Tips for becoming a tea person

Water temperature, dose, and steeping time definitely affect the quality of the finished cup. I’d recommend looking up guidelines for the particular tea you are drinking.

*don’t worry about the people who say it is odd to care about these things. They’ll love your tea.

I'm sure there'll be plenty of the European (mostly British) side of Tea drinking, so I'll talk about the Chinese style of tea drinking.

Starting with the differences, tea in china is typically brewed loose leaf, and differently from British loose leaf, an intact leaf is prized. Tea is brewed in a very small vessel - maybe 1/4rd of a cup - and brewed for a short amount of time. The tea is brewed multiple times - for something like a pu'er, that can be 10+ steeps. The person making the tea adjusts the brew time by taste over time.

There are a few varieties of tea:

Green Tea is the most commonly drunk type of tea. It needs to be fresh, and every spring the newest crop is the most prized.

White Tea is a Green Tea but with even less processing. Almost nothing more than the tea leaves after being dried. The herbal and grassy notes are amplified.

Red Tea is what most Brits would call black tea. It's oxidized and has a deeper, richer taste.

Raw Pu'er is a fermented type of tea with a smooth, deeper, almost nutty taste. I would wager almost no white people have ever tasted this, despite being fairly popular in China.

Ripe Pu'er is a more deeply fermented type of tea. The flavor is very strong, and has an almost earthy note to it. Often dried orange peels are added. Often recommended as a substitute for coffee because of strength of flavor.

No milk or sugar is added, as that masks the flavor.

I was just mocked for weighing tea...

I would say that this is somewhat in the culture. Chinese tea, unlike coffee, is a elongated experience. Coffee is brewed once - therefore, precision is required to get the optimal extraction. Tea is not like that. A tea master does not measure how much tea they use, because they don't need to. They change the length of the brew time based on taste. If they added "too much" in the first steep, in the next steep the steep time will be shorter, and vice versa. It's a "feel it" kind of thing, rather than the chemical precision of coffee brewing.

As for where to buy it online, this is a tea shop run by a youtuber https://jessesteahouse.com. Prices are very high, but shipping is better, the tea is high quality, and you get more instructions about how to use it.

For a more wholesale experience, go to https://yunnansourcing.com.

I'll drink upwards of 10 teas a day, though largely your standard fare. The Earl or something Yorkshirey, so perhaps not the sort of artisinal thing you're after.

I would advocate for oatmilk as - generally - the optimum plant milk for a brew.

Tea snob here with the hot takes. You want to check out gong-fu cha, and more broadly Asian tea cultures over the British tea culture that prevails in the Anglosphere. China cultivated tea for millennia; tea is a widely varied affair there with a huge gamut of varieties. Britain was introduced to it a few centuries ago as an import that would have hung off the musty ass of a horse for months through sun and rain while it would have crossed the silk road. It's no surprise that they're only into black (i.e. the most oxidized) tea varietals that they then have to add cream and sugar to to make palatable. And screw the haters, measure your tea. I'll measure my tea, water volume, water temperature (definitely get yourself a variable temperature electric kettle), brew durations and brew numbers. It all helps refine and improve the experience.

P.S. There are other caffeinated beverages too you might like to consider for coffee alternatives besides tea. I also enjoy yerba mate. It brews like a tea but is not made from the leaves of camellia sinensis and thereby, like other herbal infusions, is not a tea.

As a coffee person (but nowhere near as enthusiastic), I find most teas very light in flavor.

For something very, very different that impressed me, try spearmint tea. We cold brew it sometimes and it's wonderful on ice for a refreshing drink.

I like herbal teas, which you can often sweeten to enhance the flavor. My suggestion would be to see if you can get a sampler pack of a bunch of different kinds and narrow it down to a few you could see yourself drinking a bunch of. Try varying preparation with sweetener or nondairy milks to see what you like most.

Also, tea doesn't always benefit from steeping in boiling water. Different temperatures are recommended for different teas, as are different steeping lengths. Covering while steeping can also be beneficial (I just found this out in the last year or so and I'm still bad about actually doing it).

