Brew do you think you are? Why tea needs to copy coffee in order to survive | Life and style | The Guardian
http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle ... to-survive

My dad has finally bought something potentially useful - a drinks machine, sort that uses discs. Chocolate has been bought, and if that goes well I may splash out on tea and maybe even coffee... Anyway, are you bored with tea? I only drink it once in a blue moon hence being curious about the machine, as I shall now be calling it

Even I noticed the price of teabags had gone through the roof!

It certainly isn't that way over here. People look at Starbucks as though they are crazy, that much money for a cup of coffee? It is a joke. And the coffee doesn't even taste that good.
But there again, Germans have also drunk coffee the way we Brits drink tea. Tea shows that you have taste over here, although you won't find any blended tea (at least I haven't found an equivalent of PG Tips, Tetley or Sainsbury's Red Label.

But either way, they won't, generally, pay over the odds for a coffee or tea.

I think the continent has benefited from the fact that filter coffee and espressos are the norm, so they know full well what a good quality coffee tastes like. In the UK there's far more widespread drinking of instant coffee which is frankly a very pale imitation.

Our local in St. Ives uses a variety of roasts sourced from all over the world. He times the grind, weighs each measure and then times the extraction before delivering "better than average Italian" coffee for £1.80.

Cornwall has it's moments.

Tea is great, but it's a different drink. Coffee is not a 15 minute activity surrounded by brown leather, palatial surroundings and jazz. That's a cigar/wine/martini. The UK has it wrong (again).

Tea on the continent is so derisible that you get a biscuit by way of an apology. A cup of luke warm water, cream and a tea bag to dunk in it is really not the way to go about it.

As some of you may know, my blood type is Tea. I’m not sure tea needs to be “coffeed up” - it’s a simpler, easier drink to make. It benefits from not needing the machinery and drama to make it. Costa tried to make their posher choices more attractive by presenting them as a tea bag next to a latte glass of hit water (continental style), but they seem to have returned to using tea pots with the tea bag inside (tea must be made with boiling water - letting the water cool can affect the taste). We also have a cafe here which has a tea menu LONGER than the food menu. It goes for several pages, includes taste information and how long it should brew for. You are encouraged to remove the tea leaf holder after that time, of the drink will spoil.

On a similar note, I am pondering growing my own. The climate in the UK can now support the tea planet - indeed, Suki tea grows their own, and they are in Belfast. I just need one of these: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camellia_sinensis

But, really, tea doesn’t need to copy coffee at all.

Must've been a slow day at the Gradunia.

Brits will always be tea drinkers.

Depends on the tea. I drink a lot of green tea and the optimum water temperature for this is around the 75° mark depending on the type.

i do my tea they way i used to in the army
tea bag, water (measured by the cup i am using), milk (splash) and half teaspoon of sugar
all goes into a pot and is heated on the stove just and i mean just to boiling point

then poured back into the cup and drank, lovely brew ...

for fresh coffee i normally use the one cup ground coffee thingamajigs with coffee mate ...

Exactly the way my Grandad taught me - awesome brew.

Tea needs to copy coffee? Hahahahahahaha
Sod off!

Mark

Exactly. The only allowable response to the article is 'Pick up your coffee, get on your fixie and feck off to buy some beard wax, because we don't want your sort round here'.

I'll just leave this here.

Random thoughts...

Above said machine might be fine for all I know, but that Dairy Milk chocolate was vile. Like an idiot I still wanna try the tea...

Hipsters can't die soon enough. Especially a hipster who wants to hipster-brand tea. That's actually worse than corporate.

I tried coffee again tonight for the first time in years. Maxwell House's Russian Prison range, I believe.

My taste buds do not like coffee at all, and tell me that it must be for deviants

I'd be quite happy to visit some place like that if it had pub opening hours.
Being on permanent night-shift, I don't get up until late afternoon on my days off, by that time, meeting with friends in cafe's is usually out as they mostly close on or before 6pm, so the later opening times for a pub style cafe would be nice.

Mark

Maxwell House isn't coffee. It is what they use to ween addicts off of coffee, it is so vile, they'll never touch the stuff again. That is like trying to judge tea by comparing it to the tea granules that constitute an Maxpax cup of tea...

If you want real coffee, get some proper coffee beans and grind it yourself, or pre-ground coffee, and filter boiling water through it.

There is a big difference. And real coffee drinkers are no more enamoured of hipster coffee shops than tea drinkers are of the tea "pub" idea.