British tea consumption has been going down

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/05/04/why-the-british-are-drinking-coffee-instead-of-tea/

by pepys • 10 years ago

45 63 10 years ago

panic• 10 years ago

To save you a click, the "most British thing" is drinking tea. British tea consumption has been going down over time.

jff• 10 years ago

I was trying to guess what it would be as I clicked... I figured it would be drinking tea, but the other candidates were:

- Unspoken but rigidly-followed rules of decorum

- Comedy that's mostly about someone breaking said unspoken rules of decorum as the people around him sit stone-faced

- Eating boring food

- Extremely good rock and roll

- Classism

sofaofthedamned• 10 years ago

Queuing, bad teeth are missing too I suppose.

nice_byte• 10 years ago

- Eating boring food

Hey, don't you diss fish and chips! It's awesome.

bharath28• 10 years ago

- Extremely good rock and roll

This. Whatever happened to the pure magic they produced for several decades.

iamdave• 10 years ago

The gear head in me had a slight moment of panic "they're killing the Mini??"

soneil• 10 years ago

I hate to break the news. But that ship's sailed.

dang• 10 years ago

How about we use your summary as the title, in place of the baity one.

Apocryphon• 10 years ago

“I know that astrology isn’t a science,’ said Gail. “Of course it isn’t. It’s just an arbitrary set of rules like chess or tennis or, what’s that strange thing you British play?’

“Er, cricket? Self-loathing?”

“Parliamentary democracy. The rules just kind of got there. They don’t make any kind of sense except in terms of themselves."

johan_larson• 10 years ago

Now I'm wondering what the actual most British thing is. Something very common in Britain, but rare elsewhere, presumably, but not actually definitional.

cyberferret3• 10 years ago

Possibly cricket and cucumber sandwiches?? :)

TeMPOraL2• 10 years ago

I wonder if this is correlated with the huge immigration there. The last few times I've been to London and Oxford, I found it hard to even spot a native Brit when walking down the street.

desas• 10 years ago

How can you tell who's native by sight alone?

archagon5• 10 years ago

Many other cultures are just as much into tea as the Brits!

cyberpunk2• 10 years ago

As someone who has lived here for 6 years or so -- it is pretty rare to work with people who are actually from here -- the tech scene here is mostly people from outside london, or from somewhere in europe, or somewhere else... There's a rather big financial draw (we have some of the highest day rates in the world)...

Whenever I meet/hire a real londoner, though, they do get the "So you DO exist!!!" treatment for a bit ;)

erikb• 10 years ago

Reading this first I thought they want to stop Dr. Who again. Need to get off my heart attack now. I'm out drinking a tea.

switch007• 10 years ago

In short: my generation grew up without the concept of a tea break because Margaret Thatcher (who else) and massive marketing of coffee happened. Coffee is an acceptable drug and it wakes us up in the morning for our crappy commute to our crappy job on a crappy contract and we hate our lives.

mjevans• 10 years ago

I too was thinking of this comic strip... http://dilbert.com/strip/2006-10-18

(related to caffeine's use as an OTC anti-depressant)

tostitos1979• 10 years ago

As a student of history and immigrant to North America, I've often wondered if I'd be in the UK or Germany instead of the US if I was born 50 years earlier. It seems until WW2, the UK and Germany were the places to be ... both places were progressive and attracted scientists, etc. It is worrisome to see how quickly things changed.

malchow• 10 years ago

The Old World, ladies and gentlemen. Sounds like you need to move to the United States.

pan69• 10 years ago

When I saw the title my heart jumped thinking it might be referring to "humour". Thank God it's only about tea...

adnam• 10 years ago

I thought this would be about the EU referendum and the death of government-by-consent...

trhway• 10 years ago

a 19th-century invention of Anna, seventh Duchess of Bedford, who decided that tea and cakes were the best antidote to a late afternoon ''sinking feeling.''

well, i like my shot of glucose between lunch and dinner - has just finished a bagel with a 3-bag large cup of sweetened black tea :) I see the youngsters are doing it with Coke here in the US, and according to the graphs in the article the situation looks similar in UK - it is not only coffee, it is soft drinks which displace the tea consumption.

sjg007• 10 years ago

which is sad because soda and even diet sodas are especially bad on the kidneys. Tea and coffee are much better

Havoc• 10 years ago

The Brits in my office don't seem to have gotten the memo. Not only do they drink lots of tea. The employer also buys a variety of teas...peppermint, green, earl, black, and one that I can't remember.

No rooibos though...pity.

mgkimsal• 10 years ago

Few brits I know actually drink anything other than (what's known in the US as) English Breakfast, given any sort of choice. Apparently closest to a regular 'cuppa' you can get (or so I've been told).

nly• 10 years ago

Us common brits typically don't drink delicate blends like Twinings 'English Breakfast' all day long... we'll tend to stick with 'builders tea', i.e. strong unsophisticated blends full of tannins.

