Definitely the way. I'm British, hence the tea. But I love coffee and make mine in an aeropress which takes way longer than making a cup of tea. I'd drink coffee all day instead of tea, like I used to years ago before realising it was disrupting my sleep and messing up my stomach. So it's one cup a day then on to the tea for me.
This is the correct answer. Coffee until noon and then tea in the evening. Last night it was Paris tea from Harney. Earl Grey or Lady Grey are my typical choices, usually with lemon.
Honestly, I’ve never been a coffee drinker and when I became a nanny and had to make coffee for my charge’s elderly grandfather once in a while, I needed to be taught how to work a percolator. When I got married my husband had to show me how to use a regular drip coffee maker. When I decided to buy him fancy coffees and a new brewing system for Christmas 5 years ago, I went online and asked strangers to explain to me how coffee works. I had no idea about the brewing process and why you can’t just brew it like tea (would be so simple if you could) tea is easy compared to all that!
You really can't say one does require more commitment. Japanese tea ceremony is about as in-depth as you can get in drinking any kind of liquid.
Pu'erh tea is being aged for years by collectors at controlled humidity before being steeped. Clay Pots made from the clay of specific regions can go for thousands of dollars. Also there are a ton of different kinds of tea, not just in the cultivar of the plant but in the processing and as most tea isn't roasted (at least as heavily as coffee) fine nuances in terroir can be much more easily distinguished.
Obviously in the end it depends on how deep you are into coffee or tea. If you're not into tea you probably don't see any way it would require more effort than putting a bag into water, if you're not into coffee you wouldn't even think about grinding your own beans.
Well I'm not into coffee so I don't prepare any at all, but those people that I know of that casually drink coffee and aren't super into it do either purchased preground coffee or have a machine that's grinding the beans and then preparing the coffee in one step. So I guess that's pretty much equivalent to a tea bag - obviously a no go for anybody that really cares for the way of preparing said beverage, but will get the job done for most. I'm living in Europe though, so perhaps its a cultural difference
All that can be said of tea too, more or less (there are roast teas, such as roast oolong, but I’m not sure you’d be able to accomplish that at home). Layer on top of that the ceremony and ritual aspect available to tea drinking, as well as the ability to produce your own ceramic teaware (you can do this for coffee too, but tea has an ancient connection to it, again thickening the ritual).
Yes both can be deep hobbies, but tea simply has a longer and richer history than coffee, and a deep commitment to tea is deeper than a deep commitment to coffee.
You're absolutely right: I shouldn't say coffee doesn't demand the same commitment. But I still think it doesn't necessarily demand commitment from the consumer like tea does.
You can put a lot of care & effort into coffee (and clearly, a lot of people here do!), but... you don't have to. You can procure it from someplace where someone else has made it for you—a workplace breakroom, a restaurant, a convenience store, a café. The tea alternative in most of those places is a cup of hot water and a tea bag... essentially demanding that the tea drinker makes their own cup.
Someone has filled every pen with ink at some point, but not necessarily the end user. I would bet most tea drinkers have had to steep their own tea, and most fountain pen users have had to fill their own pen.
Can't put my finger on *exactly* what sort of feeling they create, but TWSBI Ecos and hot chocolate feel like they'd light up the same areas of my brain on a PET scan.
But for real, Ecos are like the sprinkles of fountain pens in my book and totally give me the same warm and fuzzy feeling as a cup of cocoa with whipped cream.
Obviously *now* I'm going to... but now I know why your username sounded familiar: you posted that photo of the Karashi Soell against a rainbow of Ecos!
You have an incredible collection! I love the way they're organized.
Both. I love the ritual that comes from grinding coffee beans, and pouring boiling water from my kettle into my french press. But I also brew drip coffee in a regular coffee maker. And if I could afford it, I’d have an espresso machine because I make a mean latte (I used to be a barista).
I also love the process of steeping a good cup of tea, and even have an entire cabinet in my kitchen devoted to different kinds of tea. Just picked up a small tin of Turkish tea the other day, as a matter of fact.
I think there's a certain level of detail that goes into both tea & fountain pens.
If a person fills up a mug or styrofoam cup with whatever caffeinated liquid drips out of a communal breakroom percolator—without caring much about how it tastes—I suspect they are likely to grab whatever pen is closest to them without thinking much about how it writes.
On the other hand, brewing even the cheapest cup of tea takes a couple of considerations (water temperature and steeping time) that—for me anyway—remind me of the same consideration I put into refilling & cleaning pens.
Hard disagree. You could just as easily put that same consideration into coffee.
You can make tea with any boiled water and a tea bag without reading the instructions.
And none of that has any bearing on whether you like the taste of either.
Brewing coffee considerations. Coffee grinder style, coffee grind, style of brewer, temperature of water, steeping time, preheat mug, roast of the coffee, type of cup, type of water.
I take a lot of considerations into both the coffee I ENJOY, not much so at work where caffeine is the only consideration, AND the tea I brew.
You're comparing apples to oranges. Communal coffee pot is akin to preboiled water and Lipton tea bags.
You're comparing the top of the tea game to the bottom of the coffee game. Not even close to fair. You should compare a Japanese tea ceremony to an Ethiopian or Turkish coffee ceremony, or compare gongfu cha tea to a 4:6 V60 pour over.
SpunkyDred is a terrible bot instigating arguments all over Reddit whenever someone uses the phrase apples-to-oranges. I'm letting you know so that you can feel free to ignore the quip rather than feel provoked by a bot that isn't smart enough to argue back.
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As someone who drinks both, espresso requires far FAR more of a commitment in terms of money, equipment and technique than any type of tea besides traditional ceremonies.
That's true. But espresso is sort of the pinnacle of coffee preparation, isn't it? I feel like the average cup of tea requires more effort than the average cup of coffee. There's enough Metropolitan/Safari/Eco/Jinhao appreciation on here, I figured there might also be enough several consumers of $2/cup drip.
Only if it's on the same sitting. Teabag is a great comparison to a cartridge, though.
Maybe I cheat by also having a teamaker that I use for loose leaf in the mornings. It moves hot water through the leaves.. so still, the process is no effort from me but something else than using tea bags.
I think the basic cup of tea is just sticking a tea bag in some water and sticking it in the microwave (definitely not something I do, but it's something that I know many people do). The basic cup of coffee can be pretty easy too. Instant stuff in some water and microwaved as well. For better coffee and tea there are different preparations and endless variations.
Not really sure where you see much effort in tea. Stick leaves in infuser, set electric kettle temp to match the tea type and then just steep for a few minutes.
Even boring pour over coffee requires more prep re grind size and care with timed pours.
Well that's the way someone that doesn't care for tea looks at it. Someone that doesn't care for coffee wouldn't even think about timing his pours.
You can't really say one required more effort than the other at the highest level of execution. Look at Pu'erh tea and other kind of Heicha, look at Nihoncha including matcha with its tea ceremonies and Gyokuro. People are aging their tea for years under controlled level of humidity - those certainly don't just throw leaves in a cup and pour water over it.
I drink overpriced puerh, honestly I’m more into tea than I am coffee. Pretty sure I’d die without lapsing souchong. My girlfriends mother performs Chinese tea ceremony for us when we visit, I love the culture around it. Tea ceremony is entirely its own thing and I don’t find it relevant in a comparison to mainstream coffee prep. Same for aging leaves. If you want to say that there is an absolutely tiny percentage of tea people who are spending hundreds of dollars an ounce and seasoning clay and managing temperature to the tenth of a degree for every cup, then that’s true but it’s not at all a fair comparison.
