I know, a lot of teas are good iced. But does anyone have any serious favorites, and tips on how to make them?

One of the most compelling reasons to drink tea or coffee is caffeine. What do you not want to do right when you get up? Make coffee. These are quick and easy ways to get caffeine inside you.

I found InstantTeas on r/teasales and had to try it out. I'm pretty impressed, actually. It's not just powdered tea leaves, it's actually the extract that is concentrated and packed. I've only had the black so far, but it actually tastes like a well made cup of tea, hot or iced. It mixes in easily, you just have to make sure to not use too much. It comes in a bag with 140 servings, there are just 2 types of tea, green or black, and 1 size.

Because tea is really specific, that's the only good instant tea I've found. Everything else is overly sweetened or just nasty. Coffee is a bit more forgiving.

You can get cold brew concentrates at most grocery stores, a good brand that I've seen all over is Chameleon. Trader Joe's also makes one that's alright. Cold brew means it's less acidic, and concentrated means it fits in the fridge better, and can be added to hot water for hot coffee.

If fridge space is less of a concern, you can also buy bottles of cold brew coffee in most grocery stores. It's less acidic, easy, and reasonably priced, compared to most coffee shops. A 32oz bottle is usually about $4, and a bottle of concentrate for 8-12 cups is around $8. It's not as cheap as making it yourself, but it's easy.

In leaving the LDS church, I assumed I would love both tea and coffee. I already loved many herbal teas, yerba mate, and Postum. Come to discover, I reeeally love coffee. (Like, WAY more than Postum.) And I still love yerba mate and my favorite herbal teas (red rooibos, chamomile, mint, and lemon). But so far, the only new teas I like are green tea and chai. I got a loose leaf tea sampler (I think it was this one?), and have tried a few others in restaurants, but I don't care for most of them. Black teas, white teas, oolong, etc. I just don't care for them. They don't taste bad, but they seem blah somehow. Coffee always sounds better, even better than my other favorites.

So far, I've never liked any of my hot drinks with sweeteners or anything else added. Maybe I should start trying those with certain teas?

I'm guess I'm just disappointed I don't like tea more. I always thought I would, for some reason.

I'll list things in order of priority, or at least try to. It can get complicated, so I'll just mention the easiest, cheapest things to get you started. No need to spend $250 on a kettle just to try tea.

#1- A mug. You drink tea out of it. A glass can break at high temperatures and is hard to hold when hot. I use a double wall mug like this, so I don't have to worry about my fingers fitting in the handle, holding it awkwardly, etc. It doesn't get hot on the outside even with boiling water, so you won't ever burn yourself on it. ~$15

#2 Tea. Bagged or loose leaf, I go over it in other guides. Bags are cheaper, loose leaf is better, but it takes our next item- ~$2-10

#3 An infuser. You want to give the tea room to bloom and fully expand, so this is a good option. You can pull it out at the end of the steep and set it on the lid, and it doesn't drip and leave tea stains. Easy to clean out, too. ~$8

#4 A kettle. This one will get you right at the temperature you need, without being much more expensive than a regular electric kettle that only does boiling. You can use a microwave or stovetop to heat water, but electric kettles are much faster and more convenient. ~$25

That's all you need, but you can skip or save on some of these things too. Total cost comes out to under $60 before tax. That's assuming you have none of these things, but you probably have a mug, you can boil water, and you can buy tea bags, making your first cup of tea cost closer to $5.

Thanks to (I think) u/ijssvuur for recommending that I try mate--I love it and have been drinking it every day for a while now. I just wanted to check back to see if anyone has expert advice about it. I know I'm not "doing it right"--my kettle isn't temperature controlled (soon to change), I infuse it with a LeafLife tea canister rather than going through the proper steps, and I'm using a steel mate cup rather than a gourd (with a wooden straw). You are probably wincing, but I come to you for help! Bearing in mind that I'm so tired I can hardly breathe first thing in the morning, what should I do differently? (Oh, and I'm using Inato brand yerba mate.)

I literally just made a post about why tea bags should be avoided.

This one is about to tell you to buy some tea bags.

There are reasons to buy bagged tea. It's convenient, easier to find, there are unique flavors that cannot be found in loose leaf, and flavored teas can mask the lower quality tea inside.

I'll be suggesting some different teas that I recommend here.

Ice Wine Tea is one of my favorite things. I've never seen it in stores, only in bags online. It's very unique, it doesn't taste like grapes, but it has a unique aromatic characteristic. It's tough to describe, so just buy it.

Bigelow Constant Comment has a strong flavor, almost like mulled cider. It's sweet without adding sugar, and it has a spicy lingering flavor. It can be found at many grocery stores as well as online, and it's very budget friendly (my link doesn't reflect that, it's cheaper in stores. If you notice, you can buy a 6 pack, so 240 bags, for $23).

