A few days ago, Gordon said, “Look at these pretty cups.” I came to look, and indeed the cups were very pretty. That’s where it ended except that said cups now arrived in the mail and were presented to me by my husband as a surprise.
I’m drinking Zhang Autumn Oolong from Verdant Tea, brewed at 180 degrees out of my new fancy cup, and it is delicious and light. Oolongs are an acquired taste, like grapefruit, but right now they are hitting the spot. I really like the roasted varieties.
Gordon doesn’t drink tea, but he drinks coffee, the normal variety in the morning, and we both drink decaff at night. We go through a lot of HEB coffee. Mmm, Bavarian Hazelnut…
It’s become a little ritual. I know the workday is over when I get a cup of decaff at night and sip it, while playing computers games.
We usually buy whole bean, and we’ve been using the simple coffee grinders to grind it, like this Mr. Coffee one.
Gordon decided he wanted to upgrade, so we bought this.
We hate it. It is incredibly loud, like a jet taking off, it takes forever, and it doesn’t seem to actually grind enough coffee. Even when set to maximum capacity of 18 cups, it makes less than 1/4 cup of ground coffee. I have to grind repeatedly and the noise level is insane. This morning, I got up first and reached right for the old grinder, because the entire point of making coffee before your spouse gets up is to surprise them with hot coffee, not jolt them out of their sleep with a sawmill in your kitchen.
The grinder was expensive at $60, and I would return it, except that there is nothing technically wrong with it. It just sucks. Loudly. Maybe it’s defective and we just don’t know? Anyhow, do not recommend. We’ll have to find an alternative.
What are your hot drink preferences?
I’m a tea drinker. Currently drinking Chocolate Hazelnut from Stash that my mom gave me for Christmas. Feels like a guilt free treat. My morning go to is a nice Earl Grey.
Earl Grey. Has been my tea of choice for decades. I might switch to a green tea from time to time, but to properly start my day, I need my huge pot full of Earl Grey. ^^
It sounds to me like the one you have is defective–probably worth doing a return. There’s no way something that says it’s grinding for 18 cups is working correctly if it makes that little!
I’m a tea person, too, but I can’t handle caffeine, so I guess more accurately I’m a tisane person :-). I can do white teas, but I have only found a couple I actually like. I tend to like spicier flavor profiles, but sweet is nice sometimes, as is fruity. Depends on mood!
My brother got me hooked on a ritual of my own: an Italian Bialetti Moka pot to brew a fresh cup of espresso in, and a double-mesh-screen frother for the oatmilk. I adore the taste of it! And I am now the proud owner of 2 different Bialetti Moka pots, one small and one enormous, and a third one medium sized, from Luxhaus. I actually use regularly ground coffee often, so I don’t destroy my innards, and I, too, have a jet-powered grinder from the Zon, although a different model! It’s such an treat for me to go through the ritual of making the Moka pot and frothing the milk (I’ve managed to give up half and half entirely—yay!)… I even do a decaf one sometimes in the evening! Sidenote: interesting history behind the word Moka and the city, and trade history of coffee! ????????
English Breakfast, Irish Breakfast for caffeine in the morning. Celestial Seasoning herbal tea in the evening. Hot Chocolate as a special treat. Hot cider as a general indulging.
Regular coffee until about 2pm, then bone broth or decaf. I like the idea of having a specific hot drink to end the workday–particularly now that I’m working from home some days.
I also grind my own beans. I love my grinder. (SHARDOR Coffee Grinder Electric,… https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07FPDJ1FK?ref=ppx_pop_mob_ap_share)
Tea all the way. The only time I like anything about coffee is when roasted beans are being ground, and then it’s the aroma, NOT the noise. I used to work down the road from a coffee company, and roasting was lots of fun unless it was French Ground, which always smelled burnt to me. Hell, I hate to vacuum due to the noise factor!
I have a teeny Braun coffee grinder, which is not ever used for coffee. It’s hella loud. It gets spices, dried chilies, and sometimes nuts.
My most common morning tea is a blend of Irish Breakfast and Celestial Seasons Lemon Zinger, and evening tea (because I have sleep issues) is a valerian root with Tazo Wild Sweet Orange. But I like most teas, as long as there isn’t any floral, which always tastes like soap to me.
My husband bought a coffee maker a few months ago and has been making noises about getting a grinder for the beans. I get ill from loud noises, so it sounds like that little one from Target might be the way to go.
