How do Americans make tea?

[Janefx40]

Morning!!! We are in our AirBNB in the States and it's 5:30am. Just me and the baby up since 4am!

There are 3 different types of coffee machine - pod style, barista and caffetiere! But no kettle! But there are tea bags!!

Have tried using pod machine but have had to run it through 3 times to get rid of remnants of coffee. Surely there is a better way?

How do I make a cup of tea??

Vessel with the pestle... effing autocarrot...

boil water add bags or loose tea like most people do

when I lived in the US nobody drank black tea only fruit or herbal. It was only coffee. So I started drinking herbal. Pot on the stove.

This is why I always take a travel kettle and teabags with me out of the UK. I am allergic to coffee and don't function well without tea, preferably Yorkshire!

BTW never order tea in the US eating out, even if it's on the menu. It will only alarm and distress you.

Either drink their coffee (which is fine) or have a cold drink. Don't be tempted even if they claim to do afternoon tea or have kinds of tea or any other normal signal that they might know what tea is or how to make it. Even if you ask, the place will almost certainly have no boiling water at all anyway, as coffee machines only go to 90 degrees and they won't have a kettle.

They will invariably bring you a glum cup of lukewarm water with a teabag placed carefully on the saucer next to it. 😱

Last time we were in the USA our Airbnb had an electric kettle but it was a tragic little thing that took ages to boil.

Why are some people put off over using the microwave? Unless your microwave is filthy, it's not any different than heating on the stove

Stovetop kettle is the usual way

This is mind blowing. I knew they had lower voltage but never put 2+2 together.

I was recently staying with family in the US and I was silently seething every morning when waiting ten minutes for the kettle to boil. I thought they had just got used to the shitty kettle and didn’t realise how bloody slow it was. I was getting to the point of putting on the kettle, going upstairs to shower and then coming back down to flick it back on to make a tea.

I have other family who made me a cuppa in the microwave. I was a teenager and visibly appalled.

Water heated in the microwave tastes vile! Can anyone explain the science?

It's dangerous to actually boil water in the microwave. Water, just plain water, in a microwave is heated at the molecular level. The smooth sided container can prevent nucleation. This means there are pockets of superheated (over 100 degree ) water molecules, trapped under the surface tension. This can cause a boiling explosion when you move the mug.

In most cases, in fact people don't heat the water to boiling. This is why the tea tastes bad. When black tea is brewed at lower than boiling the caffeine and tannins do not extract into the water, so the tea tastes weak and flat.

Yeah it's not that the water tastes bad, it's just that it's not the optimal brewing temperature for tea.

Also, pouring just-boiled water from the kettle, or hot water from an urn, into a mug with a teabag in it agitates the tea much more than placing it into a non moving cup of water which has probably also already lost heat to the surrounding air.

BTW it's not really dangerous to boil water in the microwave - it's unlikely most normal mugs you have at home are perfectly smooth as the article claims. You can though apparently just boil it with a teaspoon in. This is not dangerous but I can never quite get past the fear of microwaving metal.

You've made my day ❤️ I love that film!

Go to Wal Mart and buy a stove-top kettle. That's what we did at the Air BnB we stayed in.

This is not dangerous but I can never quite get past the fear of microwaving metal.

The reason you "can't put metal in the microwave" is that on its own a metal item will act as an antenna for the microwaves and you can get sparking, and also because even without sparks it will get very hot indeed. If it's mostly immersed in water then the heat will dissipate into the mug, but the bit that is sticking out above the water can still be an antenna.

For some reason it seems to be OK to put tin foil in the microwave. For example, foil-lined takeaway food containers seem to be OK.

I remember seeing a video on Twitter (might have been from Tik Tok originally) of an American woman making “Tea”. It was possibly the most horrifying thing I’ve ever seen, practically grounds to declare War to be quite honest!

https://www.tiktok.com/@jchelle36/video/6835600438771846406?lang=en

That is a troll video though. It's designed to be annoying. Nobody makes tea like that. It looks like a pretend tea you'd make for a toddler who wants to be grown up like Mummy.

When I travelled around America it was really difficult to find a place that served a cup of tea! We finally spoke to someone who recommended we ask for "hot tea" with milk on the side. They drink a lot of coffee over there or cold tea. But yes it seems they microwave or use a pan to boil water.

They don't drink tea anywhere as much as Brits at least not hot tea, iced tea sweet yeah especially in the south. Coffee is way more popular.

For those who want tea they can get kettles easily but you will find more houses have coffee makers than kettles.

You realize that's a just trolling video right?

American here. I have 2 electric kettles and 2 stovetop kettles, plus my espresso machine has a hot water spout, so I have lots of options. It seems likely that at least one of the coffee machines has a hot water spout that bypasses the coffee, if you can find it. 🤷‍♀️

Exactly, here is the hot water option on our coffee machine. I find threads like this are just fishing for the standard Americans are this and that comments.

Obviously sarcasm doesn’t carry well in text form!

Yes I am aware that the video is trolling!

For the sake of clarity, my comment about it being grounds for War was also tongue in cheek!

It's little bits of metal like gilding on china which is the sparking problem.

My lower oven is a combined oven, grill and microwave and has a metal rack. It's fine.

I wouldn't particularly want to put a metal spoon in a mug of water while microwaving it just because it'd be likely to get very hot itself - I just stir it once it's out.

Family use the microwave.
For everything tbh

I had to go out and buy a new one when they were visiting as we hardly use ours and it was rusty inside! I hadn't even noticed until the first thing they did in the kitchen was start heating water up 🙈