I agree with redbearsam that oat milk is often great for tea. I also like soy milk. But not every tea needs added creaminess! I rarely add milk to tea myself, unless I'm going for a tea latte situation.

American south phoning in - iced black tea is very good without any sweetener or milk. If you find it too bitter, mint or lemon can be a good addition.

That said, the thing that's worked for me getting off of Diet Dr Pepper was separating caffeine and hydration. Now I just drink (a ton of) seltzer water and take a caffeine pill every morning. Everything just works better when I'm properly hydrated.

If you’re into the fancy coffee shit, you’ll find that you can get just as (if not more) fancy with tea. Shame on whoever mocked you for weighing your tea; they clearly don’t know how complex the tea world is (:

Tea is the second most consumed beverage in the world, just behind water. There are plenty of ways to enjoy it, and it’s difficult to say where to start. If you’re serious about learning more, stay away from herbal teas or flavored blends (unless that’s something that interests you, of course); those aren’t necessarily “tea”. All tea (green, black, white, oolong, etc.) is made from the same plant, just prepared differently. It’s crazy how different flavors the flavors can be, depending on where the leaf is grown and how it’s processed.

If you’re looking for somewhere to start, I’d recommend Harney & Sons if you’re located in the US. I started with their Golden Monkey (black tea) and Jasmine (green tea), and that sent me on a journey of tea discovery that’s lasted years and I’ve still got plenty to learn. Drink the tea plain, follow the recommended volumes and brewing times, and I hope you’ll find some pleasant flavors.

I’ve only been drinking tea “seriously” for five or six years now, but I’m happy to answer any other questions you have! I’m always astounded at how deep the tea rabbit hole goes, and I don’t think you’ll be disappointed while on your coffee break. Just keep in mind that tea does contain caffeine (varied depending on type), and it’s never going to taste as strong as coffee. It’s just as enjoyable, but they’re not 1:1 substitutes.

Firstly, I'd recommend reading this Serious Eats article, it's a great article that has what you're looking for and then some. The best bit of advice from the article though is to forgo tea bags, because they kinda suck for any "proper" cups of tea. Rule of thumb is that the lighter in colour the cup of tea is, the more the quality of the leaves matters, which is why the brits can get away with pretending that their shitty English black tea tastes good when they steep it for 10 minutes in boiling water to remove any hint of delicacy in flavour - It was never going to taste good regardless of how abused those poor tea leaves get.

I'm personally a Japanese green tea kinda person. I'll give a quick primer but there are tons of resources out there - Tezumi is a good site for getting into tea brewing (they also sell tea in the US, have never bought from them myself but I've heard generally good things).

The two main types of Japanese green tea that you're likely to find in the West are Sencha and Matcha. Matcha is its own thing and it's become really trendy as a flavouring these days - Personally I'm ambivalent on it, I enjoy it when it's made "properly", i.e. as a hot cup of tea in the traditional manner, but it's not a daily thing for me. It comes in a powdered form and you can probably find it in somewhere in your area.

Sencha, on the other hand, is the more standard form of tea, its name literally meaning "daily tea". It takes the form of green tea leaves, you steep them in water at ~70C for maybe a minute, and you can get multiple cups out of the same pot of leaves. It's my personal go-to. Unfortunately it's not the easiest thing to find locally; or rather, it's hard to find stuff that's local and good, most Asian stores will probably sell Chinese-grown sencha which is universally rubbish. You can order from a ton of places online, I've had good experiences with O-cha.

Will give an honourable mention to Genmaicha also, a type of sencha that contains toasted rice grains. The toasted rice flavour is really quite strong, so it was traditionally made out of lower-quality tea leaves, sort of like adding a mixer to a shitty whiskey. Which isn't to say that genmaicha tastes bad though, I really enjoy it and it's probably the easiest type to find in the West, so pick some up if you can. You brew it essentially the same as a normal sencha, maybe a little bit hotter, 75C or so for a first infusion.

Japanese green tea isn't for everyone, some people describe it as having an almost "fishy" taste, which I've personally never noticed, but there is definitely a sort of "vegetable-like" taste in certain types, particularly deep-steamed teas, namely fukamushi - There are different types of sencha based on how they're steamed, or if they've been placed in shade while growing (notably Gyokuro, arguably the fanciest green tea out there), but I'll save that for the 201 class. I quite like the taste, it has a strong umami flavour.

