Tracking my tea collection

When I first started drinking tea

Until last year, the only time I would drink tea was during times of illness, and my tea of choice was Twinings Lemon & Ginger with some honey. Since then, I've come to learn what tea actually is, and I've tried many, mostly from What-Cha and Lalani & Co, with a few odd ones here and there. I'm often hesitant to order tea in a café, as it is usually an afterthought (even in places that are very particular about their coffee), and I only know of a few places in London that take tea seriously.

How I prepare tea at home

Let's be honest: a regular kettle, scale, thermometer, glass or ceramic vessel, strainer, and good soft water will get you 95% of the way to getting the most out of a high-quality tea, and most of us already have these things in the kitchen. I already had a few items from making pour-over coffee, such as a temperature-controllable kettle and a small scale, but these are by no means necessary.

The most-used piece of equipment I've purchased is the Gong Fu Glass Pot from Mei Leaf. It has a built-in strainer that catches most of the leaf fragments, allows me to see how the colour of the brew changes, and is easy to clean between brews. It has a capacity of around 200ml, which is perfect for one person, and generally, I use around 3g of tea per session. Most of the teas I've tried can be re-brewed at least three times, some up to six or seven.

Tracking my collection

I created this visualisation quickly using Flourish, and although I'm still making many changes, it gives me a good idea of what I've tried and where I should go next. There are a few tea estates I've sampled multiple teas from, such as Obubu in Japan, which you'll see when you zoom in. I'm also working on a similar visualisation that shows both the coffees and teas I've tried, which I plan to integrate.