I grew up in the Caribbean where it is hot and beautiful year round. But a side effect of our country once being a British Colony was that tea drinking and tea time were part of the daily ritual. In the morning with breakfast hot tea. Hot Tea and biscuits as a snack around 10am and the tea with supper before bed.
I hated it, because the tea was hot and I was hot and we had no air conditioning back in those days.
Now I only drink tea if Im sick and its really a concoction that my dad made. Orange peels, brewed with sticks of cinnamon and a dash honey. For some reason it made me feel better and still does.
I drink coffee now around lunch time for a kick of energy but its so loaded with creamer and sugar I dont really think it counts.
We use this Cuisinart. Grinds a week’s worth of coffee for is (now wonders how strong you drink your coffee in Texas?) But the grinder is loud. We use it as an extra alarm clock for the layabeds.
I am French so in the morning, I drink a large mug of coffee with milk while eating slices of frrnch bread, butter and jam.
During the day it’s black coffee without sugar, like Roman.
I order my coffee from a Parisian roaster Cafés Pfaff. So delicious.
I drink way too much coffee…
I do not drink caffeine, really. I drink a lot of tea. I am a big fan of a decaff earl gray. Right now, my favorites are Harney and Sons’ Wonderful Things–it’s earl grayish but more. I also love Stash’s Christmas in Paris (Chocolate, Lavender, and Mint) because it is tea but also a treat.
1. Can Gordon find me a similar sugar bowl? Pretty pink glass with a lid. Not quite the pattern you have. Something abit more flowery. (Lol – I am kidding, my search continues.)
2. I’ve had my first and only coffee grinder for 20+ years. Quisinart. Everyone nags me to get a new one “the blades have to be dull!” No, they are not. They work great. I’ve never had a problem. Fairly quiet and fast.
Etsy has some pretty reproduction vintage glassware. A quick search threw up this offering:
https://www.etsy.com/listing/1259760666/
Your grinder is defective. My sister has one, and while it’s definitely loud, it also grinds the amount you ask for.
red vanilla tea in the mornings and hot chocolate at night. my daughter and I curl up with books and hot cocoa in the evenings and it’s fantastic ????
Hot Cocoa! Additionally, for tea, I prefer Jasmine Tea.
Irish breakfast tea and Darjeeling tea are my personal favorites.
We also grind our coffee with a burr grinder. We have had two Bodums and love them – the first lasted for 10 years (we got it as a wedding present). Went with a replacement Oxo that is loud and screechy, hated it, and bought another Bodum which is quieter and delightful. We kept both to have separate grinders for decaf and caf but would highly recommend the Bodum.
I love lemonade in the summer and a cup of chamomile in the winter with a hint of raw honey in the bottom. I also like real tea when I need the caffeine and also prefer that with a bit of honey.
Harney and Sons Earl Grey Supreme tea first thing in the morning. My togo mug for work is HEB Texas Pecan or San Antonio coffee with Natural Bliss sweet cream creamer.
Mmm the pecan! (the blue bag, right?) I can just stand in the kitchen smelling that one.
I don’t like coffee and my mom drinks instant, so that is the type I know how to make best. If I have to run the Mr. Coffee at work, I have to ask how to make it or follow the directions on the back of the coffee can. I like Black or Breakfast teas best in the morning. Tazo, Biglow Coconut Almond Bark, or Twinings Ginger Joy. I also enjoy a variety of Chai blends especially Pumpkin Spice during the fall. Pepsi at lunch and then decaf or hibiscus tea in the afternoon. I’m getting old too much caffeine will keep me up at night now.
I have that same grinder and it is loud, my husband hates it, but I grind a bag at a time which I store in a steel airtight canister so I only grind every 10 days to 2 weeks. I grind mine halfway between medium and fine but I do pour over to make my coffee. The Cuisinart is a bur grinder, a low end one but best way to grind coffee for maximum flavor.
Coffee & tea….I have a Nespresso b/c I’m the only coffee drinker….but now I what to try your oolong…..I love oolongs and orange pekoe…..
Hot coffee. Really hot. With flavored creamer. Absolutely loved International Delight White Chocolate Raspberry ❤️❤️
Coffee, and then More coffee!
Burr grinders are simply loud. Some folks prefer them and SWEAR the coffee is better from that grinder but America’s Test Kitchen testing showed that there’s no difference in the resulting flavor of your brew in blind taste testing – so stick with the old stand by if that’s your preference. Also – return (or re-gift) the expensive grinder!
