Welcome to 2020! With 2019 having come to a close, I will now assess my current tea stash and drinking habits. For everyone else, this post is an ongoing yearly case study into the life of a tea hoarder.
Here is a template of my Tea Stash Spreadsheet! Save a copy and start keeping track of your stash. I highly suggest tracking your tea stash before it gets out of control!
This is the method I use to track my personal tea consumption. Everything tea that I own is weighed, including samples. I weigh every gram of tea I drink.
Previous Years
2015 | 2016 | 2017 | 2018
Oolong Owl’s 2019 Tea Stash Count
699. Crap, I’m close to 700 teas again. I’d really love to be down to 400 or so. And I remember back in 2013 that I felt owning over 200 teas was unmanageable. 49.2% of my stash is puer. It seems the ratio of tea types hasn’t changed since last year – Sheng Puer 32%, Shou Puer 16.9%, Oolong 18.1%, White 16.5%, Black 11.3%, Herbal 2.5%, and Green 2.4% – it is just I have 100 more teas.
If I went hard on drinking (or tossing) samples in 2020, my sheng puer, black, and oolong numbers will drop a lot. My white tea stash is scary as it is mostly cakes and large volume maocha over samples. Shou puer I tend to cake as a sample they tend to be inexpensive.
Oolong Owl’s Tea Stash
I recently emptied all my pumidors/ white tea storage to restack and do a mold check (no mold!).
My general stash didn’t change in appearance much from last year other than my white tea stash now takes both sides of that fridge. My white tea is purely in a fridge to be in an airtight-like space, I am not actively adding heat or humidity.
Oolong Owl’s 2019 Tea Consumption
- Average tea per day = 17.8 grams
- Average tea per month = 542 grams / 1.2 pounds
- Most teas drank in a month = September 2019 at 662 grams / 22g a day. I consistently drank high amounts of tea in September. During this month I was doing a week-long cruise to Alaska and I drank tea like a fish. Every day I started with matcha, then 1 or 2 gongfu sessions before lunch. I’d bring a grandpa session with me on port days, then I’d have another gongfu session or two during afternoon tea and before dinner.
- Least tea drank in a month = December 2019 at 472 grams / 15.7g a day. November was also low at 480 grams. Both these months I was busy, tired, and burnt out. There were many days I had only two grandpa style teas in the morning.
Total Tea Consumed for 2020 = 6504 grams / 14.3 pounds
Again, my numbers are similar to 2018. Have I finally settled into my final form? Aged into my old owl ways?
2020 Tea Goals
Sheng puer samples are a problem – I have so many sheng puer samples that it is ridiculous. 114 sheng samples, which is as much as my entire shou stash. There is a small pile of samples I have as they are old favorites or long sold out, but many are something I drank once and left. Samples really don’t get better, I’ve been finding they are in some dry stasis of puer hell. I sampled more in 2019 as the prices were high so I had FOMO to at least try teas. I’m undecided to accept samples are just a way of sheng, or I need to clean house.
I am burnt out and need of change – There were more posts I wanted to do last year that I never did enough to my liking such as my reHoot posts of drinking previously reviewed teas. Around February I generally feel burnt out on tea and writing but then I pick up in the Spring. This year I started feeling overwhelmed and blah in November. Burning out is a frequent topic with the tea bloggers – we put many hours into research, writing, social medial, and website housekeeping, none of those hours getting much monetary reward. I got a pile of teas to review with no end in sight. I generate income enough to keep the website hamsters running and feeding some tea habit. That said, tea blogging is a passion for tea and writing. Having said, I’m going to branch out more with this blog as well as work on other projects. I would like to do more information, research, tea revisits, and stupid tea drinking posts. Writing this goal is now guilting myself to get on the new content schedule or stay burn out.
Thanks all for reading Oolong Owl! Please give a tea hug to all your favorite tea bloggers and writers. We all work hard to share our tea knowledge and provide tea entertainment.
