Calling all Tea Geeks, Opinionated Snobs and Lab Rats...

[tenuki]

I have been wondering lately about a couple of things and would like your thoughts on them.

• Is there a 'standardized' way of rating tea? (example of what I'm talking about from the wine world).
• If not, what sorts of things would you recommend be there?
• Does anyone write down brew times, etc?
• Does anyone keep a written inventory of their teas and notes?
• Are you happy with your current tea timer? Does it track multiple brewings?
• Do you brew near a computer?
• What would you think of software that would manage all of the above and also include a tea timer and ability to share your brewing/notes/rating/vendor data with others?
• Do you think you would use it regularly?

In the wine world there are all manner of formalized rating systems, software to track wine inventory, tasting notes, etc. I haven't seen anything like that for the tea world.

I architect software for a living and occasionally, as a hobby, write software for myself that I give away for others to use too. This is sounding like my next project, but I wanted to check for interest, etc before I started.

Thanks for your attention and input.

[Chip]

From a structured, anal retentive perfectionist, this sounds like a cool idea, and very approachable...and I assume adaptable to the individual taster's criteria emphasis.

[tenuki]

Well, at this point it's just a twinkle in my eye so if I start on it I'll hopefully be getting feedback from people about what they want - so ya, creating your own rating system is now on my list. I have a mock up of a possible User Interface, I'll post the screenshot here to help everyone visualize what I'm talking about.

Even if I don't end up writing the software I'm interested in people's rating systems. That wine link is just the tip of the iceberg for the lengths those crazies go to..

[Salsero]

I keep excel spreadsheets where I have details of almost every brew that I have done at home for the last 14 or 15 months, including quantity of leaf, brewing vessel, rinse, time of each infusion, water temp, and at least once per tea a brief evaluation of the session and tea. It started out as just a way to remember how I made X tea last time and how it turned out. I also keep an inventory of Puerh, but not other teas.

Sick? Indeed yes, but lovin' it!

My own little system is completely adequate for my personal needs (although it might be nice to have a systematic evaluation standard). What seems desirable to me would be a review/inventory clearinghouse on the internet where we could share opinions and inventory with each other. Before I bought XYZ Best Ever Yancha, I could have a look see who owns it and what they think of it. Not so much reviews -- there's already a number of places for lovely full reviews of teas -- but impressions or short opinions, maybe a form like the wine one you reference. The new WikiCha would be a wonderful location to contain such a resource and of course our own BHale is the headman, inspiration, and spiritual guide of WikiCha.

Failing this, perhaps a system that could transport us to a peaceful common room where we could brew tea for each other, share, and chat in person for a few minutes.

[Space Samurai]

I like the idea, quite a bit, actually.

I don't keep tasting notes unless I am doing a review, so in that sense, my blog is my collection of tasting notes. I really like the form you linked to. I found reviewing matcha very challenging, so i came up with a much more simple version of that as a way of trying to effectively communicate the experience.

[tenuki]

Sharing our notes, ratings and brew times is definitely the reason I'm doing this. I would love to buy a tea from teaspring and enter it into my inventory and automatically get peoples notes and brew times for that particular tea as a great starting point. then add my notes and brew times, etc to the mix while I'm drinking it.

[tenuki]

Here's the mockup I created just now, remember this is pretty much like a sketch on a napkin so treat it that way.

[Salsero]

Boy, you do pretty nice work on napkins!

[joelbct]

I like it, would be a nice way to locate vendors and varieties, and compare tasting notes. Sort of like a wiki-tea-rating-opedia


One would have to factor in subjectivity on some level tho, even for people who possess as darn good taste as we

[Sydney]

I used to try to keep track of some of this on spreadsheets, but then just started blogging in a buckshot manner.

I do tinker with a borderline excessive amount of gear, but only document particular bits on occasion.

However, I think such software seems like a fine idea.

[Salsero]

One would have to factor in subjectivity on some level tho, even for people who possess as darn good taste as we

After getting to know the reviewers a little (and we may already know quite few!) we would learn to adjust based on personal variation, just as we do now in the IM or boards.

[Chip]

The sharing aspect is awsome!!! Just have to make sure spammers don't work there way in. If it is out there in the free world...well, spammers are everywhere. So, some safeguards are needed.

But I am really putting the cart in front of the horse.

[Mary R]

The mockup...it makes me happy. Lots of great potential.

[tenuki]

I was thinking of making the tea rating system based on 'channels' that you would subscribe to and could 'weight' or 'rate'. You could publish your channel. That way you would have some context for the data you were getting, and it could dovetail into the blogger hooks I was thinking about.

[ABx]

If you could make it so that it can import CSV, Excel, or Access, then I might be able to convince my dad to make a modified version of his PocketLog program for PalmOS - http://www.dataget.com/pocketlog/pocketlog.html

I don't know how many people have a Palm PDA/smartphone, but it would definitely be nice to be able to input stuff (and use the timer) on a Palm, then sync it when you get back to the computer.

Another thing that I think would be immensely valuable would be a way to print out individual entries on a tea that include information, steeping parameters, and maybe a picture, all nicely formatted. The idea would be that if you give someone some tea as a sample or gift then you could print out a nice little card/slip to include.

Lastly if you could output an entry in HTML, then we could use it for our blogs when reviewing a tea.

With features like that I could see the potential for it to become a small commercial app (or perhaps make a commercial version) that vendors may be interested in. Make it free for the enthusiasts, then the vendors could pay for access/usage rights. It probably wouldn't make you a lot of money, but could be a nice portfolio piece if you decided you wanted to do that later on.