I love both tea and coffee. That said, I start my day with coffee and many times don’t “deal” with making tea later in the day. One day I will get a nice Zojirushi “too expensive” hot pot to keep water at the perfect tea making temp and THEN I won’t have any excuse not to take the time to enjoy afternoon and evening tea!
I alternate between spiced apple cider, herbal teas (I love all the mints!! I found a chocolate nibs and mint that is delicious) CrióBru with Lairds functional mushroom creamer and my mushroom coffee.
I drink the mushroom coffee every morning. It’s from Everyday Dose. It tastes exactly like coffee with like 10% of the actual caffeine that’s in coffee. Caffeine exacerbates some of my medical conditions but I like my coffee sooo. It’s got a bunch of functional mushrooms in it and I pair it with Lairds coconut and mushroom creamer and a couple drops of liquid stevia. Sooooooo creamy and I can make it sweet or not depending on my mood. I love it. It’s really an obsession!
Ahmad English No. 1 or English breakfast tea. So good.
Your cup is lovely.
I have an odd morning ritual, but I’m not a morning person and I have to get a toddler and a 10 month old ready for daycare and out the door by 7:15. The minute I wake up a down a mountain dew for the hit of sugar and caffeine. Then I get everyone out the door and have time to make a cup of hot tea before I have to log into work. I’ve been in love with Harney and Sons All India Blend. It’s not complicated but it’s a good strong tea for the morning. For the evenings I love Meditative Mind, a white tea and rose blend to relax after the kids go to bed.
I have the same exact grinder and I love it. I would return yours. it definitely sounds defective
I have that grinder as well and while it is extremely loud, we do get the correct amount of coffee. When I was looking at reviews before we bought it. It mentioned sometimes the grinder deposits the ground coffee inside the casing, instead of it getting to the hopper (Something about the design).
We brew our coffee strong enough to slap you in the morning, and my favorite thing is our Bunn coffee maker. 3 mins to coffee is heaven when you need coffee to make your coffee!
Tea is English Breakfast, very strong with honey and milk. 🙂 We also do Russian Caravan, Chai tea from Wegmans and I’m trying to learn how to brew London Fog.
After having that same model cuisinart grinder die for a second time, we decided to splurge and got the OXO conical burr grinder. The very first thing I noticed was how quiet it was. Strongly recommend.
I’m big into any of the Yunnan teas right now . Good strong flavor to get me going but very forgiving of over steeping as I have a very distracted attention span. Yunnan gold from harney and sons is in my cup right now.
Jasmine silver needle tea. TeaSource sells a great one. It’s the single best jasmine tea I’ve ever had.
I love Upton Tea’s Organic Columbian Oolong! Smokey, smooth and unctuous (never thought I’d find a use for THAT word!). They also have a honey oolng that is so fragrant, it’s a lovely way to start the day.
Afternoons I’ve been treating myself to a London Fog. Upton’s Organic Earl Grey, steamed milk and vanilla syrup! Yum.
We went through a very similar coffee grinder journey. My husband solved the problem of the big, unwieldy, annoying grinder, by getting the idea that it would be a quick way to grind roast hazelnuts for some recipe, and heck, if the coffee tasted like hazelnut for a few brews, who cares? Well, guess what? coffee grinders spin MUCH faster than food processors, and hazelnuts turn to nut butter instead of ground nuts at that speed, and the grinder isn’t built for nut butter, and it will bind up pretty rapidly, and RIP grinder no matter how he tried to clean it out. ???????? Back to the little grinder, somewhat chastened.
I use a AeroPress. I’m the only coffee drinker in the house and typically do one cup in the A.M. It takes up less space than a Keurig and I like the taste.
I often have tea in the afternoon. Although I have a real diffuser and pot, I don’t know what I’m doing with the loose leaf. I typically just use bags. Do you have to get an electric kettle to get the ideal temps some teas require?
Oh yes, House Andrews are fans of the kettle the brews different temperatures – and they spread the love as Jeaniene Frost tells us https://www.jeanienefrost.com/2022/07/the-tea-lady/
Thanks!!
