I always thought that a good cup of coffee needs to taste like shit, that’s part of the charm. I enjoy coffee, but it’s not, like, delicious.
Tea is a fickle mistress, too. It’s very easy to make an overly bitter cup of tea, and tea bags tend to taste awful no matter how you prepare them. A good cup of tea takes effort and good quality loose leaf. God I love tea.
I love how coffee smells, and heavily diluted in an icecap or something, it’s fine.
Straight up, though? Disgusting. I’ve tried for years to develop the taste for it. No dice.
A well prepared tea just goes down easier.
Even a caffeine free green tea is a step above hot water. And I’ll drink straight hot water on a cold day in a pinch.
yea how the fuck it smells so good but tastes like meh. Wait cinnamon…
And as with cinnamon, all you need is quadruple the amount of sugar as you use coffee in order for it to start tasting ok.
Did you ever try filter coffee from a speciality shop? Some coffee variants almost taste tea like. A whole different experience from your common bitter liquid
Oh yeah. I sometimes ask my partner to take a sip of her coffee. She asks me why I punish myself. She takes it plain black, and we get it from a ton of different places.
I’ve tried larger amounts to see if my palate adjusts, but it never really has. Granted, I could try harder, but there comes a point at which it’s just not worth the effort. Tea is fine. Even shitty generic black teabags are okay as long as you don’t steep them longer than 20-30 seconds, and maybe bulk them up with a bit of sugar and salt to cut the bitterness. Too easy to overextract them and they’re usually extracted with fresh-boiling water, which is a little too hot.
Speciality coffee can be a different beast, I have tried some which have a sweetness to it
OP drinks black dark roast Folgers from a Mr. Coffee drip machine.
Tea and coffee both taste mostly horrible. I unironically do believe that. Sometimes I find some good tasting stuff, but it’s mostly additional flavour providing agents, otherwise it’s bleh
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Tea quality really matters. Almost all of the supermarket stuff in ultra fine bags is literally the leftover dust from actual tea making. (Looking at you, Tetley)
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Steep time and water temperature. Oversteeping make it bitter, which is unfortunately how most older people grew up serving it. Some teas need 5 minutes at 95C(Rooibos); other need a minute at 80C(most greens)
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You haven’t had good tea or coffee then. The quality of the tea or beans, water temp, steep time, water quality, brew method can make or ruin any cup of coffee or tea. Get yourself to a nice local roaster or tea shop and have them brew you a cup. Can’t speak thoroughly on tea but for the best coffee order a pour over (chemex or v60 if they offer options) of a single origin bean (usually on their specials menu) that has tasting notes that sound good to you. Alternatively get an espresso of a single origin bean if you’d rather get punched in the face with coffee flavor. Guaranteed it’ll be unlike any coffee you’ve had before
Can’t stress the last part enough: if you have a really good cup of coffee, it tastes actually fruity and complex. Like the good parts of wine and tea combined.
Both taste awful without something added
the secret ingredient is love
And a shitton of sugar and milk
If you have to add milk to it to enjoy it, then you like drinking milk. This brought to you by the lactose intolerant gang.
But in reality I actually love a good jasmine green tea, nothing added. Black is fine with some sugar.
Yes, I do also like drinking milk.
I sometimes even add some tea to my milk.
I call it “Tilk”
I don’t like milk in my tea (my go to black tea is earl grey) because it takes away from the flavour. But I love chai. So the trick for me is just that the tea just needs a good brew in the milk, not just the water (also I guess, adding more spices to it is also necessary).
But my earl grey? I had to stop using sugar because it sets off my acid reflux, so now I use maple syrup :D
Honestly forgot about chai. And I think people took my original comment a little too seriously, lol. Nothing at all against putting milk in your drinks or not. I’m just jealous because my lactose free milk costs twice the price.
I chuckled, because I am 100% a tea snob with strong opinions on how my tea should be made even though I also believe you like what you like. Exaggerating my opinions for laughs brings me joy IRL. It didn’t come off as serious to me.
Sometimes I enjoy a very strong, tannin-y black tea, with just a spot of honey and a dash of milk to round out the harshness.
This is to say I add two teabags to boiling hot water, stir it with a spoonful of honey, leave it for a few minutes, then put just a hint of milk so it’s not too hot to drink anymore.
Put when I specifically want good tea, I’ll make ~80C water (3 parts boiling, 1 part lukewarm ~20 degrees = 80c), then put a nice wulong tea in there to steep for a while.
