I want to know how to become a tea drinker before my 48th birthday on November 30th. This is not a lofty goal, but even goal setting is different in 2020.
Some of the best literary characters drink tea. Tea goes with my decor. Snacks are often involved, and I am a big fan of snacks. Most of all, though, I am old and can no longer handle copious amounts of caffeine. A simple coffee gives me chest pain! My heart thumps as if it is trying to dig itself out of an early grave.
I tried switching from coffee (always iced) to a soda in the morning but the soda upsets my stomach and is not as refreshing as I remember it. Does everything fun lose its appeal as we age?
The main reason I dislike tea is that it is best served warm, and I am not a fan of hot drinks. I feel that anything warm and liquid automatically catapults into the soup category.
Coffee makes my heart race. Soda upsets my stomach. Both give me heartburn! Learning how to become a tea drinker is my last hope because whether old or young, I will always need caffeine. This holds especially true in the time of corona. Advice most definitely appreciated.
This feels like you’ve already tried it but they make half-caff blends for coffee, or maybe you can make your own?
I’m at a loss for tea tips but maybe there’s away around the no coffee issue.
Good luck!!
Thank you, Susan! Breakfast just confounds me in general, let alone what to drink first thing in the morning! (Aside from water, of course.)
You can make tea cold brew just like coffee. Get a cold brew mason jar filter. Put the suggested amount of loose leaf tea. Fill with water and let it sit in you fridge for 12-24 hours. Sweeten with your choice of sweetener or none depending on your tea choice. A fruity loose leaf is nature’s sweet and very yummy cold.
Do you put the loose leaf in one of those mesh balls, or do you strain it later?
Just have to say that your popping back on the blog has been delightful. Thanks for taking the time to do it!
I don’t love tea either. But I do enjoy ordering a Venti Medicine Ball at Starbucks. (Steamed Lemonade, mint and some other tea plus honey is quite good.)
You could go very southern and brew Lipton’s iced tea. My mom prefers decaf so she can drink it at night. And we’re Texan, so put us in whatever “southern” category you might, but to us doesn’t mean sweet tea. We add a bit of sweetener to our glass…over copious amounts of ice.
Thank you, Shay! :)
I LOVE the Medicine Balls! My friend has the copycat recipe. I should try it! My friend is from Texas and she loooooves sweet, SWEET tea. I can’t imagine! I do drink chamomile, and that I like unsweetened.
I liked iced tea in the summer. I prefer hot tea in the winter but I live somewhere that hits -40F. If you don’t like caffeine – roobois teas are good along with other herbals. I prefer loose teas. I often brew them on a pot and the strain them to my cup because I haven’t found a cute little tea ball thing I like. Electric water kettles are fun. And make me feel like a real grandma.
If you find a lovely herbal – please share. I’m always looking for a good new tea!
I’m looking into electric kettles. We have pretty bad hard water here, though, so I’m worried it will have a short life. I do like the idea of feeling like a grandma. Might be worth the risk!
Where do you stand on milk (of any sort) in your drink? Because iced chai is delicious and there are definitely plenty of options! And most are black tea based so caffeine ahoy. (I don’t love the premixed boxed kind, though, because they’re super sweet and not in a good way.) And really, it’s probably good without milk, too, so don’t let that be a dealbreaker.
I am not a fan of milky teas or chai! I know! Everyone I have met who drinks tea *loves* chai. It’s very spicy to me, and I’m not a fan of spice (spicey like spice, not heat). Disclosure: I have only had chai at, like, Starbucks or a chain coffee place. I’ve never had anything reputable.
I like tea more in the fall and winter seasons.. Twinnings has some good decaf teas in bags. My local coffee shop makes a tea drink called a London Fog – Earl Grey, vanilla syrup and steamed milk.
My favorite way to make loose teas is to use this brewer
https://www.adagio.com/teaware/ingenuiTEA_teapot.html
The Roobois chai is very nice. I have purchased from adagio several times, the samplers are reasonably priced and include enough tea to decide if you like it.
