A least I don't drink thin bean soup.
Don't bring soup into this. This is an argument between soggy leaf juice and burnt bean juice.
Roasted bean juice, thank you very much. It's only burnt if it's from starbucks
I prefer the term dirty bean water
Bean mud
That's the problem. Your bean soup should be thick like mud. Tastes awful that way, but MAN WILL YOU FEEL IT IN YOUR HAIR FOLLICLES!
Perfect response.
Coffee literally tastes like burnt asshole.
I'm okay with people not liking tea, but the audacity of a goddamn coffee drinker to imply that tea taste worse than their brown bean shit-water is ludicrous
Coffee that tastes like burnt cellulose (not as you imply cellulite lol) has been left on the warming plate too long. It's like complaining that tea tastes metallic and bitter: sure, it does if you do it completely wrong.
If you want to make good coffee, you need to use beans that haven't been roasted too dark, then make it with the right parameters for good extraction, then put into a cup immediately and drink. Just like you shouldn't warm up tea for hours before drinking it.
Great coffee can be drunk without milk and gone cold and it will still taste like some kind of strange and intense and delicious cherry tea.
I'm open to trying well-prepared not over-roasted coffee, but I have tried coffee (in general, undefined) many times and have yet to find it pleasant.
Funny enough, so far the only thing I've found close to enjoyable was espresso, but it's never been the bitterness of coffee that bothers me (I tend to like more bitter things than average). I can almost enjoy espresso.
To be fair I think it's easier to make bad coffee than bad tea. But a proper good coffee is god tier, not sure about tea, I don't think I've ever had a proper good tea. (I am open to recommendations)
(I am open to recommendations)
Imo, recommending a good tea to a stranger is kind of like recommending a good song to a stranger. Without knowing more, it's just a shot in the dark. Maybe I'll recommend the greatest rap song of all time but you're strictly a country guy, you know what I mean? And I'm just an enthusiastic tea enjoyer, nothing close to an expert. But sure, I'll do my best.
First and foremost, if you have a tea shop in your area or a grocery store with a really robust loose tea section, ignore everything else I'm about to say after this paragraph and just go ask to smell some teas. Trust your nose and buy small quantities of 3 or 4 that smell appealing or like they might taste nice to you. Although I would recommend trying to steer clear of falling for sweet or "novelty" smells at this stage such as anything that smells super fruity. These might be great teas, but personally I'd start trying to form more concrete opinions on kind of "baseline teas" before muddying up the experience too much, although don't be afraid of herbal teas or ones with singular and more subtle accent flavors. If the loose tea containers don't have tea preparation instructions on them, ask a staff member. I'll mention a bit more about prep at the end here.
If you don't have that kind of access or just want to walk in and buy a box of tea bags, here are some basic beginner-friendly recommendations:
Lady Grey - You've probably at least heard of earl grey, but in my opinion it can be a little intimidating to start and bit fussier to prepare than some other varieties, but lady grey is a delightful more gentle take on the classic.
Bigelow Constant Comment - Look, this tea isn't going to blow your socks off, but it's not meant to. But what it is is a very solid, middle-of-the-road, classic baseline tea that's easy to prepare well and hard to mess up. A very solid standard choice.
Orange & Cinnamon - Any brand, doesn't have to be Twinings, they're just consistent and regularly available. Getting a bit more into the fruit and spice flavor here, but this is always excellent and taste like autumn memories.
Jamine Pearls - Doesn't matter the brand here at all. You'll probably be able to find them in pyramid tea bags, but these don't actually require tea bags. These are an excellent starter green tea as they tend to be mild, and watching the pearls unravel is a famously pleasant tea-drinker experience. Not everyone's vibe, but definitely worth trying.
Mighty Leaf African Nectar - This one is a little bit harder to find, and is technically an herbal tea (a tea made of non-tea plant leaves and materials), but is absolutely wonderful, and super beginner-friendly. If you can't find this, look for any "rooibos" teas that contain the words "honey" and/or "red" without too many superfluous flavors.