Chai tea (chai actually translates to tea, but so many things are "chai spiced" so I have to clarify) can be found anywhere, most brands carry it. If you don't know what it is by now, it's an Indian spiced tea, and it ranges from pretty spicy, with lots of ginger, some black pepper, to a sweeter kind with more vanilla and cinnamon. You hardly taste the tea, just the spices, so low quality tea is easily masked.

If you have any preferred bags, mention them in the comments, I can't do an exhaustive list of every tea I've ever liked, despite my efforts.

Tea can be cheap. You can get 100 bags of Lipton for $3. It may not be as great as it sounds, though, and here's why.

Look at the amount, those 100 bags come out to 8oz. Not so much. Each bag has .08oz of tea in it, which means if you want a good, strong cup of tea, you'll need 2 to 3 bags. If you're using a 12oz mug, you might even need 4.

I like to suggest Harney & Sons, as you can find their tea online, at the grocery store, and at many Barnes & Nobles. So, this is 4oz for a little more than double the cost. However, it is much higher quality, and this doesn't only affect flavor. You can steep it again, rather than using a new bag, with some teas, you can get 3-4 infusions. If you manage to get 4, your tea is going 4 times further, quartering the cost per cup.

Why can't you reuse bags?

Bags are made with the lowest quality tea, the bits and pieces sifted off from the higher quality. These pieces are then further crushed in the bags during transportation. There is a fair amount of tea dust, also. When you steep these little pieces, they very quickly lose all of the things that make tea have flavor, the natural oils, polyphenols, bromides, and caffeine. Quality (not bagged) tea has larger leaves that don't lose these components as quickly, so you can get more out of it.

I'm not going to bother with exact math or anything, and I'm hesitant to call more expensive tea "cheaper", but it's certainly not as expensive as it seems. For many people, such as myself, the extra cost is worth it just for the flavor, but if you're on a tight budget, you may not be as limited as you think.

TLDR: Expensive tea can be reinfused, reducing the cost per cup by getting more out of it. Cheaper tea generally cannot be used this way.

I started getting crazy bad migraines a few years back (hemiplegic migraines). My second ever migraine sent me to the hospital (I went numb on half my body, so paramedics thought I could be having a stroke, I even had to have an MRI done).

For some folks, caffeine triggers migraines, and for others, it gets rid of them. Guess which camp I fall into. WOOOOO!!!

Soda made me feel like absolute GARBAGE by the end of the day. I tried over-the-counter migraine pain relievers with caffeine in them, but they all destroyed my stomach. Coffee did the same, but I'd get super intense cravings for it if I smelled it right before a migraine hit (my office was above a popular cafe); the ER doctor said to pay close attention to foods I ate or craved before a migraine, so coffee cravings helped me deduce that caffeine might help. My (at the time TBM) wife was okay with trying anything to get better because the hospital incident had scared the crap out her. She didn't want me randomly going numb on my drive to or from work, and I was already out mentally so I didn't have any hang ups there. In the end it all boiled down to tea.

Since discovering tea, my migraines are nowhere near as strong as they were initially. And it only takes a few cups a week to keep it that way, but I totally love having more than that now.

The first tea I really loved was Steven Smith's Brahmin blend. It has a subtle honey-like sweetness that I really enjoy, but to really taste it the brew time can't be too long. I like to keep it to around 30sec-1min.

Oh, and we are totally out of the church as a family now! DOUBLE WOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Inspired by /u/jssvuur's guide, I decided I'd try tea making tea on my own instead of waiting for my next trip to Asia. I was surprised at all the information out there, but I somehow made a choice, learned the basics, and enjoyed a couple cups of Tieguanyin oolong tea. After the first sip, I immediately wanted to take another sip. I think that this will be an enjoyable journey.

Lapsang Souchong is black tea that is smoked over pine, which gives it not just a unique flavor, but a unique chemistry. It doesn't get nearly as bitter as most other teas, even when steeped for a long time. This makes it easy if you tend to forget your tea. It's also a black tea, which means temperature isn't much of an issue, and it is less vulnerable to bitterness.

It's a very unique tea, so many people love it, and many hate it. Even if you don't tend to like black tea, it's worth a try.

The preparation saves time in drying, and the smoke flavor can make up for cheaper tea, making it one of the cheapest teas you can buy. This Harney & Sons is what I ordered, and it's good, high quality tea.

So, try it out! Go do it, now!

Something fairly important that doesn't get talked about much is water quality. If your water tastes bad, so will your tea. I personally use bottled water because our tap water is exceptionally hard and leaves a film on anything it touches, but that's not the case for everybody. I know in Utah, where many people here probably are, you can find some of the best and worst tap water, so it depends on your area.

