Do you constantly fear running out of your favorite tea? Are you always stocking up on tea, for fear of some great tea-pocalypse? Is there so much tea squirrelled away in your cupboards that you’re not even sure what’s back there anymore? If you answered “yes” to any of these questions, then you have a tea problem.
You’ve lost control of your tea tendencies, and you need some help. The first step is getting your tea stash under control, and Tea can help with that. An encyclopedia of lots of different teas and a customizable tea inventory will have you back on the straight and narrow and maybe prevent you from adding yet another identical box of Darjeeling to the stack at the back of the cabinet.
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Pour Me a Cup
If you drink a lot of tea, and especially if you have a lot of different teas around your kitchen, Tea is a great way to keep track of all of the different types of tea and brands you’ve got stocked up. Not only is it really satisfying to see all of my teas gathered together in a single list, but it’s also a great way to keep track of what you have on hand.
Add teas to your list, and enter any important notes.
Tap the plus sign to add a new tea to your inventory. The app will ask for a name for your tea, and your tea’s brand. There’s also a slot for type of tea, like white, black or oolong. I’ll be honest and admit that these fields aren’t incredibly helpful. Not all teas have a name, and if you’re buying tea online, your only brand may be the retailer. Short of a straightforward entry like “Bedtime Bear Blend” from “That Tea Company, Inc.,” just type in whatever you need to be able to buy the same stuff again, because that’s what is going to be most important.
Use the inventory tracker to keep up with how much tea you have left, and share a cup with friends.
There’s a nifty inventory tracker you can toggle on or off for each of your teas, and it will clue you in on how much you have left at any given time. You can use ounces or grams for loose tea, or if your tea comes in bags, there’s a place to enter that. Every time you brew a cup, Tea will subtract the amount used from your total, so you always have an accurate measure of how much tea is left to drink. If there are special instructions for brewing, like amount of tea required or time to brew, make sure to stick that in the notes for the tea.
Enter your brewing details and set the timer.
When you’re ready to brew, select a tea from your inventory list. Enter how much tea you’re using and how much water. When you add your water, you can also start a teapot inventory, saving you some scrolling if you often use the same pot. Set your timer and temperature, and tap Brew. Tea will sound a bell to let you know when your tea is ready. It’s pretty handy to carry my timer with me, because I often walk away from my kettle and return to find that I’ve let all of my water boil off while I’ve been out of earshot.
Tea For Two
Tea’s history is a review of all of the cups of tea you’ve made with the app. Add notes when you’ve finished a cup to let the future you know what was good or bad or how you could tweak a brew. The history’s great to see what worked out well and what was off. I like my tea strong enough to strip paint, and if a cup came out weaker than I’d hoped, the notes found in my tea history can prevent a future tea catastrophe.
The encyclopedia has tons of information.
Judging from my “strip paint” comment, you may have surmised that I don’t know a whole lot about tea. I’m from America where we drink Coke, and I’m late to all this tea-drinking business. I’m an eager learner though, and I’m trying to discover what’s good, what’s better, and most importantly, what I like. That’s why I like Tea’s encyclopedia. Learning about all the different types of tea can be rather overwhelming, and it’s great to have so much information in one place. There’s all sorts of data for each tea, including really helpful stuff like how to tell when a tea is overbrewed.
Final Thoughts
Tea is a practical way to manage of all of your teas and keep that inventory list close at hand. The brewing timer is really useful and is great at keeping track of your tea as you use it. At heart, though, Tea helps you remember when and where you bought that awesome black tea so you can buy more of it when it runs out.
The encyclopedia is just a bonus, but it’s a great feature to have in my back pocket if I’ve got any questions. There’s lots of information there that isn’t going to be much use to me, but the brewing tips are definitely a plus. Tea is serious about tea and really does have a lot to offer anyone in an ongoing tea love affair.
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