As for making the tea, look, I know this will sound obvious, but read the package and follow the directions. For some reason when it comes to both tea and pasta, people constantly think they know better than industry experts, do their own thing, and then complain about the results. Every tea is going to have its own preparation preferences, so it really is best to trust the experts, at least at first. After you've had a cup or two as recommended, then you can adjust to your own preference; I personally know I like to steep my teas a bit longer to make them a bit stronger and more bitter, but you gotta get that baseline first to know how to adjust. And then for serving, I'm a sugar guy myself. Not a ton, but even just a tiny amount can significantly enhance the flavor. Honey is a good option too, but doesn't pair great with every tea in my opinion. And for some reason a lot of Americans get weird and pissing contest-y about taking their tea black, but don't be afraid to try a splash of milk or half & half, just start small and increase in small increments until you find what you like. Personally I go no dairy about 90% of the time, but the times I do feels like a nice treat. If you've got Brunost on hand, drop a square of that in your cup, trust me, and a stroopwafel is never a bad addition either.
And sweet tea is an entirely different beast which I am extremely passionate about and of which none of the above applies, fyi.
Where I live a nice, off-the-shelf tea is Tazo Zen, which is a green and herbal tea with spearmint and lemongrass. I take it with sugar or honey.
Indeed. Also, there are so many options when it comes to tea as opposed to coffee. That bitter bean sweat always tastes terrible. If you need to abuse your palate long enough in order to distinguish differences in the abuse, I'm out.
You might have been drinking burnt coffee. Truly well roasted beans should have notes of cocoa, only slightly bitter, and be welcoming, not a turn off.
If your coffee tastes burnt, then whoever roasted it burned it. Simple.
You're not far off, there's a kind of coffee called Kopi Luwak which is literally a shit coffee that's been eaten by civet cat and then pooped out. There's a similar kind of that coffee that's been eaten and shit out by elephants.
Kopi is considered gourmet among coffee drinkers, but in my opinion it's just cope considering someone sold them literal shit they juice into a cup using steaming water. Personally I cannot imagine the mental gymnastics to make the poopy brown bean shit-water a part of my morning routine.
That's a huge grift on idiotic westerners with more money than sense. Coffee connoisseurs have deduced that Kopi Luwak is both literal and figuratively shit.
ITT people who think all coffee is like the Z-tier roasted-until-burnt held-until-stale blasphemy they serve at Starbucks.
ITT people who think all tea is the result of oversteeping a lipton bag in a cup in the microwave.
ITT people who think any random plant plus hot water is "tea" but are oddly specific about what is "coffee".
I laugh incredulously when people defend going to Starbucks every day like "well I don't get the $8 dessert coffees, I just get regular coffee!" and it's like, that aint coffee darling.
As an enthusiast for both leaf soup and bean juice, it seems like most coffee drinkers think of cheap, old, dusty teabag tea, overboiled to taste like bitter vegetables in sewage water, while most tea drinkers think of pure dark overroasted burnt coffee, preground too finely (or as the worst kind of instant coffee), tasting like acid in an ash tray, like those are your only two options.
Both coffee and tea can be so terrible and also so wonderful. I guess my favorite coffee takes quite some preparation and my favorite tea cost me about as much as a junkie's crack addiction. But both can be really nice if you spend a little more money on a quality product and take the bit of effort to prepare it properly.
Ok but would you rather have a bag of an aged Da Hong Pao or whatever the coffee equivalent is?
I'd like to taste the coffee equivalent but that one time I splurged on some DHP was magical. So velvety and rich and nutty.
You can have my “Tea, Earl Grey, Hot” when you pry it from my cold dead fingers.
"Fingers, Dead, Cold"
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.
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.
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
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.
Yeah man coffee tastes so good, which is why most people drink it half mixed with milk or full of flavoured syrups.