Hmmm. I don’t normally like milky teas, but what you described sounds tasty. I will have to try it! Thanks for the link! I will check it out! :)
I think you have to experiment with different varieties/flavors of tea. For hot tea I drink a lot of Oolong and herbal teas, as well as Lady Grey. I am not a big fan of Rooibos. My tea preferences change with the seasons. Chai is my go-to for fall. As someone already commented, iced chai is really good if you like warming spices. There are lots of recipes for homemade concentrates online. I haven’t tried the cold brew method of preparing tea, but I am intrigued. I saw a recipe for an iced London Fog (Earl Grey Latte) that starts with a cold brew tea base that I am eager to try. Earl Grey is nice for winter. Over the spring/summer I made a lot of mint lemonade iced tea (steep mint leaves with the tea (black or oolong) and add lemon juice and sweetener of your choice). I hope you find a tea that you like!
I think you are right, Jennifer. I need to buy a sampler and start experimenting. Maybe I’ll ask for that for my birthday. Your recipe for mint lemonade sounds divine!!
“Tea goes with my decor“ is the best reason ever to start drinking tea.
As a child, my Scottish grandmother Would try to give me tea with milk when she didn’t know hoe else to solve my problems & I hated it. Turns out it was the milk.
Years later the early bird dinner I was sharing my dad came with tea or coffee so I tried tea with lemon and was converted. I used to buy lemon flavored tea at first, but then moved on to regular black tea. Today my drink of choice is unsweetened iced tea-I also prefer a cold beverage in the morning. I use Twining’s lady gray when I make it myself (which is all the time now.) Some teas can get cloudy when iced.
Maybe iced tea can be your gateway? You can find it at most coffee places if you don’t want to make it until you know of you like it.
Tea also comes with shortbread, so who am I to say no to tea?
So many recommendations for Twining’s! I must check this brand out. Iced tea will definitely be my gateway. I hated coffee for a long time, too, but would tolerate frappuccinos. Now I can’t believe I ever drank something so sweet!
Chiming in with the above to say cold brew tea is totally a thing and there are SO many varieties now, both caffeinated and non-caffeinated!
I love to sweeten with local honey. Seems to be helping my allergies and I like the flavor with the citrus/fruity blends I get. My most frequent brands are Yogi, Celestial Seasonings, and Traditional Medicinals
I’ve heard really good things about local honey for allergies! I need to be better about buying local honey because at this point, any little bit of help would be great. My allergies have never been so bad!
I despise iced tea and don’t even like to drink my hot tea if it’s cooled enough that I can take a mouthful — there’s something about the aeration when I take tiny sips of the super hot tea that changes the flavor enough to make me love it. Most of the time I make 12 ounces at a time in a bigger mug, using a Twinings English Breakfast or Irish Breakfast bag and a Meijer [store brand] orange pekoe black tea bag together. The Breakfast teas are somewhat bitter and the Meijer tea has a hint of floral [I’m teetotal (quite literally) and was always baffled when people spoke of “notes” in things like wine, but once I compared those teas I finally understood]. I add sugar and a pinch of kosher salt [the salt not only intensifies the sweetness, it offsets the bitterness] and sometimes milk or cream. I have trouble falling asleep so I only allow myself caffeine before noon. I have decaf until 8pm, then herbal teas until bed [not that I drink tea all day and night, but I look at the clock before I choose the type I make]. I love the Sleepytime Classic Tea from Celestial Seasonings, and I’ll very occasionally pair that with a bag of the decaf Meijer at night. [Make sure you check the side effects and medication interactions of any herbal tea ingredients before you drink them; Sleepytime Extra has valerian and I only learned after I’d had it a few times and felt weird that it interacted with my meds.] I have plain chamomile if my stomach is upset or I can’t sleep. Sometimes I add a spoonful of hot cocoa mix to black tea, and/or some cinnamon. I haven’t had many other types of teas [because I’m a coward and usually stick to what I know I like] but I do know that I hate citrus blends — including Earl Grey, which was very disappointing considering how huge of a Star Trek fan I am. ;-)
My husband loves iced tea of any flavor/type, and Arnold Palmers. When he does have hot tea he prefers chai, ginger, and fruity teas.
Oh, and I can’t be bothered with tea gatekeepers. No one will ever be able to convince me that it actually matters how you boil the water. We have very hard water and can’t use a regular kettle without descaling it once a week, so I boil my water in a Pyrex measuring cup in the microwave.
