Your Tea Habits

TastyReuben

TastyReuben

Nosh 'n' Splosh
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So...what's everyone's tea habits here?

Do you drink it regularly? Do you like it hot, iced, full of sugar and/milk? Green tea? Herbal? Flavored teas? A lot, a little? Chai, anyone?

Loose leaf? Bagged? Make your own bags from loose leaf? Do you enjoy the ritual of making a "proper cuppa" (warming the pot, steeping they leaves/bags, etc)?

My preference is hot tea, black (as in the variety), and either drunk plain, with milk (meaning half-and-half), and/or sugar, depending on the tea. I don't like green tea. At any given time, I'll have a dozen or more teas in the house.

I also do like some herbal teas, especially mint, and I like a lot of flavored teas, but nothing with too much of a berry flavor. I especially like orange-cinnamon teas in winter.

I'll use bags a lot during the week, but will usually make tea with a kettle and pot and loose tea at the weekend, because I do like the slowness of doing it, it's calming.

Iced tea could really be its own subject. We grew up drinking a lot of iced tea, brewed in two-gallon glass jugs in the sun (aptly named sun tea), and sweetened with lots and lots of sugar. Lots of sugar. Can't over-emphasis how much sugar. Lots.

Nowadays, I drink iced tea when we go out to a restaurant or fast food place (or rather, when we used to do that), but I don't put any sugar in it.

I rarely make it at home, and when I do, it's just by the glass. We've gone through two automatic iced two makers over the years, though, as MrsTasty loves it, but isn't inclined to actually make it. :)

So, how about you? What's your tea habit?
 
I am guessing that not many members here drink tea regularly, despite the fact that this is a UK run forum. Coffee has taken over the world. I rarely drink coffee at all but I suspect I'm unusual.

I drink strong 'builder's tea' in the morning, I like PG tops but also a strong Assam both with very little semi skimmed milk and no sugar. I confess I rarely drink tea except in the morning. I do like Lapsang Souchong sometimes and Earl Grey.

Herbal tea isn't tea as far as I'm concerned. :D Iced tea isn't so much of a thing as I think it is in the US. I'm not sure I've ever tried it.

I'm also very interested in using tea in food recipe. I think I may have some posted here.
 
One thing that's oft overlooked that black tea is integral to...punch. A lot of the old punch recipes from centuries ago used tea as their base.

I've made a few at home, and they're fantastic, and (until a stupid renter's argument forced them to close) we used to have a proper Victorian punch room in Cincy, that served the most magnificent vintage punches. Nowadays "punch" means some kind of sickly-sweet champagne-and-fruit juice concoction that just doesn't measure up.

I drink hot tea throughout the day, usually two mugs in the morning, another one late morning (elevenes :laugh:, then another at around 3PM, then another one before bedtime. I used to drink more than that.

Coffee, I like it ok, but I drink more of that when we're out, since your average restaurant here can't make a cup of tea to save their lives.
 
Living in the American South, Iced Tea is as common as soft drinks at restaurants. "True" Southern iced tea is sugary sweet -- usually too sweet for me.

If you walk into a restaurant in Texas and order "Tea" as your beverage, it is automatically assumed that you mean iced tea. If you want a cup of hot tea, you have to ask for "hot tea." You will get coffee cup of hot water and a tea bag.

I keep Arizona (brand) green tea with honey and ginsing in the fridge at all times. It is mildly sweet, so I'm okay with it.

Most of the time, I prefer a good cup of hot coffee over hot tea. If I do make hot tea, I brew it in a tea pot -- mine is a stainless steel restaurant style pot. It is 25 years old, and has developed a nice patina inside. I usually put fresh local honey in my hot tea.

CD
 
morning glory said:
Do you have such a recipe?
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There are several around on the 'net, but this is the first one I ever made:

https://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/alton-brown/good-eats-company-punch-recipe-1948159

caseydog said:
Living in the American South, Iced Tea is as common as soft drinks at restaurants. "True" Southern iced tea is sugary sweet -- usually too sweet for me.
Click to expand...
My grandad loved two food items over everything else; a big bowl of sweet pickles, and a big glass of of sun tea.

When he'd get the jug ready, he'd fill it nearly full with water, and then he'd start dumping in sugar. Dump...stir...dump...stir. He'd always say, "Now, you have to get that to where the sugar won't dissolve no more. Get it right to where it can't take any more."