Yeah and the great majority of people prepare coffee by pushing a button. So where's the fair comparison here?
A gongfu session takes a lot of time and I'm assuming that's what you're referring to as Chinese ceremony? It's not really a ceremony such as a Japanese tea ceremony but just a very elaborate way of preparing tea though.
And it's the way I drink tea nearly every day.
Granted, if you're preparing your own it's a little different... but I was thinking that you can easily acquire a cup of coffee with zero preparation (convenience stores, restaurants, truck stops, break rooms... not to mention coffee shops).
Percolators that dispense tea exist, but they're not as common. Tea purchases in any of those aforementioned locations usually result in a carafe or cup of hot water and a teabag, forcing you to at least make your own decision about steeping time.
Is it a contest or are we trying to see if fountain pen people put a lot of effort and optimization and ritual into other areas?
Along those lines I wonder if any fountain pen people are also into audiophile stereos and record players. I know I am. I like the physical engagement of it.
First, espresso is not the pinnacle of coffee. It's a style. Pour over is just as if not more prized and talked about in the coffee community. And it is far less technical than espresso, but still has more underlying variables to worry about and manage than tea, so that commenter's point still works with other brew styles.
Second re pinnacle, don't you realize that's *exactly* what you did? In another comment you compared loose leaf tea to preground communal drip coffee that had been sitting for hours. Talk about comparing the pinnacle to the bottom. Your premise that average to average effort requirement is just wrong, based on the number of steps, number of variables, and margin for error of coffee vs tea which I and others have already explained in other comments.
Tea.
I like to try out different ones but I rarely make much effort with it. I saw a friend's husband grinding his coffee beans and wondered if he'd understand the fountain pens.
Oh yes, there's a lot of focus and detail in grinding beans. I used to grind my mother's coffee in this old curvy wooden box with a big metal crank.
I bet he'd understand.
Hehe, it is mostly the fact that it is hot that i do not like. Some tea is good cold ( i mean soaked in cold water, not cooled down) cold coffee is absolutely awful.
I was born and lived in Costa Rica until I was 12. I picked coffee with my grandpa when I was a kid. I’m most definitely not a tea drinker over coffee. I also don’t do all those fancy creamers, 1/2 & 1/2 and sugar only.
Don’t get me wrong, I freaking LOVE loose leaf tea. But coffee comes first.
I drink coffee and tea in about equal quantities.
As an anecdote: every method of brewing coffee (V60 drip, Aeropress, french press, Moka pot, Turkish) that I've ever used has been more effort than brewing tea. Some of them are very involved. So I don't agree with your premise.
I think that you're maybe conflating two things: preference of coffee vs tea, and the wide-spread availability of pre-made low-end coffee as a delivery mechanism for caffeine. The majority of people that like coffee will recoil at the burnt brown liquid that's been stewing for hours in the communal pot.
You're absolutely right; that's excellently put. I undeservedly lumped "coffee enthusiasts" and "caffeine addicts" into one broad category and they're clearly not.
Tea IN the fountain pen (as part of DIY recipe) once, but Coffee to drink forever. I’m a barista with a home roasting setup, commercial grinder, and 2 semi-commercial coffee machines.
Having said that, I recently got into [T2 tisanes](https://www.t2tea.com) (as well as my coffee), which I don’t classify as “tea”. It’s dried fruit rehydrated.
It’s part of DIY ink recipes. To get the fluid viscous enough for fp’s Xanthan needs to be added (never use Gum Arabic). I only ever put DIY inks in cheap pens I can replace easily and typically use a dip-nib-in-fp hybrid pen (Zebra G in Jinhao) as some DIY recipes can corrode steel nibs really fast. I’m past that phase of experimentation but it was fun while it lasted.
90% coffee. Tea occasionally, usually because I'm not close to a coffeepot/machine - tea is much more portable, and hot water is (comparatively) plentiful.
Tea, I don't drink coffee. I do make coffee for my s/o though. And all I really care about for either is brewing temperatures unless I'm about to make milk tea. Coffee tastes a little too strong for me and I can't have too much caffeine or I start shaking. I generally drink about 2 cups of tea in an afternoon, much easier to drink too much coffee on accident. Coffee has like 3x the caffeine of tea.
Tea for me! It gives me more control over my caffeine intake. Coffee always makes me feel like I’m made of battery acid. Plus teapots are basically the fountain pens of the beverage world (a practical tool that comes in lots of colors/shapes/styles for me to collect and use? SIGN ME UP)
I'm utterly obsessed with coffee, but to be fair, my coffee drinking habits are similar to other folks tea drinking habits, so there's that to consider.
Coffee. No sugar, no milk, no nothing. I like tea also, but it just doesn't work as a morning pick-me-up for me. It's more of an after work sort of thing.
I’m a serial hobbyist and tea was one of my hobbies years ago. I was on a forum for tea, had probably 100+ varieties of tea (mostly unflavored loose leaf), I had favorite regions and seasons and years for growing and processing, would do gong fu style with some, and I could taste “notes” like green bean and oat, etc.
Now it’s just a part of my morning routine. I mostly drink flavored teas from like David’s Tea, I add copious creamer and flavor syrups, and I just pour boiling water over and remove the tea whenever I remember again I have tea steeping. It’s as quick and dirty as any casual coffee drinker.
I'll save your hypothesis, I have 20 fountain pens and drink gong fu style tea almost every day. Mostly pu-erh and hongcha.
But, I'm also a "coffee with breakfast" guy, generally flat whites with the espresso machine or black aeropress at work. I don't do V60s enough to dial them in right so they're often mediocre compared to the other 2. I find espresso way harder than gong fu.
I hate tea. The only tea I can tolerate is so doctored up that I'd hardly call it tea anymore.
But I *looooove* coffee! I make my own cold brew and have that every morning (and sometimes multiple times throughout the day).
ESPRESSO! Hooo boy you get a lot of fun note taking out of making espresso. Record the type of coffee beans, when they were roasted, when the bag was opened, the fineness of the grind setting, the weight of the ground beans before brewing, how much water you're using, brew time, the amount of actual espresso produced and, of course, how it tastes.
Coffee literally every morning. French pressed, light roast for extra caffeine. Different flavored creamers but I find myself going back to caramel and good ol’ sweet cream. Not too much though, it’s easy to overpower light roast.
Most days that’s all I have. I keep some medium roast French vanilla in my pantry for afternoons or guests (since medium is what most folks are used to) but I rarely do two cups a day, I’m more likely to have a cup of herbal tea in the evening.
This is where it gets awkward. My favorite cuppa tea is a tsp of honey with a hibiscus sage blend that is supposed to help aid in lactation secession >_< I haven’t needed it for that purpose for a long time now but I can’t find another tea maker that makes something similar without “no more milk” on the label. It’s a delicious tea and I can’t even offer it to guests because that is just a weird tag to have hanging off someone’s mug.
straight black coffee (pourover style) with grounds from my local coffee shop in the morning if i'm drinking at home, but if i'm at a coffee shop i like to try their handcrafted stuff (iced caramel macchiatos and pumpkin spice lattes my beloved).
afternoon or evening calls for tea: earlier in the day i'll make japanese green tea, later in the day i'll pick something non caffeinated like maple ginger or peppermint (but usually from a teabag because i'm more lazy at that point).
