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Group order September 2022

Group order is running now until next Monday 26.9. 21.00 (Finnish time). So please make your order in the next few days.

What is it?

In the group order I gather orders from you, order them from the wholesalers and finally ship them to you. So the benefits are wider selection and cheaper prices but the downside is long order processing time (max 10 weeks this time).

What’s new?

Not so much new things this time. Ban Pen and Cozy are the newest arrivals and I can recommend them if you haven’t tried.

Ban pen is a rather strong shou with a special deep energy, perfect is you want a deep meditative/trippy session.

Cozy on the other hand is very fragrant and chocolatey which is a great choice if you are looking for something more easygoing. I’ve enjoyed both a lot during the summer and autumn.

Ban Pen



Also Georgian tea “Likhauri” and bovedas are back in stock.

I decreased the price 50% of Chai (with tea) and Chai (spice mix) with the idea of selling the stock out this autumn/winter.

chai (spices + tea)



Order processing time is max 10 weeks. So everyone should get their teas latest early December. The time could be shorter.

List of group order products and some recommendations

Shou pu’er
2021 Ban Pen – strong shou with deep meditative energy
2021 Cozy – easygoing, tasty, chololatey
2020 Clarity – quite strong character. Very clean. Bright clear energy.
2014 Gentle Home – the most popular tea of Liquid Metta and for a good reason. Great taste, great effect, lasts many brews and reasonable price.
2000 Water Lily (only full bricks) – very nice aged pu’er character. Quite pricey so not recommended if you are not familiar with pu’er.
1996 The Crazy One (only full cakes) – very nice and vibrant aged pu’er character. Reminds a bit of aged sheng because it was very lightly fermented originally. Quite pricey so not recommended if you are not familiar with pu’er or don’t have proper gong-fu teaware.

Sheng pu’er
2011 Kaikkiness 3 – extremely affordable. Nice and strong sheng character.

Dark tea
2008 Heiska – Became popular quite fast when I started to sell it. Nice vibrant character and great price to quality.
Wan’s 90s gift
2009 “normal” liubao #1 – Has the “classical” liubao characteristics and is quite cheap.
2005 Four Gold Coins – One of the best sellers. Very thick and oily mouthfeel, aged flavor. 

Other tea
Osmanthus gaba oolong – Taiwanese gaba oolong + osmanthus flower. Fragrant flowery character and relaxing effect.
Georgian black tea “likhauri” – Super fragrant and fruity. Nice example of great black tea. Good price to quality.
Chai (spices & tea)
Chai (spice mix)

Other things
8 litre tea storage bag
boveda two-way humidity pack (69% RH)
palo santo
a few kettles also…


Bonus question: What would you like to see more in the webshop (or otherwise)? The webshop hasn’t been a big focus for me for a while. Now I have a lot more time to work on it so I’m open for suggestions.

If you have any questions please let me know by email (tertti[only @ here]liquidmetta.com or whatsapp [plus three five eight]443519993.

-Tertti

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Summer tea flea market 2022

Recently I removed lots of teas from the webshop. So here are some leftover amounts from those plus other findings from my storage. Most of these are very nice summer teas.

Please note that these tea flea market teas are usually lower quality compared to what I sell in the webshop.

I’m updating this page as the teas are are sold.

Please order these teas by sending me a message (don’t try to add in webshop) by email (tertti[only @ here]liquidmetta.com or whatsapp (plus nr3 nr5 nr8 443519993). You can combine a normal webshop order with flea market order.

All of these teas have had good storage and don’t have agrochemicals (as far as my skills say) if not noted.



2016 YS monkey mini tuocha ~275g (SOLD)
price: 12€
Nice little 2-3g sheng buttons. Bright energy. Light character for a sheng pu’er.

Check more info from:
https://yunnansourcing.com/products/2016-yunnan-sourcing-monkey-mini-tuo-raw-pu-erh-tea-1?_pos=2&_sid=da570e57c&_ss=r



2016 YS red monkey mini tea cake 50g total left ~245g
price: 12€ (SOLD)
Similar than the monkey mini button but slightly better material.