My one and only gripe with Japanese green tea is that it's particularly high in caffiene compared to other teas. Not nearly as high per ml as a cup of coffee, of course, but high enough that my dumb caffiene-hypersensitive body starts getting jittery and anxious after 3 or 4 cups, and the dream of an afternoon tea break is unreachable for me unless I feel like going to sleep at 4am. Probably not an issue if you're accustomed to coffee of course, but worth keeping in mind.

As for teaware, you can go fancy, or you can just, well, not. Personally I own a kyusu, a small Japanese teapot that I use exclusively for my green teas, but before that I used a simple mesh ball infuser and it worked alright (you want the tea leaves to have a large area to spread out in as they brew, helps with flavour). A generic porcelain teapot will work fine too, provided you have some kind of filter to keep the tea leaves from spilling out. If you feel like investing in an all-purpose bit of teaware, I'd go with a gaiwan, it's the most basic form of brewing vessel and you can probably find them relatively cheaply online.

Any top tips for getting into tea? I was just mocked for weighing tea... I guess that isn't as important in this scene.

Not at all! I always weigh loose leaf tea for the first few pots of a new packet. Different teas tend to have slightly different densities, normally when I open a new packet of tea leaves for the first time I weigh until I have a sense of how much is in a teaspoon's worth of leaves, after which I just go by feel. It's not a huge deal, you can mess around with tea/water ratios for any amount of leaves, but I like the same cup every time, more or less, so I sometimes weigh it.

I'm deep into both coffee and loose leaf (Chinese, Japanese, etc) tea. You can dive as deep in as you want or stay on the surface- all up to you.

Lapsang Souchong is nice, especially when the smoke is subtle and balanced and not overpowering (for me anyways). There's also a less common unsmoked Lapsang I've tried before that was nice.

I don't think weighing is strange at all actually. A lot of tea enthusiasts do weigh their tea out before brewing (some might eventually get to the point where they eyeball it, but weighing isn't out of the ordinary). I've seen plenty of "gongfu tea" enjoyers weigh the tea. Now, I'm sure that may be a less common experience in China, but for Westerners brewing loose leaf Chinese tea, I've more often seen scales than not and plenty of loose leaf tea vendors sell scales too

As others have said, lots of the same parameters as coffee (temperature, brew/steeping style and time, etc) that massively affect the taste, and depends on the type of tea, etc.

My favorite vendors tend to be Yunnan Sourcing (they have a .US site for separate warehousing in the US if that's closer to you), New Mexico Tea Co, White2Tea, Bitterleaf Teas, and Liquid Proust (admittedly this is more a boutique/experimental vendor), among a few others too. Note that the ones based in China can take some time to get the tea to you- and the tariff situation has made things messy- though a lot of vendors now do a special type of shipping where they cover any tariff costs to simplify things- just make sure to double-check any vendor- if you go down this road (or stick to vendors that have stock more geographically convenient to you)

99% of my tea experience is of loose leaf, plain/non-flavored teas, brewed either gongfu style or long steeps (Western style) in a teapot, I also don't add milk or anything- which I think is going to be more common with red/black tea and typical Western tea consumption- nothing wrong with it of course, but it's definitely optional. As opinionated about it all as I may be- the best tea is the tea you like to drink- so if that means adding milk, honey, or enjoying a flavored tea, or an herbal tisane, then more power to you

All that to say, there's multiple paths/roads to go down for enjoying tea, including as a coffee replacement, so find what works for you. All depends on what you want out of it (new hobby? deep dive? nerdy? or just a coffee replacement you can make without thinking about it, etc)

As a bone fide tea heathen, I grew up with iced tea as the preferred drink with meals. (It's a Southern US and Texas tradition). Originally, we'd have tea so sweet that the sugar would recrystallize on the sides of the glass, but I've grown out of that phase. Well, my body can't take high doses of sugar anymore, so it was a necessity.