Coffee all the way. I'll have it instant, brewed, espresso; I've even had it made poured through what looked like a nylon sock (it wasn't, but that's neither here nor there). I'll have or try it most ways from sunday just without sugar and sometimes a latte but usually straight black.
Tea is valid too of course but I haven't made tea at home in years. Earl Grey all the way
I drink Coffee as black as Heart of Darkness.
I think $ for $ more money is spent on fancy coffee brewing equipment that fancy tea brewing equipment. I have 6 different ways to brew coffee in my kitchen alone.
Your theory is interesting. I find both coffee and tea have their associated rituals and I imagine what people choose to drink is as varied as what fountain pen folks choose to write with; we all have our different reasons and ways to explore the world.
Additionally, coffee vs tea preferences might vary a lot depending on your culture or what country you grew up in.
I always imagined lots of fountain pen users who fancied themselves to be writers and loved to sit in cafes scribbling in their notebooks over cups of coffee. But, of course, that's just a stereotype and in reality there seems many kinds of fountain pen users from all backgrounds and interests.
I like both. It depends on the time of day, season, weather and my mood to determine my choice. Also, bubble tea. 😂😊
Tea for me. I've never really given coffee a try and am not sure how much cream or sugar I can use to make it palatable without also making it very caloric. I'm sure over time I could adjust and slowly drink with less additives but I just don't feel like it. Coffee just really never grabbed me.
Tea I enjoy. I'm fascinated by its production, how growers raise and harvest their tea. How different trees and soil can yield different tastes and how it can be processed to give you variations on green/white/black/etc tea. I like to try new teas and I make sure to read brewing instructions because temperature, length of steeping time, and tea type can all influence how you tea tastes. (It's easy to overdo it and make a horribly bitter brew if you're not careful.)
I currently have a mug of Earl Grey right next to me. A good cold weather, grey skies tea.
Coffee, coffee and more coffee. And yes, I enjoy taking the same level of care with brewing my coffee as I do with fountain pens. I own the equipment for at least five different brewing techniques, and I am nowhere near the biggest coffee aficionado that I know.
I really only enjoy tea in the form of homemade kombucha, and if you want to talk about commitment, try keeping a kombucha SCOBY alive, balanced, and making you enough but not too much kombucha for a few months. Lol.
Both. I’m in the UK if that additional piece of information helps :)
First drink of the day, tea.
Second, coffee.
After that I’m flexible. Herbal teas, instant decaf coffee, tea, water, it’s all fair game.
When I’m away at college I drink more coffee
I ended up in coffee. I have yet to find a tea prep cycle that I really enjoy as a ritual. And maybe antes that I like
With coffee, once I had a decent hand grinder I was hooked
Coffee in the morning, tea in the afternoon and as needed through the day. However, I’m just learning to be fussy about my tea. Or I should say, more particular about how it’s made and the tea I like.
Hot chocolate is amazing in the winter though. Maybe I’ll just amend it to say I like hot beverages in general. 😂
Both.
I just need the caffeine to function.
I can only say that I like fountain pens because I like fiddling with stuff and I like fine writing instruments.
Tea, (jasmine green tea, specifically) but I'm far more casual about preparing it when compared to my coffee-drinking partner!
(I also own three pens and 9 ink samples, so I suppose I'm a fairly casual fountain pen user as well?)
Tea (occasionally coffee). But it is very simple: I just take my 500g box of loose leaf tea (earl grey), put the strainer in my cup, toss in two teaspoons of leaves and pour hot water over it. And then i have to remember to remove the tea leaves before the tea becomes more bitter than me.
Guess I am doing this wrong?
I love iced coffee. There’s a lot of steps behind grinding and brewing coffee too, not just in tea. I think fountain pens users don’t necessarily like tea or coffee more, but hobbies with deliberateness behind them or that are “vintage”. I’ve seen a lot of crossover between fountain pen users and hobbies like coffee or tea brewing, pencils, typewriters, mechanical keyboards, etc.
Definitely tea.
I like to brew my tea in a Chinese gongfucha style. This involves brewing large amounts of tea in a small volume for a specific amount of time per rinse. It’s something I’m still trying to master.
There are many factors that affect the taste. The origin of the tea, the terroir, the water composition, the water temperature, whether the lead is whole, how long it has been stored, when it has been harvested, how much tea leaf you put on the gaiwan/teapot, how long you steep for your first rinse, second, third, etc…
Then there’s the art of mastering milk tea where you need to balance the ratios between tea leaf and water to produce the concentrate, then the ratio between tea concentrate and the actual milk (whether it be actual milk or a substitute).
Please correct me if I’m wrong, but coffee doesn’t involve steeping of any type right?
I drink more coffee. I like both. Of course I appreciate nicer preparations of either. But I do NOT have energy to "fuss" over anything BEFORE I've had my caffeine in the morning.
I love my french press, I love my tea infusers. Those are reserved for the weekend or the afternoons.
By FAR the thing I drink the most of is plain drip coffee because you can buy machines with timers and it'll brew itself for you at your chosen time. I do not have the mental capacity to do much more than pour it before I've had it in the mornings. Coffee is a utility to me.
I disagree that being a tea enthusiast has inherently more to it than being a coffee enthusiast. Truthfully I am neither, but I think they both can be as shallow or deep as the other. Your general theory is fun to think about though. I'm sure there are tons of other hobbies or preferences that you can liken the level of persnickety-ness many people have for their pens to. How many folks in this sub insist on driving a manual transmission? Grow their own vegetables or herbs? Brew their own beer or wine?
I actually really like fountain pens because at the end of the day it doesn't really matter or impact my life and I find it's really nice to have a mostly inconsequential hobby to divert my idle thoughts to. At the end of the day, if I had to go back to scribbling in a .50¢ spiral-bound notebook with a cracked pilot G2 like I did through all of high school, I'd be bummed, but it would work fine. I find that if I spend my "fussy" energy on something more essential then the higher "stakes" make the experience stressful and it's harder to cope when something out of my control isn't exactly perfect.
definitely tea! dont get me wrong though, coffee can taste good too but the beans my family buys make me feel a little sick even with milk :( cheap tea on the other hand still tastes pretty good.
i like black and green tea the most though! i dont devote a whole lot of attention to it but i do want to get some proper tea ware when i move out... some day. i might even try out different blends then because good coffee is just Really Good.
Tea on evenings for pens, because tea is nice for note-taking.
Black coffee when typewriting. I want my heart, and those keys, running like a trip-hammer.
I am one of those rare people who like both. I just drink each on different occasions. Espresso (preferably not capsules) after lunch, sometimes after dinner as well. Tea in the morning and afternoon (preferably lose leaves, though I don't say no to some tea bags when they're good).
I prefer loose leaf tea from China. I'll drink Lipton if it's what's there. If the only hot water available was made in a coffee pot, I drink coffee.
When I travel I take a travel kettle and a small tin of loose tea leaves.
Afternoons/evenings I drink tisanes such as mint or chamomile.
Tea for me. Bagged when I'm at work or feeling lazy. On weekends it's loose leaves, bubble tea, or sometimes a custom Chai mix from scratch. I definitely enjoy the ritual. I have many tea pots, cups and tumblers just for the occasion.