That's not got a lot to do with coffee and more (sugar) habits. You start drinking coffee and your parents put sugar in it so you get coffee with sugar. That's the taste you get used to now without it tastes Off.
Straight coffee can be great but it requires a bit more effort. I love some guatamala beans but most Americano stuff is not my cup of tea, if you will.
Americano is gross. If you want drip coffee, make drip coffee. Diluting espresso to the strength of regular drip coffee is asinine.
I started drinking my coffee without sugar a couple years back and after about 3 sips of it being weird I decided I'd never go back to adding sugar. Still like a splash of cream though.
There's over-roasted coffee made to be mixed, and there's properly roasted coffee made to be consumed straight.
There is really no such thing as over or under roasted, except in regards to your own preferences. Some people like the roast. You seem to like more brightness and acidity. The spectrum of bean varieties and the ways particular roasts or other preparations for particular beans can bring out or suppress particular flavors for particular drinks is just too broad to make such childishly broad statements. Same logic can be applied to tea, wine, chocolate, etc.
Both are good
Coffee tastes like hot soil juice
I mean, it was ground this morning
Excuse me, ROASTED hot soil juice, you uncivilized barbarian!
Bruh coffee is just a caffeine delivery juice, you have to put cream and sugar in it just so it doesn't taste super bitter. A lot of tease taste good just on their own. Scoreboard.
Coffee tastes good on its own tho...
Yeah I actually like drinking my coffee black. Cream and sugar adds a film to my mouth I hate.
Who is downvoting you lol? You’re absolutely right!
Coffee is great, the problem is most coffee is brewed horribly. Get yourself a cheap pour over set and a kettle and you'll get significantly better results, with much more improvement possible past that with whole beans and a decent grinder
Try speciality coffee. The average cup of coffee is not particularly good, but freshly ground speciality coffee brewed with care is great and does not warrant cream and sugar.
Beware that it's easy to go down a rabbit hole and find yourself having spent a whole lot of time and money on it after a while. It's all part of the fun, though.
Except even the best specialty coffee I had (and trust me I had some good ones because a friend of mine went down that same rabbit hole you probably went down and wanted me to try) still had way too many acids in it which meant it tasted great until it again turned my entire mouth to ash and grey bitterness...
So in other words the "primary" taste/body of coffee can get really great, but it's still not worth the bitterness after.
When I drink black tea I oversteep it and then add a bunch of sugar. For coffee it's espresso with lots of creamer. Full bitter and full sweet so my mouth is too confused to know if it's good or not.
Simplified down, coffee is burned seed wash water.
It's not burnt unless you burn it. It's roasted, homie. Also, coffee beans are literally berries. They're not seeds.
They're the seeds of the berry, I'm a coffee person so not saying it coz I hate it
As a soda drinker, I'm enjoying this cat fight.
This post brought to you by diabetes
Coffee is just bean soup
I'll stick to my
chemistry experimentenergy drinkthis comment is brought to you by my
addictionenjoyment (i can stop) of monster zeroUsername checks out
Yes, I too love battery acid
Yeah whatever. Enjoy your heated bean water.
I personally find that tea tastes better usually than straight coffee. Can't stand straight coffee and need to go to a coffee shop to get a flavor I'll enjoy. But with tea, I can handle most teas I've tried without having to add anything that changes the flavor. I'll take the leaf juice over the bean juice any day, when we're talking no additional additives.
Coffee that tastes good straight is generally expensive. I can make some straight green tea with good loose leaves for really cheap.
Yeah, when you have some really great coffee, you'll note that you still at enjoy it black when it has gone cold. And you do need to go to a roastery when you want to find that.
Surprisingly, freshly roasted coffee isn't that much more expensive than supermarket coffee where I live. 1kg of acceptably tasting fair trade coffee is 18€ in the supermarket, and there are many more expensive (but not better tasting) options. 1kg of a delicious blend at a local roastery is 24€.
I thought the same until I tried good pour over coffee... blew my mind.
