Thursday TeaDay 11/05/09 Method to your madness?

[Chip]

Greetings everyone. Welcome to TeaDay. Please come in and share what is in your cup throughout the day.

Yesterday we discussed tea and health. You can still vote and discuss yesterday's topic.

Today's TeaPoll and discussion topic. Is there a methodology to how you "pick your next tea?" Is there a method to your madness? Would "an outsider" find humor in observing? Please share how you pick your next tea.

I am looking forward to sharing this TeaDay with everyone.

[RachelC]

I selected "Not Really" as for me I choose my next tea based on which ever way the wind blows me. I am truly a mood drinker. Don't know whats happening until it's in my cup. Although this morning I started with Starbucks. Next will be a cup of tea but what will it be? One will never know until the situation presents itself.

[JBaymore]

Chaos reigns!!!!

best,

..............john

[murrius]

I'm completely driven by my tea cravings. No logic. No method. My cravings drove me helplessly to Chiran sencha this morning.

[brlarson]

I carefully control the number of bags and total weight of the green and oolong tea that I keep open, and I plan the queues for the next bags to be opened. But, beyond that, I choose from whatever is open based on the urges of the moment. My consumption plan has a lot of freedom built into it.

Loose shu pu this morning from Mem Imports. Will probably have more Hibiki-an fuka later today.

[CynTEAa]

When stressed or need to focus, I reach for sencha. So I guess mood is my main tea choice motivator. And whatever needs to be cupped.

[Chip]

Heh, when I used to have a bijillion teas open from each type, I used to go nutz trying to figure out what to drink next. I would never simply reach for my faves over and over, knowing I would empty them and still have bijillions of teas I might not like as much.

Finally in order to create some order out of the complete chaos, I went alphabetically for each type which helped as this way all were getting used. I am sure 99.9999% of the general population would think I was pretty nutz.

Today however, 8-9 out of every 10 teas I drink are Japanese. Picking from the rather limited number of Japanese teas I have open is pretty easy, as long as I did not have it last ...

If I try to pick from the non Japanese teas, it is pretty hard since I have pretty many open and have no rhymn or reason for selecting.

Have a great TD everyone.

[olivierco]

Not really.
I have a maximum of two teas of each type open at the same time (sencha, gyokuro, matcha, Chinese greeens) and some black teas. No special reason to get one or another.

Kaboku sencha in a few minutes.

[Intuit]

Like foods, various teas lend themselves to seasonal consumption. Teas or tea blends appear suited to time of day, as well - brisk, thicker bodied teas in the morning, sustaining greens in afternoon, low caffeine teas in the evening hours.

To rotate sensibly through a set of seasonal favorites, I seek new-to-me, more expensive, exotic teas to introduce variability and train the palate.

This is how I choose my teas.

For example, a fragrant, cooling, light-bodied tea that is a staple in warm weather and may loose its appeal by early Fall, becomes a mid-winter afternoon pick-me-up, when we wish for flavorful hints of a sunny Spring day. A full-bodied, woodsy black, oolong or puerh that warms us in winter (amino acids stimulating energy metabolism), may be a welcome afternoon pick-me-up on a cold rainy early Spring day.

Yes, method in my madness. Kenilworth Ceylon in my cup to start the day.

[leiche2]

Not really. I drink to my mood. I tend to open up new teas as soon as I get them, so I have lots of choices at any one time. I drink the teas I like quick enough not to notice much degeneration, and it gives me an excuse to get rid of the stuff I don't like without guilt.

In my cup: Adagio's Fujian Baroque. Essay-writing fuel.

[Seraphsody]

I'm a chaotic tea drinker. Sometimes I'll drink one tea when I want something comforting or a mood lifter, and a completely different tea the next time.

Sometimes I'll notice that I haven't had a tea in a long time and settle myself down with my biggest tea pot (enough for like... ten cups) and down said pot.

[Chip]

A rather quiet day on the forum. Maybe everyone switched to decaf?

Began the TD with Kabuse from O-Cha. SweeTea stopped by for her fill while Pyrit and Wulong were trying to divert attention from tea, unsuccessfully.

Next up, a Zencha's Fuga Limited Edition tasting.

The TD is shaping up quite nicely.

[Drax]

I'm glad the forum has recovered from its SQL error... that was a bit disturbing to run into this morning.

As for choosing my next tea, I usually default to the ones I haven't tried yet! Seriously, I still have a pretty large backup. Once I've tried a bit of everything, I think I'll plow through all the perishables, and then I'll enjoy pu'erh while I seek out other new teas....

[DoctorD]

As a strong TJ on the Meyers-Briggs, I try to preserve tea as a zone of spontaneity. Sometimes it's a hankering to use a particular pot or gaiwan that dictates the choice, sometimes a desire for variety--if it has been all green during the day it will often be oolong at night, or if it has been all Chinese during the day it will often be Japanese at night, or vice versa--and sometimes I just go eeny-meeny in the cupboard. Underlying that, though, I think I detect a kind of rhythm, though hardly a method. For several weeks I'll typically cycle haphazardly through various things I've got open (about a dozen at the moment), and then I'll often focus in on just one or two things for a few days or a week, to finish off the stash. This usually happens when the itch to order something new starts asking to be scratched... (Which, come to think of it, is pretty much all the time, but there's only so much room in the cupboard and only so much cash in the account. I'd love to know how others cope with that problem.)

This morning some DaZhang Mtn. eyebrow tea from Two Hills, an unpretentious office staple I've become quite fond of; this afternoon some gyo from Den's. Just now a couple steeps of some Lu'An Gua Pian from enjoyingtea.com; the jury is still out on that one.

[Victoria]

Chaos reigns for me. No method to my tea madness.
Whatever sounds good at the moment.
Hattialli Golden Bud from the Lochan tasting
was my only tea today.