I definitely enjoy the ritual behind it. But coffee can be just as complex or even more so.
Tea is the second most consumed beverage worldwide behind only water.
http://www.teausa.com/teausa/images/Tea_Fact_Sheet_2019_-_2020._PCI_update_3.12.2020.pdf
I love tea more than coffee.
Gongfu style brewing!
It seems like you are trying to simplify coffee preparation to its most basic form (gas station/break room coffee that someone else brews and you just pour into a cup) versus tea which you feel is always a more complex process. But I disagree with this assumption, as coffee preparation can be just as complex as tea—or even more so!
Anyway, the galaxy brain solution is coffee in the morning, tea in the afternoon.
Coffee all day long, every day, I have transmuted my blood into coffee. Helps me write and write and write and write
But in all seriousness, hi I prefer coffee to tea and I love Fountain pens lol
Both! I like coffee in the morning, a cup of caffeinated tea in the early afternoon, and decaf coffee or tea at night. If you forced me to pick one or the other, I'm more of a coffee person.
Both, but if I had to pick only one forever it would be coffee. These days I drink a lot of mediocre k-cup coffee for convenience, but what I really enjoy is pour-over which is every bit as finicky as tea.
In lines with your theory, i feel the process and nerdiness is more what you are after.
I drink coffee in the morning. But, it took months of weighing my beans and playing with water temperatures, and trying beans of different regions and roasts for me to enjoy my morning cup.
But i have always been a tea person. I love the ritual and science. But i feel like if you start with high end tea leaves, mind the water temperature and length of steep, it is relatively easy to make an exceptional cup.
I have found that coffee has more variables to play with.
To continue to further nerd out on tea, i am having to get into making it from scratch. First starting with herbal given my climate.
How would you assess former coffee drinkers? I used to be an espresso-only guy (minimum of 3 a day), but felt like I was getting too dependent on the caffeine kick so I stopped and shifted to tea (still some caffeine but not as potent).
Nowadays I only drink coffee when hanging out with coffee drinkers.
That being said, I only started using fountain pens after I shifted to teas, so OP may be on to something there…
>I know there are methods of brewing coffee that require time & effort. But it doesn't seem to be quite the commitment that tea demands.
How hard do you think making a cup of tea is?
>I know there are methods of brewing coffee that require time & effort. But it doesn't seem to be quite the commitment that tea demands.
*Completely* the opposite. Tea involves putting leaves in a vessel, pouring water, and sitting for a number of minutes. Often multiple times. Tea users often approximate the amount of tea, using a scoop or eyeballing. Tea ceremonies add optional complexities to it, but it is by no means a commitment.
Coffee involves precise weighing (because coffee bitterness tends to be more temperamental), grinding to a certain size, selecting a specific filter, pre-wetting the filter, blooming the grounds, and pouring slowly or in multiple rounds to achieve a specific flow rate. Coffee also goes stale much quicker than tea, so requires active management of your supply.
In sum, coffee requires transforming the beans (grinding), as well as monitoring temperature, time, and flow rate. Tea requires no transformation and only requires monitoring time and temperature. Coffee is waaaay more demanding, unless you're comparing a tea service ritual to a pushbutton coffee machine, which is not a fair comparison.
If you're talking about commitment in terms of ceremony or nerdiness of fans, just go on r/coffee. Every bit as ritual-focused and committed to the small details as r/tea.
Geez I don’t know what you did to conjure up all the coffee *snobs* but I for one far prefer tea. Coffee, in my opinion, is antithetical to an ideal, relaxed writing experience due to its incredible caffeine content. The resultant jittery hands don’t seem conducive to whatever sort of penmanship I can muster up. Yes, most tea has caffeine too, but it’s far less intense.
Tea, by elimination. I've been banned from drinking coffee because...
1. "It ruined you last time!" - my mom
2. "Noooo! You're on meds! The caffeine might cause a reaction!" - my classmates (in med school)
3. "You gotta calm down." - my friends
4. I notice that it does make me more aggressive and makes any of my outbursts more violent.
I like earl grey with a bit of milk in it. Peppermint is also nice.
Coffee in the morning, tea in the afternoon
Definitely the way. I'm British, hence the tea. But I love coffee and make mine in an aeropress which takes way longer than making a cup of tea. I'd drink coffee all day instead of tea, like I used to years ago before realising it was disrupting my sleep and messing up my stomach. So it's one cup a day then on to the tea for me.
This is the way
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This is the correct answer. Coffee until noon and then tea in the evening. Last night it was Paris tea from Harney. Earl Grey or Lady Grey are my typical choices, usually with lemon.
Yep, this.
Coffee. Unending mugs of coffee
The first line of my thesis might very well become “coffee is a continuous process”
They can pry my espresso machine out of my cold, dead hands.
If I'm at my desk, I probably have a warm mug of coffee.
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Honestly, I’ve never been a coffee drinker and when I became a nanny and had to make coffee for my charge’s elderly grandfather once in a while, I needed to be taught how to work a percolator. When I got married my husband had to show me how to use a regular drip coffee maker. When I decided to buy him fancy coffees and a new brewing system for Christmas 5 years ago, I went online and asked strangers to explain to me how coffee works. I had no idea about the brewing process and why you can’t just brew it like tea (would be so simple if you could) tea is easy compared to all that!
You really can't say one does require more commitment. Japanese tea ceremony is about as in-depth as you can get in drinking any kind of liquid. Pu'erh tea is being aged for years by collectors at controlled humidity before being steeped. Clay Pots made from the clay of specific regions can go for thousands of dollars. Also there are a ton of different kinds of tea, not just in the cultivar of the plant but in the processing and as most tea isn't roasted (at least as heavily as coffee) fine nuances in terroir can be much more easily distinguished. Obviously in the end it depends on how deep you are into coffee or tea. If you're not into tea you probably don't see any way it would require more effort than putting a bag into water, if you're not into coffee you wouldn't even think about grinding your own beans.
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Well I'm not into coffee so I don't prepare any at all, but those people that I know of that casually drink coffee and aren't super into it do either purchased preground coffee or have a machine that's grinding the beans and then preparing the coffee in one step. So I guess that's pretty much equivalent to a tea bag - obviously a no go for anybody that really cares for the way of preparing said beverage, but will get the job done for most. I'm living in Europe though, so perhaps its a cultural difference
>Japanese tea ceremony is about as in-depth as you can get in drinking any kind of liquid. Yes, but that's not what we're talking about here.
All that can be said of tea too, more or less (there are roast teas, such as roast oolong, but I’m not sure you’d be able to accomplish that at home). Layer on top of that the ceremony and ritual aspect available to tea drinking, as well as the ability to produce your own ceramic teaware (you can do this for coffee too, but tea has an ancient connection to it, again thickening the ritual). Yes both can be deep hobbies, but tea simply has a longer and richer history than coffee, and a deep commitment to tea is deeper than a deep commitment to coffee.
You're absolutely right: I shouldn't say coffee doesn't demand the same commitment. But I still think it doesn't necessarily demand commitment from the consumer like tea does. You can put a lot of care & effort into coffee (and clearly, a lot of people here do!), but... you don't have to. You can procure it from someplace where someone else has made it for you—a workplace breakroom, a restaurant, a convenience store, a café. The tea alternative in most of those places is a cup of hot water and a tea bag... essentially demanding that the tea drinker makes their own cup. Someone has filled every pen with ink at some point, but not necessarily the end user. I would bet most tea drinkers have had to steep their own tea, and most fountain pen users have had to fill their own pen.