I have never liked the taste of coffee though I love the smell. I am a tea drinker – thank you for the kettle recommendation that does it by temp – game changer!! Unfortunately my blood work came back and said I react to both black tea and caffeine. So except for the special occasional breakfast tea (with cream) I’m living with decaf herbals. I am currently in love with Taylors of Harrogate Blackberry & Raspberry Herbal. I miss my black tea but after doing the elimination, I found I do have pretty epic gastric reactions if I splurge. It makes me sad.
Amazon will take it back if it doesn’t meet your expectations. they have a small check list of reasons. You pick the one closest to the reason and bring it to Kohl’s to return it.
Right now I’m on a jasmine green tea kick. It’s really picky about brew time (they mean it when they say 2 minutes) bc if you go over it gets this gosh awful aftertaste. But brewed right, it’s delightful and it soothes me while picking me up mid afternoon so I can finish dealing w my teenagers (I teach 11th grade English).
I actually am a full on fruit smoothie person. With warm Apple cider in the fall. I’ve tried tea and it’s not to my taste, and don’t like the smell of coffee. My BF loves hot chocolate, but it always tastes too watery for me, so smoothies and apple cider are the thing!
My Irish grandmother made “Tay” at 5am in a brown tea pot with loose leaves. At 3pm, when we arrived after school, you got Graham crackers if you drink tay, which was strong enough to take paint off. So I drink tea in a coffee country. I live about 1 1/2 hours from Harney & Sons in Millerton NY. I get their tea as a treat. The store smells incredible.
I’ve been doing a rotation of fruity herbal tea and iced sweet tea. Lately it’s been a black cherry herbal tea. Sweet tea is sweet tea 😀
peppermint tea hot and blood orange tea cold with soda water
I used to live near Celestial Seasonings, and they make some really excellent teas. Peppermint Peak is one of my favorite black teas.
My favorite warm beverage? Coffee. Black and thick, the way I got used to drinking it during 3:00 am debugging sessions in the days of my long ago youth.
I love both tea and coffee. Coffee is the am drink and tea , usually herbal varieties of Harneys , is the drink of an evening or cold afternoon. I also like Harney’s Paris and London FOg, and Tiramasu teas. We use the Breville bean grinder for coffee and it was way too expensive, but a gift from hubby and we have had it about 9 years now. Looking for lower acid coffee with whole beans-no HEB near me. My SIL swears by HEB.
Also now trying a french press with cacao grounds of different flavors-sometimes you just want chocolate.
I had to laugh, when I was in my 60’s it was expensive grinders and pots, no, not pots but coffee brewers. Now it’s the lowest cost Mr. Coffee grinder and a @ $22.00 Mr. Coffee, 12 cup pot. With that low-cost pot, you can do pour-overs with fine grind, that’s the best flavor to me, drip with regular grind, and near French Press with course grind. I use cold filtered water because the metals are removed which makes the coffee taste bad. We do not have an HEB in El Paso and I buy my beans at Sprouts. I blend medium roast Columbian and light roast French Vanilla in equal amounts of beans.
The best coffee I have drank, was made with a Doughy Egbert concentrate, and filtered water, brewed in a commercial machine at the Sunland Park Racetrack in, Sunland Park, NM. That coffee tasted just like the smell as you pass a working coffee grinder in the coffee, tea and chocolate aisle in the grocery store. I didn’t have to add sugar or cream to smooth the taste.
I tend to drink hot chocolate in the morning (I make my own mix) and have tea or Mtn Dew in the afternoon. I like Celestial Seasonings for herbal and Harney & Sons for black and green teas.
That Cuisinart Coffee Grinder really IS the pits, isn’t it? Same issue here: We like to grind our own beans and got that as a wonderful way not to have to continually (avoid spilling) add coffee beans to a little grinder.
The only time I willingly drink coffee instead of green tea is when I am in New Orleans. Not sure why but I will happily sit there with beignets and coffee, cream and sugar thank you. Or waffles and coffee, or dessert and coffee or just after dinner coffee and be perfectly happy. Nowhere else, not even on that trip to Seattle. weirdness I guess.
It might be the chicory in the coffee that you like.
I switched to tea a few years ago, but I still have the occasional coffee. sometimes I’m just in a coffee mood.
I do an Irish or Scottish breakfast tea in the morning, and afternoons I have a little fun. You turned me on to Harney and Sons, and I Loooove their Paris, and London Fog teas. I have a few others, but those have been reigning champions of late.
I do a Tension Tamer tea from Celestial Seasonings at night when I want to relax. Mostly because of the dragon on the box…and a little because it works, lol.