Most people in the UK in fact probably drink Tetleys (from Indian giant Tata), "Yorkshire" tea (Taylors of Harrogate), PG Tips (from Unilever), Typhoo (another Indian giant), Lipton (also Unilever), or a generic supermarket brand.

subpixel• 10 years ago

After wondering what British tea was like for a long time, I did a little research and decided to try Scottish Breakfast. It's a little malty/toasty compared to standard English Breakfast.

It's a huge hit in our house. My wife actually gave up coffee for it. And she's Colombian.

I still do strong coffee in the morning, but Scottish Breakfast in the afternoon with honey and milk is a great new thing to look forward to. And by new I mean new for the last year or so.

UVB-76• 10 years ago

In an office situation, especially when doing rounds, it makes sense to have tea over coffee.

Unless you have a nice coffee machine, you're left to deal with a French press (too much effort, difficult for large rounds), or (gasp) instant coffee.

When out and about, if your drink is being made by a professional, it makes sense to have coffee over tea. Less faffing about removing tea bags, etc.

StevePerkins• 10 years ago

Bizarre, my thoughts are the complete opposite.

In the U.S., coffee is essentially a human right. Even the most humble of blue-collar work environments has at least a "Mr. Coffee"-style drip machine, and most white-collar offices these days have a K-cup or other cartridge system that brews in seconds.

It's easy to brew coffee mechanically, because the optimal temperature is well below the boiling point. Whereas most black tea requires the water to be brought to a boil. Even a nice electric kettle takes forever compared to a $15 Mr. Coffee. Also, you need to drink tea right away, whereas coffee can sit on the burner for nearly an hour before non-snobs would think to throw it out.

So in the U.S., tea is more commonly consumed at home or in shops. Coffee is ubiquitous in the workplace, because it's far easier to brew in a hurry with machines (even cheap ones).

Twirrim• 10 years ago

sips on 5th cuppa of the day maintaining the correct amount of blood in his tea stream

They'll never take my tea from me. Never.

mattmanser• 10 years ago

Think about it though.

You can't deny the tea isle has been shrinking in supermarkets. I didn't realise until I read this, but it's a real phenomenon.

cwmoo740• 10 years ago

That's because of sea level rise from global warming. Lots of isles have been shrinking.

Swizec• 10 years ago

I've been in the US for ~2 years now. The tea isle at Safeway has done nothing but grow.

There are even loose leaf pay-per-pound options now!

Symbiote• 10 years ago

tea isle

That's Great Britain.

You meant the tea aisle :-)

cyberferret3• 10 years ago

Yes, consumer grade teas are disappearing from big chain supermarket aisles. But over here, the rise and rise of boutique specialty tea stores as well as online tea stores just keeps going.

As another poster mentioned above, there is a whole world of tea outside of the big brand 'English Breakfast' or 'Earl Grey'.

Personally one of my biggest enjoyments is blending various teas to see what sort of flavours I can create. Always leaf, never tea bags!

I'd suggest that anyone complaining about tea go and learn how to make it properly: http://www.h-tea-o.net/newsletter/G001DouglasAdams/teatalk/ :)

aab02• 10 years ago

I wonder what the breakdown by ethnicity is.

orf• 10 years ago

Maybe it's not as popular as before, but my office has a full stocked cupboard full of different kinds and I drink at least 5 cups a day.

There's nothing quite like a good cuppa

meandave• 10 years ago

o no

bbarn• 10 years ago

Oddly at the same time, as the article mentions, tea consumption in the US has exploded. I switched completely to tea from coffee, and I was a 6+ cups a morning coffee drinker.

My stomach problems have gone from unmanageable to generally good since, but I do feel less alert around lunch and beyond at the office.

archagon5• 10 years ago

If you start getting bored of tea, I strongly urge you to look into the world of oolongs. It's an incredibly diverse category, to the point where the Western obsession with just a few black tea staples starts to look sad and anemic. I have oolongs in my collection that taste like orchids, cotton candy, gingerbread, caramel, rye bread, wheatgrass, and coffee — all by virtue of the strains and the skill in processing, not any additives. You don't need to add potpourri to your tea to make it interesting!

San Francisco's Song Tea is expensive but superb — try the Shan Lin Xi Winter Sprout for one of the best teas I've ever tasted. (And don't knock over any of the $200 teapots!!) Red Blossom is great as well. You can smell all the teas before you buy — and they all smell surprisingly different.

Oolongs are best brewed using a lidded cup (gaiwan) or small teapot, but it doesn't have to be anything fancy. I actually use an insulated stainless steel mug[1] that does the job better than my old porcelain gaiwan. A gram scale is highly recommended for getting the proportions right; a teaspoon can mean something completely different depending on whether your leaves are rolled into tight balls, loosely packed, etc. Loose-leaf oolongs are generally brewed a bit differently from black teas: instead of steeping a small amount (2-3g/8oz) once for a long time (3-5m), you steep a large amount (8g-12g/8oz) for a short period of time (1m or even less) and then resteep multiple times (3-5 or even more). I used to use a thermometer to get the temperature right, but it honestly doesn't matter: most oolongs brew at boiling or close enough to it.

