Do I dare ask on a UK site? Tea or Tisane? Or Caf vs herbal/decaf?

[LeetleGreyCells]

It's not just the type of tea, I find, but the brand too. Twinings is pretty horrible compared with supermarket own-make.

My list:
Green Tea (Asda)
Camomile (Asda)
Lemon and Ginger (Asda)

And my latest one to try is Spiced Orange from Morrison's - lovely!

The trick with fruit and herbal tea is not to remove the tea bag once it's in the mug. Just leave it in the mug until after you've drank the tea for maximum flavour. Otherwise, dunking the bag for only a few seconds gives you plain hot water. It needs time to diffuse properly.

 

[colly]

Plain old Tetley's or Yorkshire Tea for me. None of yer fancy, airy fairy, namby pamby, wishy washy brews for me.

I drink filter coffee for preference but a good instant will be ok. No sugar with double cream floating.

 

[Ridgeway]

For herbals we both quite like Kräutertee which is a sort of Alpine herb mixture, great for digestion also

 

[classic33]

Plain old Tetley's or Yorkshire Tea for me. None of yer fancy, airy fairy, namby pamby, wishy washy brews for me.

I drink filter coffee for preference but a good instant will be ok. No sugar with double cream floating.

At last, someone who's not been taken in by the false ones.

 

[kayakerles]

I don't like mint teas made from dried leaves. A scent is often still there, but the flavour has gone entirely (IMO). The volatile aromatics which contribute so hugely to the properties of the tea have just evaporated into the air and gone, long long ago.

When I had a much bigger garden than I have now, I grew a lot of different types of mint and yes, different types of mint can and do taste very different. It's possible to get many, many different varieties of mint from specialist nurseries -including N African and Middle Eastern ones - and then it's just a case of replicating the conditions as best you can, to get the most 'authentic' flavour. You can also find mints which are totally happy and rampant in our climate which give you the preferred flavour, or very, very close to it.

Some of the mint flavours you wouldn't want to use in any culinary dish - well I wouldn't - the 4711 eau-de-cologne mint is one, but hang a big bunch of it under the shower head and you don't need anything to perfume your shower water!

Also, the conditions they are grown under can and do change the flavours somewhat as different aromatic compounds (produced by the mint) will behave differently in different conditions.

If you have the space (for lots of large containers) and the time (for fussing around some of them) AND an interest, I can highly recommend varietal mints as something not too onerous or expensive to collect and interesting to grow on. Also good for cuttings for plant sales and the like.

Wow, so interesting. Sadly we now live in a 750 sq ft 1 bedroom flat outside of Washington DC. Nowhere to put a single pot, let alone have a garden. In 5 years I’ll retire, then we're OUTTA here. Hopefully back to having a garden again.

 

[kayakerles]

Plain old Tetley's or Yorkshire Tea for me. None of yer fancy, airy fairy, namby pamby, wishy washy brews for me.

I drink filter coffee for preference but a good instant will be ok. No sugar with double cream floating.

Glad there’s all kinds of hot bevies to make us all happy. However, even though I like numerous types of coffees, I've never found an instant that's even drinkable. Perhaps overall you just like coffee a bit more than I do. But whatever... Cheers!

 

[RoubaixCube]

Im dual fuel, so tea or coffee is fine.

Rooibos when I run out of both.

 

[kayakerles]

I find for hot herbal teas, a five minute steep after bringing water to a boil is perfect. Drinking herbals is different from drinking regular tea or coffee. The flavors are more subtle. They are not everyone’s cup of tea. But nothing like a strong cup of coffee now and then with some half-and-half and a bit of sugar. I have tried dozens of different types of coffee from all over the world, but for me they all taste nasty straight black. I make an iced tea with the cinnamon tea shown here, which also has cloves in it. It’s spiciness packs a wallop. I usually add a splash of milk with this one and it is still as spicy as ever. A nice wake up chai-cinnamon flavor. Peppermint tea makes an absolutely fantastic cold beverage for after a bike ride or just another really hot day.

 

[FrothNinja]

Drink more mint tea than anything else, but also chamomile after 10 pm. Keep stashes of other teas (Lapdog shoe snog, Red bush, Earl grey, jasmine) and like real ground black coffee, usually stronger tasting ones like Blue Mountain (just opened a Java Sumatra).

 

[palinurus]

Ah yes, the great tea debate, so subjective!
View attachment 600274
Lipton seems to be the most common everyday tea here in the States.

 

[CharlesF]

I’m amazed at the number of people who like Rooibos, it turns my stomach just thinking about it.

When we lived in Cape Town in the ‘70s we went to a farm in the Cederberg that was fermenting Rooibos by spreading it on concrete platforms, bugs, etc roamed freely, doubly put me off drinking it!

 

[Ming the Merciless]

I’m a green tea drinker. For past 20 years. Otherwise black tea. I particularly like gun powder tea if not drinking green.

 

[DRM]

https://www.bettys.co.uk/tea/all-tea?gclid=EAIaIQobChMIr5OY0Mi78wIVzgWiAx1c8wetEAAYASAAEgJWD_D_BwE

You are in luck, forget any other muck, order the best, yes they deliver to the USA, the fat rascals are to die for too with your cuppa

https://www.bettys.co.uk/yorkshire-fat-rascal-gift-selection

 

[DCBassman]

In the late 70s/early 80s, my parents were living and working in Malawi. Hastings Banda was the PM at the time. This meant a fairly extreme authoritarian rule, but it did achieve certain things: Malawi was a net exporter of food, still a thing most African countries only aspire to. A good health service. Sadly long gone, not helped of course by the onset of HIV/AIDS.
One of the things they exported and used internally was Malawi Tea. A really good, strong, black tea that we tried to acquire as ofter as we could.
Never had a better cuppa.
They also made rather a lot of Malawi Gin, probably less helpful...

 

[Dirk]

Yorkshire tea for me!
Gave up drinking coffee about 2 years ago when, after 50+ odd years of having the occasional cup, I realised that I don't actually like the taste of it.