To Sample or to Beeng?

Hello hello!

Welcome to the next edition of ‘Ask The Oolong Drunk’! Before we start, I wanted to mention that I'm currently fundraising for a trip for me to go speak at the Houston Tea Fest. I will be speaking about the basics of puer, and how to get started. Expenses include hotel, gas, and some food. If you would like to help out, here's a link to my gofundme! Anyways I've recieved a lot of questions from our fellow reader Mark who is interested in starting discussion along a few interesting questions, so lets start!

Q: How long have you been casually drinking tea?

A: I’ve been casually drinking tea my entire life. I grew up in the South, which means that every meal was served with a glass of sweet iced tea. Over the years, I never gave hot tea any thought, but around three years ago, I started my addiction with an oolong that I purchased from a local grocery store. At the time, I was a weight loss consultant and was finding more ways to get my clients to release their stranglehold over soda, and I came across an article that talked about how tea was good for you. Ever since then, its been the addiction that been fueling my soul.

Q: What led you to puer and oolong?

A: When I first discovered hot tea, I tried a wide variety of teas such as black, green, yellow, white tea, oolong, and puer. At first, I really fell in love with green and yellow tea, but slowly started to transition over to oolongs (green oolongs to be exact). I then became so obsessed with green oolongs that I decided to call myself ‘The Oolong Drunk’. One day I was browsing the tea community of Reddit and came across White2Tea. I was very intrigued by the idea of aged tea, and thought I’d give it a try! That night, I ordered 2015 Pin, and from then on puer has been my obsession.

Q: How many teas do I go through in a year?

A: I don't keep a record of all of the teas that I drink, but I have at least two sessions per day. This past year, I went through 4-5 different beengs of puer and a countless amount of oolong.

Q: Do you review most of the teas you drink or do you pick the cream of the crop to spend your time writing about?

A: For me, I drink twenty times more tea outside of what gets posted to my blog. I drink so many different teas that it would be too time-consuming to write about every single one. However, I do often post photos to Instagram which is more accurately updated with the number of teas that I drink. For the blog, I select teas that are either really good, really popular within the community, or teas that I get asked to review. I rarely give bad review of teas because one of the only times that I did (when I reviewed Cow Cunt Puer), I was heavily questioned as to why I bothered to review it to begin with. I mean, not every tea that I review is ‘out of this world delicious’, but I try to stay away from the ones that make me gag.

Q: Do you think that noobs should try a bunch of samples or buy a few recommended cakes blind?

A: When I first started drinking puer I purchased my first few cakes blindly. I was very lucky and fortunate that I ended up liking what I ordered, but there have been a few instances where I drop a pretty penny on a tea that I absolutely disliked. If I had to start over again, I would only buy samples until I figured out what I liked. If I tried a tea and end up not liking it, I’d be less upset over wasting a sample compared to wasting an entire beeng.

If theres a question you wish to ask, you can contact me here!

"Blissfully Tea Drunk"