It’s served warmer than lager (which is practically frozen the way they serve it at some bars here in the US), but it’s not quite room temperature, unless you live in a particularly cool house. It’s cellar temp, which is about 50-55F. Americans have the popular idea that real ales in England are served at actual 70F-75F room temperature. This is assuredly not the case in my experience. The beer is cool to the lips, but not ice cold.
What exactly will you be doing? I ask because in my experience, academic science laboratories are possibly one of the last places where tea breaks still happen. Not the classic cucumber sandwich, scone with jam for over an hour type, but everyone does at least stop work together to drink tea for 15-20 minutes. Coffee is allowable as an alternative, but may or may not live up to US standards. Usually there is one mid-morning and one mid-afternoon.
Unfortunately if you will actually be going to lectures rather than doing research, you’ll be lucky to a get a five minute break to grab coffee to keep you awake for the last hour or two.
Aha. The OP should be aware that - I believe - what rekkah means by “may or may not live up to US standards” is “quite likely to be instant coffee”. Instant coffee is by and large seen as a perfectly respectable alternative to actual coffee in the UK, which can be…surprising to an American.
(By surprising I mean horrifying.)
Well, yes; and we think the same when we try to get a decent cup of tea over there! Different places, different tastes, different priorities. Only really insecure people would try to place a value of one over the other.
Really? In my experience most people here drink tea bags, the highest selling brand being Tetleys. If that’s our standard, I find it hard to believe even the Yanks could mess it up. 
In America beer is consumed ice cold so anything served at room temperature would be sent back. There is even a gimmicky brewing process called fractional freezing which led to a an ice-beer marketing war back in the 90’s.
Oh god. You just made me cough up my pancreas thinking of only instant coffee for a week. As for what I’m doing there, meeting with the Ph.D. student for a meet and greet and meeting with my doctoral supervisors over a couple days.
Whats worse for me is I hear you have to go to a specialty import store to get real Mountain Dew. If I ever head over it’ll be tea (and cider) for me.
Damn you sir! ! ! ! ! yes I’m that angry !
Afternoon tea is taken at FOUR of the clock, not three.
You sir are a cad, a bounder, definitely a working class oaf, probably shoots foxes for a hobby and no doubt would mention a ladies name in conversation after the Port has been passed around.
I just hope that you now do the decent thing.
We’re British dammit.
I live in Kenilworth - my wife’s a post-grad student at Warwick 
If you’d like any specific info on the area let me know.
Will you be staying at the Holiday Inn?
As much as I hate to say it, Starbucks has had franchises in the UK for over a decade now. Odds are there will be at least one near any major university, or if not Starbucks there will be another major chain such as Costa Coffee or Caffe Nero. You’ll have a much harder time finding a place that serves loose-leaf tea than you will finding a cappuccino.
If Saint Cad is staying in the Holiday Inn in Kenilworth he/she’s in luck, as there is a Starbucks in the hotel.
We also have a Costa coffee 2 mins walk into town.
There are also several pubs nearby that will serve a decent cappucino or filter coffee (e.g. The Almanac just over the road).
Beer served at room temperature would be sent back in the UK too. As stated above, bitter/ale is served at cellar temperature (around 12C/54F). Lager is, of course, served chilled (although perhaps a degree or two less chilled than you might find it in America).
Oh but they can! Tea bags, regardless of what the snobs say, can produce a perfectly good cup of tea - but, like leaf tea, you have to use boiling water, as in proper, fresh-out-of-the-kettle-just-as-it-clicks-off boiling.
Putting hottish water in a cold cup in a hotel kitchen, then putting it on a saucer with a wrapped tea bag on the side, then carrying it out to the customer thus letting it cool down even more before the tea bag is even put into the water, does not result in a good cup of tea.
Yes; but in my experience if in an American’s house and they offer you a drink, asking for a cup of tea will probably not result in a cup of tea - because they’re unlikely to have the tea bags in the house.
Exactly the same as the point about coffee in the UK. It’s not that the coffee doesn’t physically exist here, it’s just that most people are unlikely to have non-instant coffee in the house.
This place is where I go when I’m nostalgic for Chex Mix and Butterfingers.
Not quite accurate. Anywhere with a strong union would ensure that their members had a tea break mid afternoon. In factories and shipyards the workers would at a fixed time every day put down their tools and have tea.
Thatcher put a stop to that sort of thing, bless her.
Your political slam is ignorant and incorrect. I was enjoying morning and PM tea-breaks into the late 90s. That’s long after the Thatcher era. Including at a Tory County Council. IME they disappeared in about 2000.
Of course, the three-pint lunch also died about then. It’s amazing the British accomplished anything back then.
At a fixed time every day? Regardless of whether work is currently busy or quiet?