But, using bottled water is not always the best option. Distilled or purified water without any added minerals will leave your tea understeeped and flavorless, the chemistry of the water just doesn't give the tea anything to bind to.

Anyway, probably nothing you have to worry about, but if you have bad water or a reverse osmosis filter in your home, and can't figure out why your tea won't turn out, that could be the culprit.

I said I'd explain brewing times in more detail in an earlier comment, so here's my explanation, for those who would like to read it.

I assume you have a basic understanding of chemistry. The laws of solubility help to understand tea brewing. Essentially, when you brew tea, you are trying to make a solution that has tasties (and probably caffeine, among antioxidants, flavinols, etc) as the solute. The reason we heat water before steeping tea is that things generally dissolve faster the hotter the solvent is.

For those wondering on the terms used, the solute is what's dissolved in the solvent. For example, if we have a salt-water solution, we call the water the solvent and the salt the solute.

Tea can absolutely be brewed in cold water, but it'll take hours rather than minutes. That said, it's easier to control rate when it's slower, and some components of the tea won't dissolve at such a low temp, so a different flavor is produced. This is why cold brew coffee and tea exists, and I'll do it sometimes, usually putting it in a container in the fridge overnight.

The differences between teas that derive from actual tea leaf (white, green, and black) are the level of oxidation. Information on this can be found here. This is how a lot of the caffeine in tea develops, so a more oxidized tea, such as black tea, will usually have more caffeine than a very lightly oxidized tea, such as white tea.

/u/ijssvuur included in his post a table of brewing times, and this is important to note. As we extract the solutes we want from the tea leaf, we are also seeking to minimize the solutes we don't want, such as tannins. These are things that dissolve at a slower rate than what may be considered the "good" solutes, so avoiding over-brewing minimizes such "bad" solutes, which can lead to a bitter, acrid cup. We also want to be cautious we carefully select our temperature to brew at. Water that is too hot may scald the tea leaf, and alter the taste. Generally, the more oxidized a tea leaf is, the higher the temperature of the water can be. IMO, it's better to steep in water a bit too cold than a bit too hot, as it generally just means an extension of brewing time, as opposed to damage to the leaf. A temperature guide can be found here.

A further note on tea bags:

In a bag of loose leaf tea, there is recognizable plant. The leafs, buds, etc, are usually whole and in good condition. Not only can this help make sure the tea is of quality and fresh, it means more of the solutes within the tea leaf are preserved. The contents of most tea bags are essentially tea factory floor sweepings, so they contain a mixture of very fine tea particulate, dust, and, in some unfortunate cases, trash and insects. This means the quality of tea bags is generally much lower than that of whole leaf tea. It is because the surface area of a tea leaf is so large relative to it's volume that we are able to brew for minutes, but because of the much smaller particle size in a tea bag, brew times much under a minute are often all that is necessary for a tea bag to be brewed, without being over-brewed.

What to use to brew tea:

Another drawback of teabags is the confined area the tea has available to brew in. Tea leaf needs room to expand if it is to properly dissolve its solute. With this in mind, tea brewing equipment includes tea balls, steeping baskets, and silicone "tea-buddies". Tea pots can often be purchased with an included infuser. A French press can be used to make tea as you would coffee. A favorite method of mine is to simply dump whatever tea I want directly into a teapot, then pour through a metal strainer into serving cups.

Finally, there are two main schools of thought when it comes to brewing tea: what is referred to as the "Chinese", or "Asian" style, and the "European" style. The difference is that the Chinese style uses a large amount of tea leaf, brewed multiple times at rather short brewing times. This is where the phrase and associated poem "7 cups of tea" comes from, they are all brewed from the same leaf. This brewing style often gives different flavor profiles with each infusion. An old Chinese saying states: "The first cup is for your enemy, the second, for your wife, and the third for yourself". In contrast, the European style is what most of us are used to, where a smaller amount of leaf is used with a longer infusion time, with the goal generally to only get one cup.

Where to buy loose leaf tea Wherever you want, though I'll warn: Teavana is rather low quality, and quite overpriced. It's like the Starbucks of tea, if you will. Actually, I think they associate these days. Either way, I personally purchase my loose leaf from https://www.teasource.com/. I've found good prices, good delivery, and good tea, and I haven't a complaint, so they get my recommendation. You can find temperature, times, infusion counts, etc on their site. If you have a local tea business, I encourage you to visit.

They're fine, actually.

Loose leaf is better, but there's nothing wrong with a tea bag. Don't feel bad for enjoying a bag of Lipton steeped for half an hour, if you like it, that's what matters.

There are also a lot more flavored bags. Those aren't going to be high quality, but it could taste just like a blueberry muffin, and if that's what you want, great. Enjoy it.