2018 Mengku da xue shan 200g cake ~175g left (SOLD)
price: 10€
Quite basic young sheng.

Check more info from:
https://yunnansourcing.com/products/2016-autumn-mengku-da-xue-shan-raw-pu-erh-tea-cake?_pos=2&_sid=6d40463b1&_ss=r


2015 laos green bar 450g (SOLD)
price: 15€ for 450g or 8€ 225g
I used to sell it in the webshop. The character is light like between sheng pu’er and green tea.



2015 laos black bar 115g(SOLD)
price: 5€
Oxidized tea. I used to sell it in the webshop.



2018 “breath” moonlight white cake 70g (SOLD)
price: 6€
Moonlight white cake. Kind of in between black (oxidized) and white tea. I used to sell it in the webshop.

More info:
https://liquidmetta.com/shop/black/2018-breath/ or https://yunnansourcing.com/products/2018-spring-old-arbor-yue-guang-bai-tea-cake-200-grams?_pos=1&_sid=7e562b279&_ss=r



YS sample set (SOLD)
price: free
I didn’t like these. It felt that they probably have some agrochemicals.

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Tea & teaware flea market 2022

I’m once again cleaning out my closets of samples and other stuff which I don’t want to keep. If you are interested in anything just send me an email to tertti(at)liquidmetta.com or whatsapp +358443519993

Prices are without shipping. It’s possible to combine a normal webshop order shipping with flea market order if you send me a message beforehand.

UPDATE 12.2.2022 only some teaware left.

Chahai ~200ml
FREE (not including shipping)
flower gongfu cups 4x
FREE (not including shipping)
35ml filled to the brim
Sold only as a set.
gongfu cup #2
FREE (not including shipping). Sold only as a set.
These are maybe the nicest cups for the tea quality from these flea market ones. Slightly older porcelain.
55ml


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Changes in Liquid Metta 24.3.2021

From a company to a private person

I have been doing a lot of thinking, calculations and research or actually more accurately this sort of process happens on it’s own in my creative projects. The result is that I’m moving my tea activities from my company to myself as a private person. I can do this while everything being 100% legal (taxes, health regulations etc.). If my turnover will increase dramatically I need to figure out something else but for now this works. This also has more benefits than purely monetary.

The upcoming changes

Prices will decrease
The tea activities within my company were causing a lot of extra bookkeeping fees which will save me a lot of money now. As a result I can and will decrease the tea prices. I will also put some guidelines for the pricing so I don’t need to think about in in every case.

In most cases I will use these guidelines:
-profit is 25% for teas that I have to buy bigger amounts from the supplier and I need to store at home. In these cases I also have to invest some money to the tea before selling it.
-profit 15% for teas which I can order smaller amounts and I don’t have to store it at home.
-In both cases the profit is limited to minimum 10€ and maximum 25€ per bigger amount (200g+).
-For 15g samples I use a formula: price per 15g (my buying price) + 65 % with minimum 5€ total price per 15g sample and maximum 5€ profit per sample.

Previously my profits were 10-35 higher %.

VAT removal
After the change I’m not obliged to add VAT on my sales and I choose not to. But I need to pay it on the top of the price of the teas which I will import from outside EU normally. Or if I get the tea from within the EU that VAT will be added there by the seller.

Shipping & packing fees
From now on the shipping fees will be as I have to pay them. Previously in some cases I was paying a big portion of them myself.

Sharing the sources and origins of the teas
I’ve been holding back on the sources (sellers) of my teas and their origins. Recently this has felt a bit strange so I want to be more transparent. In the long run I want to be more as a “product reviewer” than a “tea seller” fulfilling orders. This also allows my tea findings to spread to a broader audience which is nice.

It will also save me a lot of work since there will be no rewrapping.