[1] http://beta-blog.archagon.net/2015/12/26/the-perfect-travel-...

christophilus• 10 years ago

Oolongs are great. I'd be interested in knowing which one you have that tastes like coffee.

archagon5• 10 years ago

All three of the roasted Dong Ding oolongs I've tried have had that lingering coffee-like rich roasty bitterness — though I'm not a huge coffee drinker, so maybe somebody with more of a taste for coffee would disagree.

HillRat• 10 years ago

Try a pu'er -- incredibly dark, rich fermented teas. If you're in SF, Red Blossom Tea Company has a wonderful selection.

ceratopisan• 10 years ago

In all fairness, you can brew with larger amounts in shorter time and also resteep with black tea too, or I suppose green too.

"Get the leaves wet and drink the water" is really all you have to do for tea. All these other rules are just people saying how they like to have it, but you don't have to.

And yeah, oolong variety is not as well-known as it should be. Blame it on health-hype for green tea.

archagon5• 10 years ago

Sure, but my impression is that the taste does change depending on which way you brew it. Larger/shorter tends to really bring out the more subtle flavors, which oolongs have in abundance; meanwhile, traditional black teas like Darjeeling are so potent that going smaller/longer works best. (I've tried brewing those teas larger/shorter a few times and it was just too much for me!) I also think the # of possible resteeps is directly correlated to your brewing technique: smaller/longer sucks up most of the flavor in the initial brew, while larger/shorter leaves a lot of flavor for later infusions. (But I could be wrong about both of these things.)

cr18953• 10 years ago

A gram scale is highly recommended for getting the proportions right; a teaspoon can mean something completely different depending on whether your leaves are rolled into tight balls, loosely packed, etc.

Maybe this is why I find I brew them inconsistently. I take my coffee game very seriously, but I've never bothered to weigh tea. Maybe I should.

I learned another method for oolong tea from some Chinese coworkers called grandpa style. You leave a few oolong leaves in the bottom of your cup and just continuously top it off with hot water.

gwern• 10 years ago

I second the oolong recommendation. For those not in SF: you can get a remarkably wide variety of fairly priced oolong teas from Upton Tea (http://uptontea.com/) as well as all sorts of strange and exotic teas you probably have never heard of before (tea flower tea; kukicha; genmai-cha; pu'erh), and often they have a sample available for ~$3, so you can easily sample 20 or more teas in a single order of $60. I have used them for a decade now and I love them.

(One aspect their site is weak on is customer reviews. You can't review unless you order more than a sampler and they archive reviews regularly, so I keep mine on my own web page: http://www.gwern.net/Tea )

I don't think a gram scale is all that necessary since you can easily calibrate the amount to your liking, and I've gotten by fine without using one for years. It is helpful for side by side reviews so you can be sure you are comparing different teas favorably.

archagon5• 10 years ago

I just bought their Darjeeling and Assam samplers a few weeks ago! Good stuff. I've also had very good experiences with Mountain Tea[3] and Eco-Cha (specifically their rare tea club[4]).

I could get by without using a gram scale, but mostly I like having it around for peace of mind. I didn't figure out the right tea/water ratio for my oolongs until I started measuring them. It's also nice for when you have a particularly expensive or rare tea and you want to make sure that everything is perfect.

[3] http://www.mountaintea.com

[4] http://teaclub.eco-cha.com

agumonkey• 10 years ago

Maybe to compensate for mine. I'm afraid I have PGtipsis.

SeanCrawford• 10 years ago

I am of the generation that would say, "The redcoats are coming!" To us coffee seemed more manly, as in, what Earnest Hemingway would drink. Or soldiers.

Imagine my amusement in the 1970's when I was stationed with the British army and our mess halls had big vats of tea.

cyberferret3• 10 years ago

But wait - the hipsters have just discovered this brand new unheard of thing called 'matcha'... Soon trendy matcha bars will replace all the coffee shops in high street. And millions of people in the orient will smile as they sip their matcha tea like they have been for thousands of years...

forgetsusername• 10 years ago

the hipsters have just discovered this brand new unheard of thing called 'matcha'.

The "I did it before it was cool" mentality isn't much better.

aab02• 10 years ago

Strictly speaking, while tea may go back thousands of years, methods of preparation have varied drastically. For example, in _The Classic of Tea_, detailed instructions are given on how best to toast your tea brick over a fire before steeping it. I don't know about you, but I have never seen nor heard of anyone in the West or China or Japan toasting their tea in the past few centuries (even tea bricks are hardly seen anymore these days). And I'm not sure matcha existed more recently than the 1000s CE when predecessors were brought over from China.

ricksplat• 10 years ago

Coffee in the morning, tea in the morning, tea in the afternoon, tea in the evening. Coffee for work, tea with friends.

British tea consumption has been going down

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