In 2020 I stopped writing new posts. Even though the Case for Northern Tea was published at the end of 2020, I actually had pre-scheduled it in the summer, so it’s been over 4 years since I’ve written anything. Old School Pu’erh Categorizations was accidentally released at the end of  2024. The categorizations was a  85% complete post that was written in 2018/2019 but I didn’t feel was polished or checked into enough. Coincidentally it mistakenly published a few weeks after my daughter’s birth where I was particularly ill equipped to start writing again. There are a few reasons for my hiatus.. (1) I started to have wrist issues in 2019, which are sort of resolved now. (2) The pandemic got me out of the habit of writing. (3) I fell back into some old hobbies of film watching and RTS gaming which took some time away from tea. (4) There have been some very annoying technical issues with the blog (this is why the template changed).

Still Definitely Drinking Tea

In How My Tastes have Settled I quantify the amounts of tea I consume (~60% semi-aged raw, 12% aged oolongs, 10% Wuyi oolongs, 6% TW oolongs). I probably drink a touch more Wuyi Oolongs and a little less semi-aged raw, but it is more or less accurate. Technically I drink more ripe than any other category (see: big blue pot inbetweenisodes), however, it is in a very casual manner where I don’t mind a little less attention and discarding the later brews. Most tea drinker’s diet is dictated by two major factors (1) what fits your lifestyle/schedule and (2) your preference. My schedule is not exactly the same but similar and my preferences have remained about the same, so there have been no dramatic changes in my drinking.

A Place for Writing

I was reading some of my old posts and I miss writing. In the last four years a lot of life has happened. Beyond the pandemic, I now have a 1-year old daughter and for a stretch was reduced to very casual drinking and did not have as much mind space for tea. This was documented in videos I released earlier this year. In the last six months, things have normalized a bit more, allowing me to go back to some semblance of my old routines and I’m hoping to add this blog to the mix as well.

While the videos have been great as an outlet to continue drinking tea, the written posts allow me to go into more detail and force a thoroughness that the videos simply don’t. During the blog hiatus, some ideas that likely would’ve been posted were converted into videos, but I’m hoping to express my better and more interesting ideas in written format again. Realistically I won’t be able to resume at the old pace, but will be shooting to do one post every 6-8 weeks.

How Has The Tea Scene Has Changed?

Perhaps the largest change in the tea scene is the steady movement away from forums and blogs to social chatting programs like Discord. When I started drinking tea 12 or 13 years ago, Teachat was a very active forum. This is no longer the case, as the forum is more or less dead. The movement towards messaging platforms was happening a bit before 2020 in slack, but seems to have really taken off around 2020 specifically with Discord. And of course it’s not a community without a bit of drama, so there are some larger discords like Communitea (around 6-7k members) but also a few smaller similarly themed teachats as well. You can find certain vendor discord’s as well if you want to stay up to date on them.

There are a few other spaces like facebook, but for my money the various Discords are better, with more interesting chatter. These spaces are important. Learning doesn’t happen as effectively in a vacuum even with the internet. At a certain point the dialogue and interaction with peers is important for expanding your learning to the next level. Discords can also help facilitate buying/selling, group buys for expensive teas and help expand your horizons with a diversity of thought. Discord and to a lesser extent slack have increased the sheer volume of dialogue, and while not all chatter is productive, it’s ultimately a positive thing.

What’s Next? & Revisiting My Slowly Aging Tea

Since writing my last post my stash has gotten ~5 years older, and I’m overdue to evaluate and think about teas that I’ve long stashed away. I still did buy some tea throughout the pandemic (I’ll write on this at some point), but my peak buying was in 2015-2017, nearly 10 years ago. I have changed virtually nothing with my storage and while tea has continued to age slowly, I think I should look at them in a bit more depth in 2025. There are some teas I’ve drank regularly, but others I’ve completely forgotten about and are slowly aging in a back corner of the Eurocave. There’s also a fair bit of housekeeping I am overdue on with discarding unwanted cakes and samples. I’ll try to document some of this. Thanks to everyone who’s followed us for so long. Our original videos were released in 2013, when we were in our mid 20s. Now we’re both dads! Cheers to that!

Final Note: I’ve started to document different written post ideas, something I was doing prior to the blog’s hiatus as well, but if anyone has ideas on something they’d like to see covered, I’m happy to hear about them.