Many of us in these regions still brew tea so strong that it can float horseshoe nails, but don't judge all of us for that. And no one I know is a connoisseur. Most still use plain Lipton's black tea. I find it both weak and bitter, which is a weird combination of flaws. I prefer Tetley British Blend, which is also a black tea.

Can't say as I care for hot tea very much. I'll drink one or two cups of it a year, in contrast to the five or six glasses of iced tea a day that I consume. Hot green tea with Chinese food is fine, though again, a rare drink for me.

If you miss the experience and adventure of selecting different coffee roasts and discussing them with your roaster, see if your area has a super fancy shit tea importer. You can of course also shop online.

Let's forget flavoured teas and non-tea teas like herbal, fruit and rooibos for a moment. Not that there is anything wrong with those, but if exploring super fancy shit coffee was your thing earlier, you can do a lot of that also with the shrub that we call the "tea plant", the camellia sinensis. Think of it a bit like coffea arabica. It's the good stuff.

Now, just like coffee comes in very different flavours depending on where the beans were grown, how they were fermented and how they were roasted, the taste of tea is also affected by terroir, fermentation / oxidisation and processing. If you enjoy exploring different taste profiles and processing methods, teas can offer you just as wide a range of experiences as coffee (or wine).

And just like coffee, tea comes in different packaging. Tea bags are typically like instant coffee in terms of convenience and taste. Ground and small leaf loose tea is like supermarket coffee. Large leaf loose tea is like specialty coffee. Although that's very broad brushstrokes and not intended as a value judgement. I've had excellent tea bag tea, just like I've had great specialty instant coffee. I've had horrible full leaf loose tea, just like I've had disgusting specialty coffee.

Tea "colours" are somewhat similar to coffee roast levels. White tea is your light roast. Black tea is your dark roast. In between, you have other colours and it goes something like this: white < yellow < green < oolong < black < pu'er. The "darker" a tea is, the more oxidisation it has gone through. But as with coffee roast levels, these are all the same plant, just differently processed.

If you like lapsang souchong and you are specifically searching for that morning wakeup fix, take that as your starting point. Maybe try two things next: some fancy oolong tea, and some nasty fermented pu'er. Both come in a million different varieties, and pu'er even sort of comes with vintage years like wine, so I can't really tell you what you might like. But if you have that super fancy shit tea importer in your area, go in there and talk to them, sniff some teas, make uninformed decisions. You have a wonderful journey ahead of you.

Now, if you do go to get your tea from that super fancy shit tea importer, you may be shocked about the price that they charge. Or maybe you won't, if you are familiar with super fancy shit coffee. In either case, keep in mind that super fancy shit tea can usually be brewed multiple times. In fact, most of those teas pretty much require multiple brews and you only extract the best flavour on the second or third brew. So it's not quite as expensive as it may first seem.

Which brings us to brewing. Just like there are multiple ways of making coffee, there are several ways of preparing tea as well. Well, maybe not quite as many, and certainly not quite as expensive. But just like some coffee roasts are better brewed with one method than another, some tea types benefit from one approach more than some other. And again, just like different coffee roasts and different coffee preparation methods benefit from your water being in different temperatures, different teas also work best with different water temperatures.

Which reminds me: just like with super fancy shit coffee, the quality of your tea drink also hugely depends on the quality of your water.

So, there is no optimal way to make tea, but if you go and buy tea from that super fancy shit tea shop, I can give you a starting point that not only extracts flavour profiles well but is also cheap and perhaps even somewhat familiar to you if coffee has previously been your thing. It's a bit like the gongfu method of tea preparation that others have mentioned here, although a traditionalist would execute me on the spot for saying so. Or, some might at least say that what I do is not conventional, but it's the preparation method that I've been primarily using for years now.

So, start by getting yourself an electric kettle with a temperature control, as well as a French press. Just don't use a French press that you also use for coffee.

Put something like 10-13 grams of tea leaves into the French press. And yes, you can weigh it, it's your tea and you can do whatever you want with it.

Get your water to a desired temperature. If the tea you bought doesn't tell you what that temperature is, do about 70 degrees Celsius for white or yellow tea, 80-ish for green, 90-ish for oolong, and 90-100 for black and pu'er. This is a starting point. You can tweak it later as you get familiar with your tea.

