I don’t think this is what the the OP is asking about though. That’s just a ‘break’. They have them in America. The OP seems to be thinking of a proper sit-down family session with tea and scones at the same time every afternoon, ‘Alice in Wonderland’ style. I don’t think that’s been the norm for decades.
Or you’ll end up with iced tea by default.
I don’t think that’s true - most Brits probably do have “proper coffee” in the house, but they’re unlikely to be in the habit of brewing it regularly - it’s just too much hassle. I’ll make a proper pot of coffee on weekend mornings, and maybe an espresso in the evening once in a while, but generally if I want a hot drink I’ll have tea or instant coffee. I actually quite like instant coffee - I know it’s not comparable to real coffee, but if you just think of it as an alternative hot drink in its own right, it’s quite pleasant IMHO.
University depts - especially science / tech - are reasonably likely to have “real” coffee available.
Plenty of labs have a coffee machine in the corner which is kept on the go during the day.
It’s worth noting that (arguably) the world’s first popular webcam was of a coffee machine in the Cambridge University computer lab.
We have a couple in our offices, but most people are fueled by instant coffee and it seems to do the trick.
The worst kind of coffee is that Cona stuff. This is the glass jug that sits on a hot-plate all day and gets fouler tasting as the day progresses. I prefer coffee out of a machine than that stuff.
I agree with Colophon, for everyday drinks around the home it’s instant. I do have both a proper electric espresso coffee machine (complete with milk frother), and one of those metal Italian espresso jugs that you heat-up on the stove. They are mainly used at the weekend.
I drink proper coffee daily using a cafetiere - no more trouble than instant and infinitely better than filter. And I’m a Brit!
The problem, I understand, with drinking tea in the US (and mainland Europe for that matter) is two fold:
a) the water isn’t hot enough to extract the flavour and
b) because tea is either drunk iced or hot without milk, it isn’t as strong as the stuff we Brits drink, so to us, it just tastes like ash. My partner always takes her own teabags abroad.
I’ve also been told that most US homes don’t have an electric kettle, which just seems bizarre to a Brit - in the UK, they’re as standard as having a fridge and a cooker.
??
I’m British. We have a Gaggia, which only gets used at weekends or if there’s someone over, a cafetiere, which is used if we want more than just an espresso, and a Moka. We have a variety of coffee in the freezer, but no instant coffee in the house at all. I drink it at my parents’ house; as someone said, if you think of it as a totally different drink, it’s palatable. It’s just not coffee.
**Great Philosopher **- don’t encourage them. The beer isn’t warm.
Electric? As in, you plug it in instead of heating it on the stove? I’ve never seen any like that. Doesn’t that take more time to heat?
Anyway, yeah - most American homes nowadays won’t even have the heat-on-the-stove type of kettle, let alone an electric one. If we want to heat a cup of water, it’s usually done in the microwave.
Electric kettles are much faster than heating water on a stove. Ours can boil a litre of water in a couple of minutes.
I have an electric kettle. I use it for hot water for tea and for making couscous right in the serving bowl, rather than dirtying a pot (unless I’m using stock or adding other stuff to it).
I think most will have had at some point (and maybe it’s languishing at the back of a cupboard somewhere).
Yes; about as common as chairs and walls. In fact, I’m not sure I’ve ever met someone without one!
Two ways ways the US surprised me in being more primitive than the UK:
- no electric kettles
- no decent washing machines (they almost all use top-loaders, which died out in the UK a long time ago)
As for tea, you will find tea at most places in the US. But since it doesn’t sell very quickly, it is likely to be quite stale: it will have been sitting on store shelves, followed by house shelves, for many months indeed.
The really hifalutin “let’s make everything into a gourmet version and a shitty version” thing the US does to everything (viz, beer) has happened to tea. You find really highbrow leaf teas in the US, but the bog standard cuppa is nowhere near the same standard. Less refreshing, somehow.
UK coffee generally sucks compared to US coffee. Pricier, too.
pdts
They boil water amazingly fast, then shut themselves off. We bought one a couple of years ago and now can’t see how we lived without it.
They also don’t make annoying sounds, and you don’t burn your hand on them.
pdts
That boggles my mind that most Americans don’t have electric kettles :eek:
Thinking of it as an entirely different beverage is fair, I guess. I think part of the common American distaste for it is that it’s kind of close to coffee, but at the same time decidedly different. You have your own idea of what Coffee will taste like, and if you’re used to brewed coffee it’s kind of unsettling to be handed a cup of coffee which is almost, but not quite, entirely unlike Coffee.
Hey now, some of us do. But again - most Americans are far more inclined to drink coffee than tea, so a coffee maker (particularly one with a timer so it brews automatically in the morning) is just a bit more convenient. I, on the other hand, am a terrible deviant who makes my coffee just a cup at a time with one of these, but also drinks a lot of tea, so a kettle is awfully handy. (Further proof that I’m a terrible deviant who has no place in civilized society, British or American: milk in tea is gross. Sugar’s okay. Lemon is okay in some black teas. Milk? Blargh.)
Of course, one reason that most Americans don’t own an electric kettle is that if you asked them why they don’t have one, they would say, “Say what? Tea is served over ice and with lemon. You don’t brew it. You make it with crystals from a jar that already include the lemon.”
I’d rather drink instant coffee than the 1 lb. cans of “fresh” Folgers arse-flavored coffee that seem to be the default throughout the US.
Lipton owns the teabag market here and if you thought Tetley was bad, you’d throw up a cup of US-market Lipton tea.
We were being served tea at my prep and secondary schools as late as 1996. Dunno what’s happened since.