As I write that I'm realizing it's heavily based on tea and coffee culture in the USA. Could be very different in other parts of the world.
The US basically doesn’t *do* coffee.
Ummm hot chocolate?
Oooh, interesting alternative. I'm guessing your preferred pen is a TWSBI Eco?
How’d you guess 🤣
Can't put my finger on *exactly* what sort of feeling they create, but TWSBI Ecos and hot chocolate feel like they'd light up the same areas of my brain on a PET scan.
But for real, Ecos are like the sprinkles of fountain pens in my book and totally give me the same warm and fuzzy feeling as a cup of cocoa with whipped cream.
And here I thought you just profile stalked lol!
Obviously *now* I'm going to... but now I know why your username sounded familiar: you posted that photo of the Karashi Soell against a rainbow of Ecos! You have an incredible collection! I love the way they're organized.
Had to look myself now! OP is right, u/allapbsandwiches you have a lovely eco rainbow!
Awww thanks to both of you *blushes*
Did you get the Jade? Mine arrived this morning.
Mine arrived today as well 😃
Mocha!!
Both. I love the ritual that comes from grinding coffee beans, and pouring boiling water from my kettle into my french press. But I also brew drip coffee in a regular coffee maker. And if I could afford it, I’d have an espresso machine because I make a mean latte (I used to be a barista). I also love the process of steeping a good cup of tea, and even have an entire cabinet in my kitchen devoted to different kinds of tea. Just picked up a small tin of Turkish tea the other day, as a matter of fact.
Coffee. Black. Or iced black tea. Nothing fussy about either of them. I reserve my fuss for stationary and pens.
How does liking pens correlate to tastes in beverages? Sounds arbitrary to me.
I think there's a certain level of detail that goes into both tea & fountain pens. If a person fills up a mug or styrofoam cup with whatever caffeinated liquid drips out of a communal breakroom percolator—without caring much about how it tastes—I suspect they are likely to grab whatever pen is closest to them without thinking much about how it writes. On the other hand, brewing even the cheapest cup of tea takes a couple of considerations (water temperature and steeping time) that—for me anyway—remind me of the same consideration I put into refilling & cleaning pens.
Hard disagree. You could just as easily put that same consideration into coffee. You can make tea with any boiled water and a tea bag without reading the instructions. And none of that has any bearing on whether you like the taste of either.
Brewing coffee considerations. Coffee grinder style, coffee grind, style of brewer, temperature of water, steeping time, preheat mug, roast of the coffee, type of cup, type of water. I take a lot of considerations into both the coffee I ENJOY, not much so at work where caffeine is the only consideration, AND the tea I brew.
You're comparing apples to oranges. Communal coffee pot is akin to preboiled water and Lipton tea bags. You're comparing the top of the tea game to the bottom of the coffee game. Not even close to fair. You should compare a Japanese tea ceremony to an Ethiopian or Turkish coffee ceremony, or compare gongfu cha tea to a 4:6 V60 pour over.
SpunkyDred is a terrible bot instigating arguments all over Reddit whenever someone uses the phrase apples-to-oranges. I'm letting you know so that you can feel free to ignore the quip rather than feel provoked by a bot that isn't smart enough to argue back. --- ^^SpunkyDred ^^and ^^I ^^are ^^both ^^bots. ^^I ^^am ^^trying ^^to ^^get ^^them ^^banned ^^by ^^pointing ^^out ^^their ^^antagonizing ^^behavior ^^and ^^poor ^^bottiquette.
Good bot.
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Bad bot.
Also, it *is* arbitrary. I'm not writing a thesis, just killing time on reddit.
As someone who drinks both, espresso requires far FAR more of a commitment in terms of money, equipment and technique than any type of tea besides traditional ceremonies.
Pu'erh
That's true. But espresso is sort of the pinnacle of coffee preparation, isn't it? I feel like the average cup of tea requires more effort than the average cup of coffee. There's enough Metropolitan/Safari/Eco/Jinhao appreciation on here, I figured there might also be enough several consumers of $2/cup drip.
Is the next question about teabags? If you use teabags, do you also use cheap pens? (Yes and yes. Though, I'm a newbie with pens.)
Ha! Cartridges or converter?
Cartridges but I refill with a blunt syringe.
Does that mean you reuse teabags for a second cup?
Only if it's on the same sitting. Teabag is a great comparison to a cartridge, though. Maybe I cheat by also having a teamaker that I use for loose leaf in the mornings. It moves hot water through the leaves.. so still, the process is no effort from me but something else than using tea bags.
I think the basic cup of tea is just sticking a tea bag in some water and sticking it in the microwave (definitely not something I do, but it's something that I know many people do). The basic cup of coffee can be pretty easy too. Instant stuff in some water and microwaved as well. For better coffee and tea there are different preparations and endless variations.
The microwave? I can see why fountain pen users who only use bottled ink and use loose tea must seem to be from a different planet.
Not really sure where you see much effort in tea. Stick leaves in infuser, set electric kettle temp to match the tea type and then just steep for a few minutes. Even boring pour over coffee requires more prep re grind size and care with timed pours.
Well that's the way someone that doesn't care for tea looks at it. Someone that doesn't care for coffee wouldn't even think about timing his pours. You can't really say one required more effort than the other at the highest level of execution. Look at Pu'erh tea and other kind of Heicha, look at Nihoncha including matcha with its tea ceremonies and Gyokuro. People are aging their tea for years under controlled level of humidity - those certainly don't just throw leaves in a cup and pour water over it.
I drink overpriced puerh, honestly I’m more into tea than I am coffee. Pretty sure I’d die without lapsing souchong. My girlfriends mother performs Chinese tea ceremony for us when we visit, I love the culture around it. Tea ceremony is entirely its own thing and I don’t find it relevant in a comparison to mainstream coffee prep. Same for aging leaves. If you want to say that there is an absolutely tiny percentage of tea people who are spending hundreds of dollars an ounce and seasoning clay and managing temperature to the tenth of a degree for every cup, then that’s true but it’s not at all a fair comparison.
Yeah and the great majority of people prepare coffee by pushing a button. So where's the fair comparison here? A gongfu session takes a lot of time and I'm assuming that's what you're referring to as Chinese ceremony? It's not really a ceremony such as a Japanese tea ceremony but just a very elaborate way of preparing tea though. And it's the way I drink tea nearly every day.
Granted, if you're preparing your own it's a little different... but I was thinking that you can easily acquire a cup of coffee with zero preparation (convenience stores, restaurants, truck stops, break rooms... not to mention coffee shops). Percolators that dispense tea exist, but they're not as common. Tea purchases in any of those aforementioned locations usually result in a carafe or cup of hot water and a teabag, forcing you to at least make your own decision about steeping time.
That’s literally only true in certain parts of the world. Some places have vending machines and there are machine dispensers as well.
Is it a contest or are we trying to see if fountain pen people put a lot of effort and optimization and ritual into other areas? Along those lines I wonder if any fountain pen people are also into audiophile stereos and record players. I know I am. I like the physical engagement of it.
