Oh, I’m all about the coffee. Tea can gently waft you into consciousness in the morning, but coffee provides the rocket to alertitude. Coffee makes me feel like Zeus. Coffee hits me in the brain as soon as I smell the ground beans, or the fresh brew, or the infused chocolate-chip cookies, or the spoonful of freebased caffeine ready for injection.
Coffee smells heavenly and tastes pretty good on occasion, but it always leaves me jittery and often makes me sick to my stomach.
Tea, on the other hand, is just lovely. And even when I can’t have caffeine, there’s herbal tea (orange is my favorite), and when I can’t sleep, Celestial Seasoning’s “Sleepy Time Tea” is just perfect.
I regularly drink both–a small pot of green tea early in the morning, and later two to three cups of coffee through the course of the day. I started drinking the tea because I heard it was good for you in a lot of ways, and because the negligible caffeine content wouldn’t mean that I’d have to reduce my coffee intake. Once in a while, though, I’ll drink black tea instead of green, and I notice my desire for coffee is much reduced later in the day.
Tastewise I prefer coffee over tea. I like the noticing how the different varieties taste, and each week buy a different variety from Diedrich’s. When I want a caffeine drink, coffee is what I normally turn to. But tea is somehow better inside; if I have a cold or headache, tea seems to soothe it in a way that coffee can’t.
Oh, I’ve had good tea, from a Turkish Sufi teahouse, and in England at high tea with the queen. (Okay, maybe not with the queen, but it was still excellent stuff). I sneer not at tea. It’s just not coffee, is all.
If you want superior drip-coffee experience, I recommend Batdorf and Bronson, a roastery out of Olympia, Washington. Their coffee is exquisite, absolutely exquisite.
Gunpowder is cheap but fantastic! Buy in smallish quantities, as this stuff really makes big mugs with just a little leaf. It has a smoky quality and deep flavor. If you’ve thought that green is wimpier than black, this will change your mind.
Their lapsang souchong is to die for. Warning! High caffeine content.
Their white peony is simply magnificent. Believe or no, but it has a chocolatey flavor.
Their yunang gold is da bomb. Powerful, spicy, full, floral–you won’t believe it.
One note of caution. Their teas come in special cans, but I have found that the lids are not quite tight enough. I would put the tea in a standard can with a tight lid if you can. This applies mostly to more humid climates, however; we were in Japan.
Another great site is www.imperialtea.com. Their monkey-picked Oolong is simply incredible (I got it as a sample; it is really expensive!). If you want a good selection of exotic Chinese greens, this is the place. Their black Sichuan is a whole other type of black tea that you’ll probably never try unless you, well, try. Buy it!
One caveat about this site, however: Their packaging sucks. I would advise against ordering jasmine or other flavored teas because the strong smell is likely to contaminate other teas in your box.
“Chocolate tea” is something they drink in India. Once, though, I looked at a package of it which someone had brought from India, and found that it’s actually some dark tea that’s flavored with vanillin, an artificial flavoring. The vanillin gives the illusion of a sweet candy sort of taste, and tricks the brain into thinking chocolate.