Then, once it got to that point, he'd top off the water, so it was right at the sweet spot, so to speak, where it was just able to dissolve the sugar. That was when it was sweetened enough for him. Then he'd throw in about half a box of Lipton tea bags and set it out in a sunny spot for about half the day, and that was that. He always had a jug of sun tea in the fridge.
 
I drink tea regularly. I tend to have a coffee or two in the morning then switch to tea for the rest of the day

I use a tea pig for loose leaf, currently going through a Covent Garden blend.

Used the last of my Assam recently, must get some more, strong and 'malty'.

And when I use a tea bag I prefer to leave the tea bag in the tea while I drink it.

Dash of milk no sugar. I'm sweet as I am. :p: :p:
 
TastyReuben said:
There are several around on the 'net, but this is the first one I ever made:

https://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/alton-brown/good-eats-company-punch-recipe-1948159


My grandad loved two food items over everything else; a big bowl of sweet pickles, and a big glass of of sun tea.

When he'd get the jug ready, he'd fill it nearly full with water, and then he'd start dumping in sugar. Dump...stir...dump...stir. He'd always say, "Now, you have to get that to where the sugar won't dissolve no more. Get it right to where it can't take any more."

Then, once it got to that point, he'd top off the water, so it was right at the sweet spot, so to speak, where it was just able to dissolve the sugar. That was when it was sweetened enough for him. Then he'd throw in about half a box of Lipton tea bags and set it out in a sunny spot for about half the day, and that was that. He always had a jug of sun tea in the fridge.
Click to expand...

This is so alien to me! Nothing like that exists in the UK. Nearest I came to it was in Egypt where tea is perilously sweet and flavoured with mint.
 
Us kiwis are tea raised, my mum always had morning tea and afternoon tea, with biscuits. If my grandparents were at home, mum did afternoon tea on a trolley with cakes. She prolly had about 6 cups a day. I never had tea or coffee growing up. I only started coffee when I started work, and smokos ( morning and afternoon breaks) were compulsory. I would have a coffee in the morning only. When I started my own company I supplied tea coffee and soup. And biscuits. I used to drink about 6 cups of coffee then. Then I stopped coffee. I only have coffee with my friend when we visit delis and coffee shops, once every 6 weeks? Last 5 years I have a cup of earl gray tea every morning. Sometimes with a biscuit. One cup a day here now. Wife has a hot chocolate most mornings as well.

Russ
 
morning glory said:
I am guessing that not many members here drink tea regularly, despite the fact that this is a UK run forum. Coffee has taken over the world. I rarely drink coffee at all but I suspect I'm unusual.
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I don't drink coffee at all. We don't even have the tools to make it. The Netherlands is a coffee drinking nation, but I did not grow up that way.

As I said before, I grew up bilingual and my ex is British. I grew up with British culture too, at home. So we always drank tea.

For breakfast usually Darjeeling or pure Cylon , my mom used to have it with milk but I always preferred my tea without any additions. Maybe the occasional bit of honey when faced with a sore throat.

I still drink Darjeeling for breakfast, sometimes Lady grey. During the day I'll often have the same or green tea like smoked lapsang souchon or gunpowder.

In the evening I like Morrocan mint tea made the traditional way or Indian chai.

I drink at least four mugs of tea a day.
 
Morning Glory said:
This is so alien to me! Nothing like that exists in the UK. Nearest I came to it was in Egypt where tea is perilously sweet and flavoured with mint.
Click to expand...
Tea all around Africa (and the Middle East) tends to be served very sweet. I've had fresh mint tea in Morocco that had no sugar and it was very nice. You could smell it coming from miles away.

One of the first Tigrigna phrases I learned to say in Eritrea was "without sugar." Tea there, and in Ethiopia, comes in little tumblers a bit like whisky glasses. It comes with lemon and, unless you specifically ask, enough sugar to sink a cruise ship. In some places, like where I worked, it's actually brewed with sugar, so I found the best thing was to squeeze in as much lemon as I could and make a kind of Lemsip concoction. It's more a case of "how much tea would you like with your sugar?"
 
Coffee also comes with a ton of sugar in East Africa unless you slip the word, or two words to be precise. Something else you find is that what they call a macchiato there is milkier than what we see in the West. I quite liked it, as long as the sugar shovel hadn't been out.
 
I can drink hot tea with or without sugar, though my preference is without (if it's yer basic "breakfast tea"), but I can't get sweetened coffee past my lips - it's an inadvertent spit-take moment if I inadvertently take a sip of sweetened coffee.
 
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