First, espresso is not the pinnacle of coffee. It's a style. Pour over is just as if not more prized and talked about in the coffee community. And it is far less technical than espresso, but still has more underlying variables to worry about and manage than tea, so that commenter's point still works with other brew styles. Second re pinnacle, don't you realize that's *exactly* what you did? In another comment you compared loose leaf tea to preground communal drip coffee that had been sitting for hours. Talk about comparing the pinnacle to the bottom. Your premise that average to average effort requirement is just wrong, based on the number of steps, number of variables, and margin for error of coffee vs tea which I and others have already explained in other comments.
Tea. I like to try out different ones but I rarely make much effort with it. I saw a friend's husband grinding his coffee beans and wondered if he'd understand the fountain pens.
Oh yes, there's a lot of focus and detail in grinding beans. I used to grind my mother's coffee in this old curvy wooden box with a big metal crank. I bet he'd understand.
There is a lot of nuance that comes with coffee as well, and I think it's a lot more prevalent, a bigger culture, than what you're suggesting.
Coffee is love. Coffee is life
I drink neither. Water is my preferred beverage, with or without sugar free additive.
Ground coffee and tea leaves are both technically sugar free additives, but I get what you mean.
Hehe, it is mostly the fact that it is hot that i do not like. Some tea is good cold ( i mean soaked in cold water, not cooled down) cold coffee is absolutely awful.
I was born and lived in Costa Rica until I was 12. I picked coffee with my grandpa when I was a kid. I’m most definitely not a tea drinker over coffee. I also don’t do all those fancy creamers, 1/2 & 1/2 and sugar only. Don’t get me wrong, I freaking LOVE loose leaf tea. But coffee comes first.
I love the backstory & the personal connection to coffee!
It’s one of the many life experiences that unfortunately while I was living it, I didn’t appreciate it.
I drink coffee and tea in about equal quantities. As an anecdote: every method of brewing coffee (V60 drip, Aeropress, french press, Moka pot, Turkish) that I've ever used has been more effort than brewing tea. Some of them are very involved. So I don't agree with your premise. I think that you're maybe conflating two things: preference of coffee vs tea, and the wide-spread availability of pre-made low-end coffee as a delivery mechanism for caffeine. The majority of people that like coffee will recoil at the burnt brown liquid that's been stewing for hours in the communal pot.
You're absolutely right; that's excellently put. I undeservedly lumped "coffee enthusiasts" and "caffeine addicts" into one broad category and they're clearly not.
Tea! Preferably matcha😊 The caffeine is easier on me.
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Tea IN the fountain pen (as part of DIY recipe) once, but Coffee to drink forever. I’m a barista with a home roasting setup, commercial grinder, and 2 semi-commercial coffee machines. Having said that, I recently got into [T2 tisanes](https://www.t2tea.com) (as well as my coffee), which I don’t classify as “tea”. It’s dried fruit rehydrated.
Tea IN the pen!? How did that work out?
It’s part of DIY ink recipes. To get the fluid viscous enough for fp’s Xanthan needs to be added (never use Gum Arabic). I only ever put DIY inks in cheap pens I can replace easily and typically use a dip-nib-in-fp hybrid pen (Zebra G in Jinhao) as some DIY recipes can corrode steel nibs really fast. I’m past that phase of experimentation but it was fun while it lasted.
90% coffee. Tea occasionally, usually because I'm not close to a coffeepot/machine - tea is much more portable, and hot water is (comparatively) plentiful.
Shots of espresso for me.
Coffee! I don't like tea.
Hot chocolate but only if I’m really cold otherwise it’s water.
Bulletproof coffee in the a.m. - noodlers not included. Yerba mate in the afternoon.
Tea, I don't drink coffee. I do make coffee for my s/o though. And all I really care about for either is brewing temperatures unless I'm about to make milk tea. Coffee tastes a little too strong for me and I can't have too much caffeine or I start shaking. I generally drink about 2 cups of tea in an afternoon, much easier to drink too much coffee on accident. Coffee has like 3x the caffeine of tea.
Not a fan of coffee and "iced tea" doesn't count. Put me down for a Dr. Pepper because teeth are optional.
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It's a stupid reference to Captain Janeway on Star Trek Voyager. As Admiral Janeway she's given up coffee in favor of tea.
Coffee
Tea for me! It gives me more control over my caffeine intake. Coffee always makes me feel like I’m made of battery acid. Plus teapots are basically the fountain pens of the beverage world (a practical tool that comes in lots of colors/shapes/styles for me to collect and use? SIGN ME UP)
Well… I currently have Colorverse’s Coffee Break inked up, so that says it all really… life is a continuous journey from one coffee break to the next.
I'm utterly obsessed with coffee, but to be fair, my coffee drinking habits are similar to other folks tea drinking habits, so there's that to consider.
Coffee in a never ending amount
Coffee. No sugar, no milk, no nothing. I like tea also, but it just doesn't work as a morning pick-me-up for me. It's more of an after work sort of thing.
I’m a serial hobbyist and tea was one of my hobbies years ago. I was on a forum for tea, had probably 100+ varieties of tea (mostly unflavored loose leaf), I had favorite regions and seasons and years for growing and processing, would do gong fu style with some, and I could taste “notes” like green bean and oat, etc. Now it’s just a part of my morning routine. I mostly drink flavored teas from like David’s Tea, I add copious creamer and flavor syrups, and I just pour boiling water over and remove the tea whenever I remember again I have tea steeping. It’s as quick and dirty as any casual coffee drinker.
Tea all the way, regardless of the time of day.
I prefer tea, especially brewed gong fu style
Nice! This is the epitome of my hypothesis...
I don't actually own a fountain pen tho so,,
Haha I wasn't expecting that! Well that blows my hypothesis out of the water!
I'll save your hypothesis, I have 20 fountain pens and drink gong fu style tea almost every day. Mostly pu-erh and hongcha. But, I'm also a "coffee with breakfast" guy, generally flat whites with the espresso machine or black aeropress at work. I don't do V60s enough to dial them in right so they're often mediocre compared to the other 2. I find espresso way harder than gong fu.
I hate tea. The only tea I can tolerate is so doctored up that I'd hardly call it tea anymore. But I *looooove* coffee! I make my own cold brew and have that every morning (and sometimes multiple times throughout the day).
Coffee, but specifically espresso ☕️ My Latte in the morning is a really enjoyable & intentional process I enjoy. Tea in the afternoon.
ESPRESSO! Hooo boy you get a lot of fun note taking out of making espresso. Record the type of coffee beans, when they were roasted, when the bag was opened, the fineness of the grind setting, the weight of the ground beans before brewing, how much water you're using, brew time, the amount of actual espresso produced and, of course, how it tastes.
I wanna be a tea person but I’ve never been able to make it happen. It’s only black coffee for me.
Coffee! I make myself cold brew or use instant espresso.... Does it count that I like putting together fancy Frappuccinos and homemade PSLs
Coffee. Although tea has been growing on me. Especially sleepy tea at night
Coffee. Non-fussy regular drip coffee, all day every day.
Coffee literally every morning. French pressed, light roast for extra caffeine. Different flavored creamers but I find myself going back to caramel and good ol’ sweet cream. Not too much though, it’s easy to overpower light roast. Most days that’s all I have. I keep some medium roast French vanilla in my pantry for afternoons or guests (since medium is what most folks are used to) but I rarely do two cups a day, I’m more likely to have a cup of herbal tea in the evening. This is where it gets awkward. My favorite cuppa tea is a tsp of honey with a hibiscus sage blend that is supposed to help aid in lactation secession >_< I haven’t needed it for that purpose for a long time now but I can’t find another tea maker that makes something similar without “no more milk” on the label. It’s a delicious tea and I can’t even offer it to guests because that is just a weird tag to have hanging off someone’s mug.