Pour the water in and let it brew for about 10-15 seconds. Then pour it into your cup(s). And yes, that's seconds. Although this again depends on the type of tea and the amount of water that you use. Some teas require a bit longer, but rarely over a minute with this method.

And remember, don't throw out the leaves that you just used. The next brew will be better. The one after perhaps even more so. In fact, if the super fancy shit tea that you bought was the type that had its leaves rolled, the first brew will basically be just hot water. Throw that out and let the leaves unroll naturally, then brew the first real drink.

I tend to keep my used leaves in my French press for a day or two. That's typically 4-8 brewings for me (about 7dl per brewing), depending on how the tea behaves. Don't let it mould, though. How long you can safely keep your leaves in the French press depends a lot on your house's temperature and humidity levels.

As with coffee, do let the drink cool down a bit before you drink it. The flavour will benefit from that. As will your mouth.

Some teas are nice with sweeteners and milks, others not so much. Again, it's your tea, you can do whatever you want with it. Experiment, explore, share and enjoy.

I'm far more into the world of specialty coffee and barely understand tea but I can give you some tips from the perspective of someone who is deep into coffee. And when I mean deep, I mean right now I'm playing around with low pressure "soup shots" and low temp pour overs on lighter roasts but when it comes to tea, I just want something that's tasty when it's cold outside. Here's what works for me

1. Absolutely measure your tea the way you do your coffee. I'm using 1:100 which works fairly well for the tea I have

2. Temperatures generally works backwards from coffee. Darker teas, either from smoking or oxidation or another process, need higher temps ( I use 185F) while lighter teas use lower temps ( I use 170F for my green teas). However, like with coffee, increasing temp can also increase the presence of less desirable compounds like tannins. So if you want a stronger brew, use more tea

3. Brew times will vary depending on tea type and generally speaking, darker or herbal teas need longer steep times. Like wise, steeping longer isn't advised for "stronger tea" , just use more tea. In addition, many good teas can be steeped multiple times though I don't know how to determine which teas this works for and every time I've gone for a second steep, it's come out tasting like water, even when I try expensive stuff (yes I know expensive =/= good)

4. Absolutely drink your tea without sugar or dairy. I drink my coffee this way and I like my tea this way as well.

5. Caffeine is also kind of reversed in tea. Darker teas, unlike darker roasted coffee, have more caffeine in the cup than lighter tea. My understanding is lighter teas like green have more caffeine in the leaf but extraction at lower temp = less caffeine. The exception would be roasted teas like hojicha which have low caffeine since caffeine is heat labile.

Personally, I really enjoy east asian teas, particularly from China and Taiwan. When it comes to buying teas, I buy from adagio which has worked well for me over the last decade. I also use this tea infuser which I like as the infuser is easy to clean and the 24 oz size easily allows me to brew 500 ml of tea. As others have mentioned, use a variable temp kettle and I assume you already have a variable temp goose neck kettle. Personally, I find that my Fellow Stag EKG pours far too slowly for tea so I use the Fellow Corvo EKG and just use the same heating base. There are probably some other options out there but if you have the money, the convenience of swapping out my Stagg for the Corvo is pretty nice.

I’ve replaced morning coffee with tea, but I have always liked tea. I still have espresso sometimes after lunch at the office, or the occasional cappuccino on a weekend (oat milk, I don’t drink regular milk and avoid most dairy).

I have always been a fan of Japanese green tea. Sencha is my go-to. It’s affordable compared to some fancier ones. I’ll be honest, I don’t pay too close attention to brew time or quantity. I have a measuring spoon of it but I’m not sure if I am using enough or too much. It feel fine to me. Tastes good if I don’t forget it in there for too long. As with cooking I kinda just go with my gut feeling and improvise. I’m sure it’s better if you do respect the ratio, the water temperature, and the steep duration.

The other tea I like is Earl Gray. I don’t add milk, but I do like adding a bit of sugar sometimes.

This is going to be a strange recommendation, but one thing that will make you appreciate tea is to stop drinking sweet beverages. Sweet is almost but not quite the opposite of the astringency of tea.