Alright bean soup enjoyer.
Coffee snobs who use those plastic capsule machines that produce bitter tarmac pishwater
Posers. They probably didn't even start drinking coffee until Keurig hit the market. They probably have strong opinions about K-cups vs Tassimo pods.
The problem is that the widely available tea brands (at least in America) are usually shit, and people not knowing how to make it right and end up using scalding hot water when making green tea or microwaving the water with the bag in. I get my tea from tea shops and use an electric kettle to get the brewing temps right, and now a lot of grocery store teas are disgusting to me.
I like good coffee too, but when I have it I often feel sick later and the caffeine content sometimes sets off my anxiety.
Coffee also messes with my digestion and if I'm not careful makes me anxious. These days I avoid coffee and get my morning caffeine fix from yerba mate. It tastes better and is easier to enjoy than coffee.
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.
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.
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.
Yes, I too prefer burnt bean water over hot leaf juice. Sorry, Uncle Iroh.
Not beans.
It's burnt pit water.
Bagged tea you get at the grocery store does suck, it either has no flavor or it's all artificially enhanced. Loose leaf is where it's at.
This.
Although here you also have to buy from abroad. All local companies just repack the same bulk garbage with dried fruit, artificial flavouring or both. This coffee drinking nation doesn't know any better and only few bother to import anything better.
You don't even need to go for super special, expensive, high grade stuff imo. As long as it's not shavings, i.e. marketed, neatly packaged garbage, that already makes a huge difference at not much of a price increase. If you can see actual leaves or pieces of leaves you know it's going to be at least decent.
Yorkshire Gold would like to fight you for your shoes.
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.
I just put caffine powder between my gum and lip wtf you guys fighting about
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
-
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)
-
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)
-
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.
I dunno man have you tasted coffee? It's like making out with a pack a day smoker
Bruh. What kind of coffee are you buying?
But less fun
They're both just dirty water
Thing is, I like both but much prefer unsweetened hot tea to black coffee. Unsweetened cold tea is horrible though. Sweetened & hot? I’ll swap between.
Stop flagging posts as political. If you do it again, you will be banned.
Cold green tea with light sweetening is very refreshing.
Properly brewed cold green tea is best enjoyed without sweetening
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
I have gone down the chai rabbithole in the last year. First my partner taught me how to make a chai base from their days in a cafe, but then we got this metal milk frother you can use on the stove as well. Now I'm making one or two chais a day individually. It's a bit meditative as well (I sit on a stool next to it so it doesn't burn/boil over).
Chocolate chai's are also amazing, and I've been making them some nights as a dessert after dinner.
A good chai is worth murdering over for sure!
Just ask the British, or the Dutch, or the Portuguese, or...
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.
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.
Non-tea teas are usually referred to as tisanes by those who care enough to make a distinction between the two
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.
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.
You can make tea out of like anything though. Like different dried fruit make some of the best teas imho.
No. Only tea is tea. If there's no actual tea leaves in it then it's an infusion.
Chamomile tea with honey.
-19 anxiety +6 antioxidants +3 sleepiness
I'll stick to my Lipton English Breakfast Tea then.
Man I really would like coffee. It has all these cool gizmos and gadgets.
Just the smell of it turns my stomach. Oddly though, coffee flavored sweets can be bloody amazing.
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
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.
I drink both. But dunking Chocolate Digestive biscuits can only be done in a mug of Tea 😋
Oh yeah? Mixing with hot chocolate can only be done in a cup of coffee
You underestimate my power
Coffee tastes like absolute shit. I've gagged every time I've tasted it.
I just need enough milk and sugar and I'm good to go
That’s Weed Soup to you, sir.
Flower water is best water. Hibiscus tea with optional dash of your preferred sweetener.
I tried tea for the first time a couple years ago, I was surprised how bad it tastes. I'll stick with water.
That's like saying I watched a movie once, and I was surprised at how bad it was, I'll stick with books.