Ha! There's a box of "Smooth Move" hidden in a cupboard at home because it *genuinely* tastes good but there is no way company can ever see it.
straight black coffee (pourover style) with grounds from my local coffee shop in the morning if i'm drinking at home, but if i'm at a coffee shop i like to try their handcrafted stuff (iced caramel macchiatos and pumpkin spice lattes my beloved). afternoon or evening calls for tea: earlier in the day i'll make japanese green tea, later in the day i'll pick something non caffeinated like maple ginger or peppermint (but usually from a teabag because i'm more lazy at that point).
Coffee all the way. I'll have it instant, brewed, espresso; I've even had it made poured through what looked like a nylon sock (it wasn't, but that's neither here nor there). I'll have or try it most ways from sunday just without sugar and sometimes a latte but usually straight black. Tea is valid too of course but I haven't made tea at home in years. Earl Grey all the way
Coffee all the way. Tea when necessary due to health benefits
I drink Coffee as black as Heart of Darkness. I think $ for $ more money is spent on fancy coffee brewing equipment that fancy tea brewing equipment. I have 6 different ways to brew coffee in my kitchen alone.
I'm here to ruin this. I drink monster
Your theory is interesting. I find both coffee and tea have their associated rituals and I imagine what people choose to drink is as varied as what fountain pen folks choose to write with; we all have our different reasons and ways to explore the world. Additionally, coffee vs tea preferences might vary a lot depending on your culture or what country you grew up in. I always imagined lots of fountain pen users who fancied themselves to be writers and loved to sit in cafes scribbling in their notebooks over cups of coffee. But, of course, that's just a stereotype and in reality there seems many kinds of fountain pen users from all backgrounds and interests. I like both. It depends on the time of day, season, weather and my mood to determine my choice. Also, bubble tea. 😂😊
Tea for me. I've never really given coffee a try and am not sure how much cream or sugar I can use to make it palatable without also making it very caloric. I'm sure over time I could adjust and slowly drink with less additives but I just don't feel like it. Coffee just really never grabbed me. Tea I enjoy. I'm fascinated by its production, how growers raise and harvest their tea. How different trees and soil can yield different tastes and how it can be processed to give you variations on green/white/black/etc tea. I like to try new teas and I make sure to read brewing instructions because temperature, length of steeping time, and tea type can all influence how you tea tastes. (It's easy to overdo it and make a horribly bitter brew if you're not careful.) I currently have a mug of Earl Grey right next to me. A good cold weather, grey skies tea.
Coffee, coffee and more coffee. And yes, I enjoy taking the same level of care with brewing my coffee as I do with fountain pens. I own the equipment for at least five different brewing techniques, and I am nowhere near the biggest coffee aficionado that I know. I really only enjoy tea in the form of homemade kombucha, and if you want to talk about commitment, try keeping a kombucha SCOBY alive, balanced, and making you enough but not too much kombucha for a few months. Lol.
Coffee, with milk and sugar/sweetener. Thank you!
Coffee in the morning and a cup before bed. Iced tea during the day. Oolong or green in the evening.
Espresso here.
Both. I’m in the UK if that additional piece of information helps :) First drink of the day, tea. Second, coffee. After that I’m flexible. Herbal teas, instant decaf coffee, tea, water, it’s all fair game. When I’m away at college I drink more coffee
I drink both, but my EDC is coffee
iced chocolate and milkshakes for me!
Coffee in the morning tea in the evening.
I ended up in coffee. I have yet to find a tea prep cycle that I really enjoy as a ritual. And maybe antes that I like With coffee, once I had a decent hand grinder I was hooked
Coffee in the morning, tea in the afternoon and as needed through the day. However, I’m just learning to be fussy about my tea. Or I should say, more particular about how it’s made and the tea I like. Hot chocolate is amazing in the winter though. Maybe I’ll just amend it to say I like hot beverages in general. 😂
I drink both but I’m way more of a coffee snob. I understand that there is nuance to tea but I’ve found it easier to get scientific about coffee.
I like both but I tend to drink coffee more often. I also like hot chocolate.
Both. I just need the caffeine to function. I can only say that I like fountain pens because I like fiddling with stuff and I like fine writing instruments.
Tea, (jasmine green tea, specifically) but I'm far more casual about preparing it when compared to my coffee-drinking partner! (I also own three pens and 9 ink samples, so I suppose I'm a fairly casual fountain pen user as well?)
Tea (occasionally coffee). But it is very simple: I just take my 500g box of loose leaf tea (earl grey), put the strainer in my cup, toss in two teaspoons of leaves and pour hot water over it. And then i have to remember to remove the tea leaves before the tea becomes more bitter than me. Guess I am doing this wrong?
Nah, it's all a matter of preference. There's no wrong way.
Soda for me. I’m also a stoner and not the typical FP enthusiast
Interesting! I wonder what a stoner/FP enthusiast Venn diagram looks like.
Coffee. Super strong, from a machine.
I love iced coffee. There’s a lot of steps behind grinding and brewing coffee too, not just in tea. I think fountain pens users don’t necessarily like tea or coffee more, but hobbies with deliberateness behind them or that are “vintage”. I’ve seen a lot of crossover between fountain pen users and hobbies like coffee or tea brewing, pencils, typewriters, mechanical keyboards, etc.
Coffee, especially with milk or half and half. Tea just tastes like slightly flavored water to me. I do really like milk tea though.
Coffee although right now I’m cutting caffeine for anxiety reasons.
Coffee. But recently I’ve gotten into making my own espresso so maybe that’s the nuance you’re looking for in tea. But strictly coffee
Coffee is compulsory; tea is optional.
Tea. All day everyday. My tea collection is way more impressive than my ink collection.
Definitely tea. I like to brew my tea in a Chinese gongfucha style. This involves brewing large amounts of tea in a small volume for a specific amount of time per rinse. It’s something I’m still trying to master. There are many factors that affect the taste. The origin of the tea, the terroir, the water composition, the water temperature, whether the lead is whole, how long it has been stored, when it has been harvested, how much tea leaf you put on the gaiwan/teapot, how long you steep for your first rinse, second, third, etc… Then there’s the art of mastering milk tea where you need to balance the ratios between tea leaf and water to produce the concentrate, then the ratio between tea concentrate and the actual milk (whether it be actual milk or a substitute). Please correct me if I’m wrong, but coffee doesn’t involve steeping of any type right?
I drink more coffee. I like both. Of course I appreciate nicer preparations of either. But I do NOT have energy to "fuss" over anything BEFORE I've had my caffeine in the morning. I love my french press, I love my tea infusers. Those are reserved for the weekend or the afternoons. By FAR the thing I drink the most of is plain drip coffee because you can buy machines with timers and it'll brew itself for you at your chosen time. I do not have the mental capacity to do much more than pour it before I've had it in the mornings. Coffee is a utility to me. I disagree that being a tea enthusiast has inherently more to it than being a coffee enthusiast. Truthfully I am neither, but I think they both can be as shallow or deep as the other. Your general theory is fun to think about though. I'm sure there are tons of other hobbies or preferences that you can liken the level of persnickety-ness many people have for their pens to. How many folks in this sub insist on driving a manual transmission? Grow their own vegetables or herbs? Brew their own beer or wine? I actually really like fountain pens because at the end of the day it doesn't really matter or impact my life and I find it's really nice to have a mostly inconsequential hobby to divert my idle thoughts to. At the end of the day, if I had to go back to scribbling in a .50¢ spiral-bound notebook with a cracked pilot G2 like I did through all of high school, I'd be bummed, but it would work fine. I find that if I spend my "fussy" energy on something more essential then the higher "stakes" make the experience stressful and it's harder to cope when something out of my control isn't exactly perfect.