More importantly, get used to drinking water. It is, after all, the largest component in tea, and teas tend to compliment the flavor of the water you brew it in. It’s a lot more noticeable than with coffee.

Maybe start off by drinking plain black tea so you know what plain tea starts as. No, Earl Grey and English Breakfast don’t count; they are blends. After a few cups start to experiment. If you have a store that sells loose tea or individual tea bags, that can be a great way to get small quantities of multiple varieties.

If you want to be like me and Captain Picard you'll only drink tea. Earl Grey. Hot.

Regarding dairy, while I know it's common to add milk to tea in many cultures, you don't have to. My family never adds milk to their tea and we drink tea pretty frequently. It's just a personal choice.

I do not consider myself a tea person at all, so I don't have much more to add but I think the old adage of "it's all preference" reigns supreme here. The best tea is the one you like, so don't try too hard to be a "tea person" so to speak, and more so try to find what you enjoy.

I'm no tea connoisseur, but I don't discriminate in my love for caffeine, and decided to pick up some tea for work as I work night shifts and the coffee at my work is god awful.

I've been buying and consuming Yogi tea, and enjoy it. I'm sure more knowledgeable people can offer more specific recommendations, but for a starting point, I've been quite pleased with it!

I'm also a person who is working to get into tea, in my case to avoid caffeine. I got a sampler with a ton of different flavors at first and it helped a lot.

I still don't much care for plain tea, but there are a wide variety of flavors out there though, both herbal and caffeinated, and they made it easier for me to transition into tea. I used to not like the chai or anything with cinnamon, but when I started out I loved the lemon teas because I think drinking lemon is more familiar.

I also make a thing out of the tea ritual. Get a cup I really like, relax and prep the tea as a timeout in the day.

As mentioned, European tea styles tend to be bagged with milk and/or sugar to taste, but I've always been a black/straight tea drinker, usually. I got into Chinese tea in various formats but these days lean heavily on grandpa-style (take a bunch of leaves in a larger cup, fill with hot water, drink over time, top off when you near the bottom). I actually have a 1L beer mug I fill with like 5g of leaves, pour water in (heat depends on temp, oolongs get 195F, greens get 175 usually), and have a good time with it.

Any top tips for getting into tea? I was just mocked for weighing tea... I guess that isn't as important in this scene.

Experiment. Get that one tin on Amazon, go to a specialty store (online or in-person), find what you want to try. Many people in the west who enjoy Chinese tea will us a company like Yunnan Sourcing (with a Chinese and US warehouse, .com/.us respectively)), for relatively well-priced well-sourced tea.

As others have said, find what you want. I prefer plain, whole-leaf Chinese and Assam (Indian-derived) tea and some Japanese varietals, but there's a lot of blends, flavors, preparations, etc.

I don’t think you need milk to enjoy tea… I tend to mix milk with coffee more than I have plain coffee, unless it’s dripped coffee which I have acquired a taste for recently.

Maybe trying adding small amounts of sugar to your tea? I used to always have sugar with my tea, but nowadays I prefer it without sugar.
Look into herbal teas as well(If you would count them as tea).
Tekkane is a pretty good brand from my experience, I’d look into herbal teas that contain cinnamon, cherry or pomegranate flavors, since those are my favorite.

Just practice practice practice with a gaiwan until you can brew like this. :-p

For experiencing full leaf teas though, I’d recommend learning brewing methods with the gaiwan since it’s the easiest to do and to clean. You can also decide to make as much or as little as you like and it’s easy to resteep. I tend to just have a thermos full of hot water at my desk (a zojirushi vacuum sealed one) and a small gaiwan and will sip tea while I work for hours. You can generally get a whole lot of steeps from one fistful of leaves, and if it starts to get insipid you just toss in some more. At the lower water temperatures you don’t have to worry as much about overextracting like you do with coffee.

Just a quick note: Christmastime always has a bunch of weird advent calendars being made, and this year is no different. But it's worth noting that this year I'm seeing a lot of tea advent calendars. Particularly with blended western style teabags. I found one the other day at one grocery store or another with 12 bags that were apparantly made by Lipton, and another one at Aldi that has 24 bags for about $8. Are any of these good teas? Probably not. But it's going to be a fun daily experience.

