Tea of the Month Club (Beta)

The Tea of the Month Club has been around for quite some time now. It wasn’t an idea that was there in the beginning, it was something that came up later, after the realization that I create a lot of teas. So many teas. Possibly even too many teas, depending on your perspective on such things.¹

This is just the chocolate teas circa 2015. If the decaffeinated versions are included, there are over 350 teas that have been worked up completely.

The Alpha version of the Club was flawed, on a number of levels. Taking in and thinking about the commentary I had received from a number of sources led to a slow reassessment of my approach. This led to a lot of math, and eventually resulted in the more recent offering of two versions of the Tea of the Month Club.

The reoffering made me realize that there should be an explanation of the two versions, and of the concept of the Club in a more general fashion.

The first version is the curated version. This is the one I considered to be the basic version for years. Every month²you receive a tea. But not just any tea. A tea picked specifically for you, based on the answers to the Tea Preferences survey. It comes along with a note explaining the why of that particular tea, and, depending on how much we interact or how much I see on social media that note may evolve into a pen-pal-ish kind of letter.³

The curated offerings will be limited, and I am still deciding how many of them I can handle in a given month. This past month I discovered that trying to handle all of them in a single day is a terrible idea, so I will be adjusting my process going forward. Current plan is to have week-sets – where a particular set of subscribers are sent their teas in a specific week of the month.

The second version is the standard version, and, as of when this was posted, I am still looking for more participants. It is a bit of a challenge for me to approach, and will become easier once I hit a certain number of subscribers. With this version you will still receive a tea every month, but it will be chosen for the month itself – whether that be hopes for what that month will be, the resonance left over from the month prior, or a roll of the dice to pick one of the teas that were inspired or created the previous month. There will still be an included explanation as to why, but it won’t be hand written and it won’t be personalized in the same fashion. The for-the-month teas will probably be chosen mid-month and shipped in the 3^rd or 4^th week. The standard club is still so new it squeaks, so there may be changes as I find out what functions and is comfortable.

The standard version will also have limited participation, just far less limited than the curated. If you are interested in signing up for it, the listing is here.

Additionally, with the standard version I will still want survey answers. There are a couple of reasons for this. I use a wide variety of tea ingredients, and I do want to make sure I avoid any allergies or absolute dislikes or taste associated triggers. My overall goal will be to make it so that each monthly tea is safe for all of the standard subscribers, but if I really want to send one that you cannot have, I will choose an alternate.

Pricing ranges from 14 USD to 60 USD, depending on what options are chosen. Beyond the choice between the curated and standard, I offer a relatively wide range of amount of tea and containment of tea options – from a single teabag to 5 serving samples as either loose tea or teabags right on up to full batches of tea either loose or in teabags. Shipping is included in that overall price. This may mean that the single teabags option gets retired in the relatively near future, as postal service regulations regarding size mean that there isn’t much difference between shipping 5 servings of tea and 1.

For now, subscribing is done through Paypal, though I hope to change that in the relatively near future. This does lead to some limitations. Once subscribed, the only way to change your subscription type is to cancel and resubscribe. As the curated tea of the month club is not presently publicly available, if you want to change your curated subscription you would need to contact me after canceling so that I can send you a subscription link directly.

Unfortunately one of the potential perks to the Tea of the Month Club can also be a drawback if there is a tea you really enjoy and would like to acquire more of. With either version there is a good chance that you will receive one of my teas-in-progress. If a tea is still just a number and a story, it will not be available in the shop. One of the last steps in the evolution of any of the teas is the name.

If you do fall in love with an unnamed tea, there are a few options. You can let me know and I will make finding its name a priority, you could suggest a name to get the conversation for it started, or you could reach out and ask that I put together a custom order for you with a proper batch of the tea.

Other than the unnamed teas once I get things back up and running fully any tea you receive should be available in the shop. That process, however, is going to take some time and I would greatly appreciate your patience during that time. If a named and known tea is unavailable, I will be just as willing to put together a custom order.⁴

My personal goal for the tea of the month club is for a little bit of happiness or a tension breaker or…  just something good to arrive in your mail once a month. Something to break up the mind-numbing rhythm of advertising circulars and bills and political snailspam.

It’s why the tea preferences survey exists and why there are so many options for how your tea arrives and how much of it there is.

If you have any other questions about the club, please let me know.

If you’d like to be notified when more curated slots open up, please reach out.