Oh, and I usually save the tea after we’ve steeped it and it’s dried again. My husband’s favorite teas still smell amazing afterward so I put them in a canning jar with special hole-y lids so we can still smell them, with a piece of coffee filter added to prevent dust accumulation inside the jar. I put them in the kitchen window and when the sun heats up the jars the smell of the tea fills the room again. My decaf black tea is saved to use as a deodoriser — one use is that it can be sprinkled on the cat’s litter to help reduce odor between box cleanings.
Reusing the tea is fascinating and inspiring. I never considered doing this!
Do you have a specialty tea store anywhere near? Because if you do, you must buy tea loose, not in bags, and will find a whole new world in the flavour! Many are glorious iced, many are caffeine-free, and many are beautiful to look at. Making tea drinking into a ceremony, with a beautiful cup and saucer, a glass or ceramic tea pot and putting aside some alone time in which to drink it can make it into something beautiful and sacred. A type of meditation. Perhaps worth trying. Here is the tea shop near me, which also sells by mail, and does so across the border to you! https://shop.chayi.ca/
Thank you for the link! :) I used to have a Teavana in the mall, but it closed down. I will have to investigate. We do have one English/British Emporium, but I don’t know if they carry a large variety of tea. Of course they must carry some!
You’ve already got a ton of good advice but I’d figure I’d chime in since I’ve recently been converted to a tea drinker. We had a friend move in with us after the pandemic started and she’s always making tea and that helped a lot. Plus it fits into the cozy feel i want in my house.
Making tea used to feel like too big a project but once I made a little tea corner in my cabinet it became so easy. Teas, honey, spoons, kettle in one spot. And an electric tea kettle is a must. I thought it was unnecessary for a long time until my sister gave me her old one and it changed my life. Ha She used it for a lot of years before upgrading to a prettier one and it lasted for a good 3 years before dying on me. Even with our super hard water. It’s totally worth it.
Also, I had to come to terms with the fact that I don’t love black tea. I’ll make it every once in a while but it needs copious honey and a squeeze of lemon. I prefer herbal teas. They’re flavorful, not usually as bitter, and caffeine free. I pretty much grab a new flavor to try every time I go grocery shopping. Recently I got a mint green tea at Trader Joe’s that is so good and I’ll use that if I need some caffeine.
Another thing that helped was learning how to properly make a cup of tea. Clear detailed directions are my love language. I saw a tik tok from some guy in the UK about how to properly brew tea and it was super helpful. Haha I stick to brewing for about 5 mins and i never leave the bag in the cup, esp with black teas, so it doesn’t get bitter.
I think my favorite thing about it is that it makes my 3pm snack binge wayyy more legitimate. Instead of feeling like a monster who wants to eat all the sweets in the house in the afternoon, I sit down with a cup of tea, some toast/cookies/candy/whatever, and a book and just chill for a bit. It’s lovely.
You sold me in many ways, but the cookies and electric kettle despite our hard water did it for me.
Lots of good suggestions including trying a tea sampler. If there’s a natural food stores with bulk bins in your area, they often have a variety of teas available in bulk, so you can buy small amounts of several to see what you like.
If you’re looking for a caffeine option that’s not coffee or black tea, green tea might be worth a try. It’s best to brew it with water that’s slightly cooler than boiling because very hot water increases the bitterness of green teas. My favorites blend green tea with mint, particularly “Moroccan Mint.” You can probably brew it as cold brew or sun tea. Tazo’s Zen tea is also a nice green blend.
Electric kettles are very convenient if you drink a lot of hot tea and are a quick way to boil water for cooking. We’ve used a variety over the years; we currently have a glass one by Breville which has minimal plastic in contact with the water. Cheers!
I’m intrigued by the idea a kettle can have minimal contact. I’m off to research. Thank you!
I grew up with tea drinkers so I may be biased towards tea, though my favorite teas are not tea-y if that makes sense:
-I also love iced things, so hibiscus iced tea is my jam. I like this one from Republic of Tea a lot.
–Harney and Sons Hot Cinnamon Spicereminds me of red hots and is warm and soothing and sweet even without sugar.
-My husband is a tea snob and loves the whole process of warming the cup and shaking out loose leaves, etc. I find the whole endeavor sort of fussy and prefer bags. I think if you really want to embrace your cozy English thing, go for the loose tea. But if you want convenience, bags are fine!
-So glad to see you blogging again!