share what is in your cup throughout the day!

Over the weekend we discussed aspects of tea, and you can still vote and discuss the weekends topic!

Today's TeaPoll and discussion topic. Do you maintain some kind of written journal of all the teas you drink? Bonus, is it "up to date?" Also share what you include.

We are looking forward to sharing this TeaDay with ... everyone! Bottoms up.

[IPT]

I don't keep a daily journal, but I do keep an inventory of my teas with notes as to where I got them, when I got them, how much they cost, where they are located in storage, and any interesting notes.

[auhckw]

I don't keep a journal of the taste notes, but only the inventory. Info is in excel. Columns:-

Tea Name
Type
Weight (g)
Price per unit
Quantity (Unopened)
Quantity (Opened)
Est. Total Weight (g)
Est. Total Price
1 (g) : Price
Date of Compressed
Tea Age (Auto calculated from Date of Compressed)
Date of Purchased
My Storage Duration (Auto calculated from Date of Purchased)
Tea Seller Contacts
Comments

From the info above, I am able to know...

Total Weight (g)
Total Price
Total Weight (g) - Unopened
Total Price - Unopened
Total Weight (g) - Unopened (Raw)
Total Price (RM) - Unopened (Raw)
Total Weight (g) - Unopened (Ripe)
Total Price (RM) - Unopened (Ripe)
Daily Consumption (g)
Number of sessions - Unopened
Number of years - Unopened

Today, having Hojo's 2010 Midi Raw Puerh in office. I have long not drank this tea as it is my occasional tea. Decided to bring it to office to treat my colleagues who came back from the long CNY holiday. My colleagues like it saying it has very good aroma and sweet aftertaste. No bitter. No astringency. Lacks of smoothness.

[Nenugal]

I keep inventory too, including amount, shop/source, buying and opening date, picking time and region, rating and comments, etc. I keep it in a google documents spreadsheet.

[brlarson]

Yup. I track all info needed to identify the tea along with date received, opened, and completed, and initial net and incremental weights. I also track brewing parameters with very minimal notes. Occasionally, rarely these days because I just don't have the time, I'll do structured tastings and I post most of those to TeaChat.

I always give teas an appropriate amount of attention. Recently I collected a selection of long jing and arranged structured, side-by-side tastings for all of them and because of my schedule it took five months to schedule and complete them all. I keep detailed notes of structured tastings but they attempt to describe the inner workings of the teas and not produce descriptions that would be usable as sales blurbs -- I try to keep my feet on the ground when my head is in the tea.

Anyway, Hou de's shui xian is my breakfast tea today.

[David R.]

I keep a tea-diary, but I do not use it every time I have tea. It is mainly for first contacts, samples, and experiments with brewing parameters.

[tortoise]

Sort of and not up to date. Much more meticulous with greens. I sometimes feel it's futile due to the variation each year. I am starting a pu journal because with all those names and numbers, it's very important to leave a trail of bread crumbs when walking through the pu forest if you will.

Irish Breakfast this morning. Gonna hit the pu this afternoon.

[artmom]

No way! No journal.

Marco Polo this a.m.

Happy Valentine's Day!

[gingkoseto]

Kind of, but not for all the teas. I make most notes for puerh, not because it's my favorite (by far it's not), but because there are too many samples of various brands, years, styles... You've got to take advantages of puerh samples by remembering how good or bad each of them is But I use excel file entries most of the time and keep each entry very simple with only a few words.

Sometimes I write lengthy blogs, mainly to record pictures and make comments other than the taste. I do tealogs on steepster too, mostly when I hold a cup of tea and don't have anything else to do

[debunix]

I use steepster.com as a tea journal--when I write notes and reviews about teas here or in another forum, generally copy & paste those to steepster. It's a nice organizational tool. And then I back up the data by periodically copying my 'tealog'. It's not so up to date, as I have quite a few teas there that haven't ever been noted, but have been drunk quite a bit.

And no teas yet to report for this teaDay, hope to rectify that shortly.

[olivierco]

Not anymore because I now don't drink many new teas.

Golden needles this evening.

[GreenwoodStudio]

This is a great idea, especially for someone like myself who's just learning and trying to figure out what I like. I think I'll start one.

Started the day with some Traditional Dong Ding, then some Shui Xiam, now sipping some F.C Baozhong. All from FLT.

[Trey Winston]

I don't keep a journal of teas. Chaos reigns as always.

Had some sencha today.

[JRS22]

I've been keeping a diary of sorts with brewing parameters and evaluations and it's been working well for my chinese greens and white. Now that I've got all these puerh samples and a selection of loose puerhs in the house I think I'd be better off with a database or index cards so I don't have to go back through any number of pages to find information.

In my cup this morning, a series of easy-to-brew chinese teas - an ji bai cha, bai hao yin zhen and jasmine pearls.

[Skippyandjif]

I don't keep a journal... Unfortunately, I have so much homework that any paper would probably get lost in an avalanche of other papers. So a journal is probably out of the question for now.

Rose congou all this afternoon; currently drinking a chamomile tisane.