My daughter gave me a Keurig for Christmas so my husband could get his coffee (which I don’t drink) and I could drink tea (which I’ve enjoyed when we have visited England). She bought me a box of Earl Grey cups, and it doesn’t taste like anything I had in England, and actually seems to have an odd, foul taste. I know there are some recent threads on tea, but the ones I’ve found are more about how do you like your tea. Can anyone steer me to a nice black tea that tastes like tea, and not some spice?
Get either the Irish or English Breakfast. Standard black teas with no added flavors.
You should probably go for one of the English Breakfast types; they have a couple brands. A Keurig will produce a substance almost, but not quite, entirely …
sorry. I don’t like it, but that doesn’t mean you won’t.
Bigelow and Twinings both make basic ‘English Breakfast’ blends for the Keurig. Tazo is now also in the business of making Keurig cups and has an ‘Awake’ blend that seems to be an English-type tea. I like the Bigelow, personally, but the Twinings is also good.
I’ve found using the Keurig for coffee tends to put a serious off taste into the tea. I’m not, in general, a huge fan of the Keurig machines as (IMO) there are limits to how much fresh tea taste you can get from one of those prepacked cups. Opinions may differ but I don’t think you are going to get a true, fresh tasting Earl Grey like tea out of that machine.
Personally, I don’t like the tea K-cups so well… I just take out the K-cup and set it on a cycle anyway (you will have to open and close it if it’s empty, for the machine to think you’re adding a cup), and use the hot water with a teabag. It’s probably not exactly the right temperature but it is super quick. I do like K-cup coffee though.
This shouldn’t be a problem if you do a Rinse before each cup of tea. Since the coffee grounds are contained in the little cup, they don’t flavor the various parts of the machine itself.
That said, I like my Keurig for tea only for convenience (I want a cup of herbal tea before bed and I don’t want to boil water) more than taste. After the novelty and ease of use wore off, the black tea is generally weaker than I like it, and there isn’t much to you do about it except use more (expensive) K-cups.
You can, by the way, buy little filters that fit into the “make your own cup” holder and use your own tea. But the process just isn’t the best for good black tea. Tea needs to float around in the hot water to steep properly, and in a Keurig it can’t.
Roddy
I’ve been using one of those so I can use my old non Keurig coffee in the new (for Christmas) Keurig maker. I have no opinion on using it for tea, as I don’t drink the stuff, but for coffee it works well enough.
Why would you use one of the K-cup machines to make tea? The procedure for making regular tea is boil water, add tea bag. There’s no third step.
Because you don’t have to boil water. I use it when I don’t want to go to that much trouble. 
I use it so I can tell my daughter how much I use it and enjoy it! Otherwise I stick a Pyrex measuring cup wailed with water in the microwave for 4 minutes or so, then stick a tea bag in it, and that works, too. You can tell I’m not a tea expert, can’t you?
I always run my Keurig through a cycle(just water) between coffee and tea making. It helps get rid of that coffee taste in the tea.
I no longer buy the individual K cups for tea–stuff’s expensive. I bought a plastic K cup at Bed, Bath and Beyond and just stick a Twining’s teabag inside it. I do run both an 8 oz and then a 6 oz through the same teabag to get my large mug filled. It works fine. It’s much cheaper to do it this way as well. (this does not work for coffee, even with the tiny coffee filters they sell. I don’t drink coffee, but the 2 coffee addicts in the house say anything but the K cups suck for coffee in the Keurig).
It probably wouldn’t satisfy a tea connoisseur, but if you just want a quick cuppa, go for it.
This. 100%. Don’t buy the k-cup teas they’re terrible, but you can use the machine as a source of convenient hot water for other teas.
If you go to the Keurig website, they have a ton of different teas WITH reviews. I’m partial to the Gloria Jean’s Earl Grey (and Bigelow’s Green Tea) but if you’re not a fan of Earl Grey, definitely try English Breakfast as others have suggested.
Oh, also join Club Keurig, discounts and free stuff!
Average retail for Kureig is about $.40 a cup. It’s way expensive. I’ve heard nothing but bad things about the use-your-own-coffee-cups.
My VP at my company bought our group a Keurig for Christmas. Gee thanks, for giving the gift that’s going to cost us money. We used to use a cone drip cocffee maker and take turns buying ‘good’ coffee for it.
Maybe. I tried this at work, and it sprayed hundred year old coffee grinds that had somehow snuck their way out into the k-cup holder over the course of time. Minus the k-cup, they joined the water and appeared in my tea, floating on top.
If you did this regularly, it might help to keep the chamber clean, though.
On mine you can remove that part of the machine so you can rinse it out or whatever. I dunno if it’s dishwasher safe, but you do need to exercise caution due to the “needle” in there to puncture the bottom of the cup.
I assume it’s part of the universal design, since the little adapter I got to use with regular non-Keurig coffee requires you to pull out the little part before you can slide it in.
I wonder what would happen if you just took that part out and didn’t put anything in its place and tried to heat some water… either yay clean hot water or boo huge hot flood on the counter, I suppose. 
When I got my Keurig I cut the bags of my tea bags and dumped them all in a Tupperware tub. I just use the “brew your own” drop in for the Keurig and experimented with the amounts for a few cups until I got it where I wanted.
I’ll have to ask my wife how the tea tastes. We’ve had a Keurig for two or three years now and love it. Of course, we had to find good K-cups (the green mountain stuff is AWFUL)…I have settled into a rotation of Coffee People Black Tiger, Diedrich’s French Roast, Emeril’s Big Easy Bold and Newman’s Special bold. We also pick up some of the Caribou cups. On the tea side, my wife will occasionally try some of the dedicated teas, and I’ll have to ask her what works best and post again later, but she often uses the machine just for a cup of hot water and uses a tea bag.
As to the cost, I think for coffee anyway we have probably come close to breaking even with drip. We used to waste a whole lot of coffee before the Keurig. I’d want a cup before work, and since you can’t make a single cup without it tasting awful, I’d have to make ‘4 cups’ (or two real mugs) at a minimum, and usually that second mugful would go down the drain. On the weekends we’d often brew a second pot and have one or two cups out of it and toss the rest. Became pretty wasteful. At least now we aren’t brewing it for the sink.