In the Middle East, where part of me is from, we drink black natural tea with no milk (eww).

I recommend trying to find a local store in your country that imports products from the Middle East and find either loose black tea that you can use to boil or black tea bags that come pre-packaged.

The best method to make this tea is to buy a teapot and fill it with water, bring it to a boil and then dunk the black tea inside. Some people like to add ginger to their tea, like, pieces of ginger to boil with it, others like to sprinkle cinnamon when it’s done and another common garnishing for it is mint! You can add as much sugar as you’d like.

If you end up doing this, let me know your thoughts. Personally I’ve tried many different teas and this is the only way I genuinely like it.

Peach ice tea not withstanding. 😁

I don't have a tip cause am a coffee drinker however I do have one bit of personal experience and experiment. About two years ago I decided that I was to stop drinking coffee and drink tea; you think stopping smoking is hard, just wait. Anyway, did it - took me over 3 months by just forcing myself to it. After the 3rd month, I was comfortable and almost natural to do. You can look at machines, approach etc., whatever! just do it - you will find your way. The funniest thing, after doing it for half a year or so I drank a stout beer. Finally understood why Irish people like that stuff! Can't describe it with words but yeap, drinking tea lead me to discover the love of stout beer. Anyway, am back to coffee and my larger beers.

*sips on a steamy cup of decaf earl grey.

There are a lot of reasons, occasions, or urges that drive tea consumption, so I think any good advice will need to resonate with you and what you're into/hoping for. Personally, I drink a shit load of tea. Half my drinks during the day are tea, and probably 80% in the winter months. But that doesn't mean I drink one thing all day. Clumping tea into one category is harder to do that clumping all coffee into one category. Outside of "tea" ass "tea - english breakfast, oolong, green, etc - there are so many plants, fruits, herbs, and spices that make up tea. So before saying "I want to supplement my coffee drinking with tea" maybe think of what tea you might want when.

In the morning I drink much brighter, punchier teas: Earl Grey, Gunpowder, Toasted Rice, etc. Things that get me going and moving outside. Often later in the day I'll grab for an herbal tea - hibiscus or peppermint - to mellow out or help me digest post meal. And I'll always end the day with something calming: Camomile, Sleepy time, or Lavender. Different times of the day call for different things, so the teas change accordingly.

It's the same with seasons. In the winter or fall, I'll often reach for more spiced and fruity flavors: Winter fruit (apple, lavender, and cinnamon), Mulling spices, orange peel, etc. In the spring I'll got for bright and fragrant options: lemon grass/ginger, roobios, mint, green tea, etc. So beyond just thinking about what time of day it is, I'll take into account how the climate feels.

And then there is the question of utility with my tea drinking. Am I sick? Then I'm going to grab some fresh ginger to crush up. Or maybe I'm just doing lemon and honey. Or hell, am I really stuffed up, maybe I'll combine all that and throw some whiskey in. Or maybe I have a sore throat. Sounds like it's time for licorice based throat coat. Am I constipated? Time for some Peppermint and Senna Root. That'll clear me out. Or maybe I'm just trying to wake up. A big cup of Earl Grey or English Breakfast will do the trick.

My advice is to have many kinds and blends on hand at all times. Because there will be a moment when your "go to" tea won't sound good, but one of the others might. If you can find a store that sells by the pound, bring lots of little mason jars or tins, and just go ham. If it's a fun exciting thing, vs a poor replacement for coffee, I think you'll find it to be a better experience. Tea gets a bad wrap because people experience tepid, shitty, boring tea. Find the ones that speak to you and I think it'll be an easy swap!

I'm a big coffee guy and I really don't like tea.

The only tea I can tolerate is cinammon with bay leaf. Pot of water, two sticks of cinammon, five bay leaves. Usually takes about an hour to boil.

I have three different major views on tea: hot, cold, and milk, and I'm kind of an outsider on at least two of them.

My Southern heritage demands that tea be ice cold and sweet as the devil's lies. And while I can drink this, my body complains so if you see me drinking sweet tea in the spring and summer, it's likely sweetened with Stevia instead, and I've cut it to be almost not even really tea. My people like it strong as hell, but I do not. I am an outsider in my own culture.

