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Three cups an hour?

A little atypical for me, I reckon about one an hour, maybe rising to 1 every 30 minutes, but 3 an hour? Entirely within sensible consumption limits.

Now I don’t drink tea or coffee personally.

But a good few years ago I went on a trip to Le Mans with some friends, there were 3 of them who drank tea, we were there for 4 days, they took a brand new bag of 1000 tea bags and brought back maybe 100 , so basically 300 tea bags each over 4 days or 75 a day, they were brewing up at least 3 or 4 times an hour all day.

How?

Chronic caffeine addiction?

Tea is nicer than coffee, but that's not really saying much to be fair.

Properly speaking the love affair with tea has a lot to do with the Victorians temperance movement. Back in the "good old days" there was no water filtering, so if you didn't boil it then you'd get lots of nasties from drinking it. Boiling the water dealt with this problem, and the standard beverage of choice was in Georgian times "small beer" which had something like a 0.5% alcohol content, much like most modern canned beers.

The Termperance movement then made it socially unacceptable to drink small beer by screeching about the evils of the devil water loudly, and to appease the screechers small beer was largely replaced with a mania for drinking tea. These days things have progressed and the descendants of the same people are screaming about putting a lump of sugar in the tea. Thanks to effective filtered water on tap we can all drink squashes and cordials instead without worrying about dying from horrible diseases.

Right, i've insulted tea drinkers, coffee drinkers, anybody who's drinks modern canned piss and the politically correct brigade. Who have I missed?

Boiling the water dealt with this problem,

Upvoted. I came here to say that.

Tea probably was a health drink in 1690, simply because it was the only common drink to be boiled immediately before consumption, and hence largely microbe-free.

It would certainly have been a healthier drink than drinking unboiled water pumped from the pump next to your outside toilet and getting Cholera from the process! I'm pretty sure that small beer was boiled, bottled and consumed quickly enough to be relatively healthy though.

I remember reading something a few (15+) years ago about tea being a driver for the expansion of cities, but they cited the tea, rather than just the boiling, as the factor.

Wish I could find the thing I read, but from memory it talked about towns/cities couldn't grow beyond a certain size because of disease, with the exception of Britain and Japan (logically, it might have said China too, but I don't remember that).

Other places also boiled water for drinks but didn't grow so much, so the article was linking it to the properties of tea.

They then linked that to the rise of industrialisation (larger workforces in smaller spaces) in Britain first as opposed to Japan because we liked using iron, whereas they'd settled on using other raw materials.

Vague recollections aside, I still like to think the tea was the initial lubricant of the industrial revolution.

> Properly speaking the love affair with tea has a lot to do with the Victorians temperance movement

There's also the British Army's love of tea, which dates back a few centuries - Bernard Cornwall's Sharpe was set during the Napoleonic wars, and the soldiers in that are constantly brewing up.

It'd be interesting to find out the history behind this. After all, it makes sense for the army to push tea as a drink; you have to boil water to make it (sterilising the water and the utensils used to make the brew), and it's a mild stimulant. It's also light and compact, doesn't require any special equipment or tools (unlike coffee) and isn't alcoholic, so something of a win all round if you're trying to keep a large group of men in fighting shape.

Not that it always worked, as happened in Gallipoli during WW1.

Either way, I guess this would have helped to spread it across the country, as the men would come home from t'war with their new habit/addition, and introduce it to their families.

And it's a bit odd that other countries didn't pick up on it to the same degree, though I guess this might have been at least partly due to the fact that the British Empire was consuming as much as could be produced. After all, we literally bought all the tea in the world during WW2...

https://blog.teabox.com/year-britain-bought-tea-world

Tea is for people who can't handle the intensity of coffee and/or who have a moral objection to things which are enjoyable. You know, the English.

> Tea is for people who can't handle the intensity of coffee and/or who have a moral objection to things which are enjoyable.

Ooo. Someone needs to settle down with a nice cuppa!

No, everyone knows that tea was introduced to Britain in Roman times by [1]Asterix .

M.

[1] https://www.asterix.com/en/the-collection/albums/asterix-in-britain/

I was fed tea (mostly milk of course) as a young 'un, and have stuck with it. I find coffee too bitter, though I imagine I could get used to it. Tea gives me the caffeine boost that I'm now used to. All you need is a kettle (which will last for years) and a teapot (which will last for decades). Far simpler than some coffee rigs. And, I believe it is a lot cheaper than coffee.

The one downside for me is stained teeth (not nearly as bad as smokers, and I imagine coffee does it too). And perhaps a few more bathroom breaks...

Coffee is too bitter, and cannot be consumed in the quantities required for refreshment. I like a coffee occasionally, a shot of espresso or even a lungo in the morning. But to sip that swill that is filter coffee all day long like the Americans? No thanks. Similarly, I'm fat enough without adding the filth that is a Starbucks venti latte. I've always found it strange that Starbucks, a coffee company, have so many drinks that are designed to hide the flavour of the coffee.

For me, tea is a total cure-all. Hangover, queasy stomach? Nice cup of tea will make you feel better. Dehydrated? Nice big cup of tea. Cold? Big cup of tea. If you have too many coffees, you can get the jitters and not sleep all night. Too many teas, you're just flushing the loo slightly more frequently. I start each day with 3 or 4 20oz cups of tea (SportsDirect mug size, although mine is a Chewbacca mug).

> Coffee ... cannot be consumed in the quantities required for refreshment.

It certainly can, but you might need to alternate coffee with water to prevent the "drink a pint and pee a quart" phenomenon from leaving your body entirely without moisture. (A pint is, of course, a perfectly reasonable size for a coffee mug.)

And there are things you can do with coffee to make it more palatable - Irish coffee is a lot nicer than Irish tea.

> ....putting milk in the teapot "to save time"

WTF?

To all those who laud tea I have but one word...

Gin (its not just for breakfast)

Wot, instead of adding milk? Sounds good...

I just drink whatever comes out of the Nutri-Matic machine...

So, I am Italian, which of course means I can have the final word on coffee ().

I started drinking tea in my mid-20 as I found that it settled my stomach better after a heavy night out. Coffee was just giving me heartburn.

Since I was young and foolish, this meant tea every w-end for breakfast, and sometimes also during the week (I regret nothing, up until the second ulcer).

The habit stuck, and tea is still my favourite drink for breakfast IF I can't get hold of proper cappuccino. I leave in UK now, so to be honest chances are slim.

I avoid Starbucks like the plague. I had coffee there 3 times (3 different branches in different years), and were all awful. They burn the shit out of it. Or maybe it's just their particular type of roast. Anyway, that explains why they "have so many drinks that are designed to hide the flavour of the coffee".

I drink tea without milk, as it's not the norm in Italy (and AFAIK outside UK). Tried a couple of times, it's ok but literally not my cup of tea.

But even green tea doesn't have the kick of coffee. Now that I stuck at home I do my after lunch one with this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moka_pot

To me it's the only way to make it, outside of a bar where they have a proper espresso machine. I am considering one.

So for anybody that made it that far in my rambling:

Tea is because it's easier on my stomach, I can dip biscuits in it (McVites rich tea or scottish shortbread) and I have to do something while I read The Reg in the morning and afternoon (I am 2 cups a day, a lightweight, I know).

Coffee is because I need to stay awake, and part of the italian "after lunch" tradition. Back in Italy I was easy on 5 espresso a day, and I wasn't the heaviest drinker between my friends.

Green tea definitely won't have anywhere near the kick of coffee because it has the least amount of caffinee. You want black tea for that.