No honey, no milk. Maybe a few drops of lemon juice on rare occasions to switch it up a bit.
Cold green tea with light sweetening is very refreshing.
Properly brewed cold green tea is best enjoyed without sweetening
The taste of tea is heavily dependent on how it gets brewed. Correct brewing temperature and time steeping play a huge role on making sure too many tannins aren’t extracted and it ends up tasting like hot garbage.
Same could be said about coffee but I feel like people are more willing to forgive all the garbage coffee out there than the tea.
I enjoy a good high quality cup of either.
I can practically guarantee that people who say they hate tea haven’t tried brewing any kind of loose leaf tea at the proper temp and time.
I got a 1kg brick of the cheapest loose-leaf black tea I could find for ~$3.50, and it’s delicious. I drink it almost every day, I bought it in June last year, and I’m just now running low. I brewed a bag lipton black tea at work recently, took one sip and I dumped it the fuck out. Absolutely foul, that stuff.
So I can see why people hate tea if they’ve only ever tried cheap bags with boiling water
What you mean? Just dump the damn teabag in the hot water in your cup and a spoonful of honey.
Tastes like honey every time
The boiling water gets poured over the tea.
Don’t forget the water quality itself. Plays a major role too.
Yup, green tea is great if you’re not drinking factory floor dust and you haven’t oversteeped it. If your tea is bitter and is leaving you with a dry mouth, something is wrong.
And if you don’t leave it to infuse for too long. Unlike black tea that can be left to infuse indefinitely green tea gets bitter after few minutes.
left to infuse indefinitely
🤢
Absolutely not
My British half: Utter balderdash thou toadspotted codpiece!
Is your British half about 500 years old?
Representative of our population demographics
Last remaining Tory voters
It really depends on the tea, I’ve had some black tea that’s absolute dog shit but I’ll murder someone for Jasmine tea or god forbid some homemade chai
I’m still more of a coffee drinker tho
Flower water is best water. Hibiscus tea with optional dash of your preferred sweetener.
Coffee and tea are both delicious.
Energy drinks, on the other hand, taste like battery acid and bile. That’s where your scorn should be directed.
Exactly, why limit yourself to only one source of caffeine. Coffee and tea are both awesome!
What else would give you energy if not literal battery juice?
Pure uncut methamphetamine.
You’re goddamn right.
SMH y’all just making water worse. Pure, undiluted water with just enough crap in it so that it doesn’t literally strip your ions or something and kill you. That’s the best drink.
I don’t know… nothing cools me down on a hot day quite like liquid methane.
I heard it’s waxy in consistency once and have wanted to swim in it to confirm ever since.
Plenty of teas aren’t even made of leaves.
Then it’s not tea, it’s an infusion or decoction.
Tea is made from a specific plant, the tea shrub (Camellia sinensis).
These infusions might be called tea, but they are tea in the same way as a hotdog is a heated companionable mammal.
Except if you talk about Kukicha, then it’s made from the stems of the tea shrub. The important part here is the tea shrub. Without tea in it, it just ain’t tea.
Technically, these are all decoctions, and “decoction of tea (the plant)” has become just “tea”, which is now colloquially replaced “decoction”.
So in the sense I was using tea, as a replacement for “decoction”, coffee is a “tea”, insofar that the replaced word, “decoction”, boiled plant matter drink.
Language isn’t quite as black as white as we’d sometimes wish it was.
So you’re not wrong, per se, but neither am I.
Non-tea teas are usually referred to as tisanes by those who care enough to make a distinction between the two
Asian cultures called various hot beverages tea 茶 before some Westerner decided that they are wrong. Sure there is green tea from that plant but Asian cultures also had mint or chrysanthemum tea using the same 茶 character (pudina chai in India for mint tea).
If anything, the Westerner who decided that beverages made from only that specific shrub is called tea was the wrong one. Broader uses predate your definition.
Thanks for correcting me then
Yeah, like coffee.
It’s just bean-tea.
Ok, good, I’m not the only one whose had that shower thought
If coffee is a tea then I’m going to demand the pasta tea not be poured down the drain
Apparently tea made of leaves and fruits from coffee plants is a thing.
Oooh the cherry leaf tea sounds good! They both do but the regular coffee leaf tastes like green tea so I’m not as curious
Perfect response.