I grew up being given hot tea only when I was sick, and always served with lemon and honey. When I was about 10 or 11 we got cable TV and both Comedy Central and Nickelodeon were trying to get their feet under them at the time, so I got shown quite a lot of British comedies and cartoons. And I of course noticed them drinking tea, and always they put some sugar and milk in it. Well, we had tea and I was allowed to boil water, so I made myself a cup of what is now called Celestial Seasonings Bengal Spice but had a different name back in the early 90's. I added sugar and let it dissolve, then added milk and tried it a bit timidly but... those wacky Brits were right, that stuff was gold. I switched to Earl Grey for many years after seeing a rerun of Star Trek the Next Generation and Jean-Luc Picard ordering it. Let it never be said that I'm immune to propaganda or cultural influence from television shows. And now I drink mostly Scottish Breakfast, Oolong, and varieties of green, and I don't drink hot tea without sweetener (stevia, now, and/or monk fruit) and more milk than is probably seemly. But this is how I drink tea, and it tastes wrong and bad without the extra body that milk brings. For a long time I couldn't tolerate dairy milk, so I used Oatmilk and that worked just fine.

Finally, we come to green tea and the paradox of everything I just said. Green tea is often meant to be drunk hot, with delicate flavors, and most people I know sweeten it. I like it ice cold, genmaicha style (with roasted rice in the brew bag) and completely unsweetened. I don't like it with sweeteners, I don't like it warm. Ice cold, genmaicha style, no sweetener.

Those are some tea things, I guess. I have no idea if you're going to find this useful. I hope so?

Not a tea expert by any means, but if you want no sweetener or milk, Asian teas are the best. I had some South Korean Tea that was white tea based, with some fruity and floral additions for flavor. Maybe this is sacrilegious to Brits, but black tea does not taste good without milk at the very least.

Do you live near a tea restaurant that lets you try a whole bunch of different ones? Since you liked going to a roaster nearby, I suggest the best way to get into it is to find and visit a good tea nerd hub and talking to the owners.

Forget the chains that hire teens who don't know anything. Go find an authentic restaurant from a culture that serves breakfast with tea and try them: they may not nerd out either but it'll give you a clue as to how other cultures get their morning fix, and you can see which style is more your speed.

What do you eat for breakfast, something heavy and oily which needs a stronger brew or something light that benefits from a mid-ferment, or even going without breakfast so pairing with a white or green?

For myself, a good HK cafe instant noodle + sausage egg combo pair with hot or cold yuenyueng or HK milk tea since you're leaving the coffee world. There's no way I can stock up on the many tea leaves necessary for the brew so I leave it to a good restaurant.

If I'm having a good dinner then I can enjoy a nice cup of gongfu (usually an oolong or similar) that I can even prep slowly at home to wind down the day.

But I'm not a tea nerd. I mostly drink grocery store mix genmaicha or haphazardly prepared lychee red during the day.

Piggy-bagging on the thread, does anyone know how to get tea without manually brewing?

Usually I'd drink Itoen-brand jasmine tea. It's ฿30 per bottle which I feel is expensive for just tea leaves and water in a PET bottle (sugary tea is less than this) and I could get better tea leaves for the same price. Sometimes I "upgrade" to imported Ayataka from Japan - I really like the drink when I was in Japan around 2018 and it is just ~120 yen but the imported ones I bought this year (~฿70) I felt the quality has dropped. Bottled tea is not an option when you want to drink tea as a replacement for plain old water.

Then I bought an automated tea machine. It has three compartments - you fill water into a reservoir, then press a button. The machine pump the water into hot water and fill the top compartment, which you've added tea leaves. After a minute or so (depending on which button you press) the liquid inside will flow to the lower compartment. This ensures that you don't oversteep the tea which was a problem when I use manual brewers - I'd brew the tea and forgot about it until half an hour later.

The problem with this machine is that the water is only about 75C hot and is non configurable. Its small top compartment only brew about a cup. I wish it would just repeat the process until the bottom compartment is full or allow me to queue orders. Finally, it is past its end of sale and the top compartment broke today.