So basically you can find the same tea which I’m selling from e.g. yunnansourcing.com and order the same tea from there with a slightly cheaper price. This is totally fine with me.

some personal philosophical pondering…

The biggest reason for the change was that Liquid Metta tea sales were not producing enough turnover and profit. I think this is a result from only one thing. I couldn’t produce enough value for the customers. I think that if I would have produced enough value I would have had more customers, turnover and profit. I don’t think there is anything wrong in my tea selling but it just wasn’t good enough to “become a thing with a big impact”.

All of this is fine with me and I’m not sad about it. Liquid Metta is one of my creative projects which feels very natural and allows me to grow even though it’s challenging. After I presented some of these changes to my friend he asked me if I still want to do something “for profit” with tea. I replied that it feels much more natural to do it that not to do it.

You might think why am I doing this project at all when I get such small profits. Well… first of all it’s more natural to do it than not. My main goal is to provide great value to tea people. If I will succeed in that the money will come somehow (if I and it wants to).

I’m constantly trying to find “my thing”. I don’t want to compete with other online tea shops because my strengths are not there. Or compete with anyone at all. I rather find my own special little corner where is no competition.

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5 simple ways to make your tea more meditative (part 1)

This is a part of a bigger blog post. I will publish the rest a bit later 🙂

Good tea leaves turned into a mundane experience

side handle + gong-fu cups. Wrong-fu style at it’s best

After tasting the tea the guy looked at me, politely said thank you and moved forward to other activities and to taste other teas. Actually the same thing happened with almost everyone who tasted the tea I was offering. The reaction was very mundane, basically like they had a cup of warm water with flavor. I was both disappointed and intrigued since this was a very good tea. Why didn’t it leave a strong impression?

This happened back in 2018 when I was asked to hold a tea tasting as a part of an event in Helsinki. There were a few tea and health presentations and some tea tastings. The event was in a conference room, there was a lot of activity, everyone could come and go as they wished and usually they had only one cup of tea.

So even though the tea was really good quality (Gentle Home, 2014 shou pu’er) and I brewed it well enough, nothing about the tasting experience was special. I’ve had this tea hundreds of times alone and public ceremonies and without exaggerating I must say that it’s a powerful one. In the right circumstances it will produce a strong meditative experience for anyone (~95% of the time).

The tasting event and my disappointment were not bad per se. I didn’t succeed showing how special this tea is (and tea in general) but it strengthened my understanding of which things need to be emphasized that tea can be experienced “fully”.

The next part of my tea trip in Helsinki was holding a tea ceremony in a basement of a cafe. The setting was calm, nice and there was lots of time. I chose to brew Cloud Hidden, a 2014 shou pu’er, which is similar quality than Gentle Home. This time everyone had a strong meditative experience where they felt very mindful and relaxed. One guest had only the first bowl and just sat completely still for around 45 minutes, just meditating.

So these two occasions strengthened my understanding that without a few important things the tea experience won’t be anything special.

Why is this relevant for you?

First by knowing the different aspects which support the ceremonial use of tea you can plan how to make a tea session more (or less) meditative for yourself and others.

Second you know in which things to concentrate on if you have challenges to make a tea ceremony daily (and would like to).

The five (+1) ways to make your tea more meditative 

  1. Have enough time for the tea session (45-60min)
  2. Have a clean and nice place
  3. Don’t talk
  4. Focus on the tea and your experience (+ don’t force anything)
  5. Drink many cups or bowls of tea
  6. Bonus: Choose an organic and high quality tea

I will go through them more in detail in the upcoming parts. These results are merely reflections from my daily tea meditations and public ceremonies from the past five years. Trying to find scientific reasoning for them would be largely a waste of energy (at least for me).

The challenge is that there are infinite amount of things you can concentrate on improving your tea. The good thing is there are only a few of the basics which are really impactful compared to the rest. And also a nice thing is that the improvements don’t require purchasing anything or learning new “brewing tricks”.

What do you think? Did I leave something important out? If you had to choose only five things which you emphasize in preparing for a tea meditation what would they be? Have you had experiences where in different circumstances the same tea leaves were mundane or very special? Let me know in the comments.


-Tertti