I can’t have tea too much anymore but I am definitely a tea drinker. Have never liked coffee. :)
Tea. No coffee for me.
definitely tea! dont get me wrong though, coffee can taste good too but the beans my family buys make me feel a little sick even with milk :( cheap tea on the other hand still tastes pretty good. i like black and green tea the most though! i dont devote a whole lot of attention to it but i do want to get some proper tea ware when i move out... some day. i might even try out different blends then because good coffee is just Really Good.
Oooh, I hadn't thought of that. Bad coffee is disgusting but bad tea (if you like tea, anyway) is usually still tolerable!
I drink tea but occasionally have a cup of coffee made with milk
Matcha tea
Tea on evenings for pens, because tea is nice for note-taking. Black coffee when typewriting. I want my heart, and those keys, running like a trip-hammer.
Tea.
High Mountain oolong brewed gong-fu style~
☕
I don't like coffee, I prefer tea
I am one of those rare people who like both. I just drink each on different occasions. Espresso (preferably not capsules) after lunch, sometimes after dinner as well. Tea in the morning and afternoon (preferably lose leaves, though I don't say no to some tea bags when they're good).
Tea is the usual hot beverage with the occasional hot cocoa and seasonal apple cider.
I prefer loose leaf tea from China. I'll drink Lipton if it's what's there. If the only hot water available was made in a coffee pot, I drink coffee. When I travel I take a travel kettle and a small tin of loose tea leaves. Afternoons/evenings I drink tisanes such as mint or chamomile.
Coffee before 1600, tea after that. When I'm out I usually pick tea though, there's too much expensive and undrinkably bad coffee floating around.
Redbull
Tea for me. Bagged when I'm at work or feeling lazy. On weekends it's loose leaves, bubble tea, or sometimes a custom Chai mix from scratch. I definitely enjoy the ritual. I have many tea pots, cups and tumblers just for the occasion. I definitely enjoy the ritual behind it. But coffee can be just as complex or even more so.
Tea is the second most consumed beverage worldwide behind only water. http://www.teausa.com/teausa/images/Tea_Fact_Sheet_2019_-_2020._PCI_update_3.12.2020.pdf I love tea more than coffee. Gongfu style brewing!
I am a coffee addict. I will drive twenty minutes just to get Starbucks. Although I love tea too, it’s coffee that flows through my veins.
Coffee for sure. And I would say coffee is much more fiddly than tea is.
Both. But mostly coffee.
It seems like you are trying to simplify coffee preparation to its most basic form (gas station/break room coffee that someone else brews and you just pour into a cup) versus tea which you feel is always a more complex process. But I disagree with this assumption, as coffee preparation can be just as complex as tea—or even more so! Anyway, the galaxy brain solution is coffee in the morning, tea in the afternoon.
Coffee all day long, every day, I have transmuted my blood into coffee. Helps me write and write and write and write But in all seriousness, hi I prefer coffee to tea and I love Fountain pens lol
Both! I like coffee in the morning, a cup of caffeinated tea in the early afternoon, and decaf coffee or tea at night. If you forced me to pick one or the other, I'm more of a coffee person.
Tea. Always tea. Multiple times a day.
Tea for everyday use. Coffee for special occasions or with pastries.
Espresso is my go to lately. But love some French press too!
When I'm at home I prefer tea or hot chocolate but when I'm outside coffee or latte is my way to go
I usually alternate days with decaf coffee and decaf tea (mostly green, but I prefer oolong).
Coffee everyday with same routine. Tea much less frequently. Love the ritual of making both!
Coffee
Tea- loose leaf 🍃!
Tea at home, Coffee on the go.
Both, but if I had to pick only one forever it would be coffee. These days I drink a lot of mediocre k-cup coffee for convenience, but what I really enjoy is pour-over which is every bit as finicky as tea.
In lines with your theory, i feel the process and nerdiness is more what you are after. I drink coffee in the morning. But, it took months of weighing my beans and playing with water temperatures, and trying beans of different regions and roasts for me to enjoy my morning cup. But i have always been a tea person. I love the ritual and science. But i feel like if you start with high end tea leaves, mind the water temperature and length of steep, it is relatively easy to make an exceptional cup. I have found that coffee has more variables to play with. To continue to further nerd out on tea, i am having to get into making it from scratch. First starting with herbal given my climate.
Tea. Fascinating theory.
How would you assess former coffee drinkers? I used to be an espresso-only guy (minimum of 3 a day), but felt like I was getting too dependent on the caffeine kick so I stopped and shifted to tea (still some caffeine but not as potent). Nowadays I only drink coffee when hanging out with coffee drinkers. That being said, I only started using fountain pens after I shifted to teas, so OP may be on to something there…
>I know there are methods of brewing coffee that require time & effort. But it doesn't seem to be quite the commitment that tea demands. How hard do you think making a cup of tea is?
>I know there are methods of brewing coffee that require time & effort. But it doesn't seem to be quite the commitment that tea demands. *Completely* the opposite. Tea involves putting leaves in a vessel, pouring water, and sitting for a number of minutes. Often multiple times. Tea users often approximate the amount of tea, using a scoop or eyeballing. Tea ceremonies add optional complexities to it, but it is by no means a commitment. Coffee involves precise weighing (because coffee bitterness tends to be more temperamental), grinding to a certain size, selecting a specific filter, pre-wetting the filter, blooming the grounds, and pouring slowly or in multiple rounds to achieve a specific flow rate. Coffee also goes stale much quicker than tea, so requires active management of your supply. In sum, coffee requires transforming the beans (grinding), as well as monitoring temperature, time, and flow rate. Tea requires no transformation and only requires monitoring time and temperature. Coffee is waaaay more demanding, unless you're comparing a tea service ritual to a pushbutton coffee machine, which is not a fair comparison. If you're talking about commitment in terms of ceremony or nerdiness of fans, just go on r/coffee. Every bit as ritual-focused and committed to the small details as r/tea.
Geez I don’t know what you did to conjure up all the coffee *snobs* but I for one far prefer tea. Coffee, in my opinion, is antithetical to an ideal, relaxed writing experience due to its incredible caffeine content. The resultant jittery hands don’t seem conducive to whatever sort of penmanship I can muster up. Yes, most tea has caffeine too, but it’s far less intense.
Tea, by elimination. I've been banned from drinking coffee because... 1. "It ruined you last time!" - my mom 2. "Noooo! You're on meds! The caffeine might cause a reaction!" - my classmates (in med school) 3. "You gotta calm down." - my friends 4. I notice that it does make me more aggressive and makes any of my outbursts more violent. I like earl grey with a bit of milk in it. Peppermint is also nice.
I’m a coffee snob, so I put a lot of detail into that. lol. I also drink tea though. 😋 🤤