Hot tea - No cream or sugar, don't be a degenerate

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Not sure if it's easy to get yerba mate reliably where you are (it is hit and miss where I live). Other strong teas include any Irish breakfast tea (which is heavy in an Indian variety called assam which is intensely robust). When I make this I generally make it incredibly strong and bitter, to the point you actually do want to put a lot of milk and sugar in it, "builder's tea" so-called because of its popularity among construction workers.

Another I like is lapsang souchong, a Chinese black tea smoked in pine wood that tastes like a campfire. This does not like or need sugar.

And Earl Grey will never do you wrong, although I prefer double or triple bergamot. This is so impossible to screw up even pleb brands at Wal-Mart like Bigelow's or Twining's are completely fine.

If you just want high-caf, though, Irish breakfast tea (or straight assam) is your daily cup, and if you don't want sugar, brew it to the limits of your tolerance. This can upset your stomach if you drink it on an empty stomach, so that's pretty much up to you.

And if you want to get super fancy and even more high-caf, look into the Chinese puerh teas. There's reasonably good discussion of these on 4chan's /ck/ tea general, surprisingly enough. This is esoteric tea-ism though.
 
There are places that will allow you to buy small samples of everything you want to try, or variety packs. I started off with Harney and Sons, Kusmi Teas, David's Tea, and Adagio Teas, but in retrospect those are more expensive than just buying in bulk or directly from China, India, Japan, and so on. I still recommend samples or variety packs to first figure out what you like, though.

Maybe this isn't something that would appeal as much to a man, but when I tapered out a terrible coffee habit, I really enjoyed using well-built and attractive teaware. I have a really nice vintage samovar for the water, and a few differently designed metal glass holders with separate glass cups.

These are some of my favorite types of tea, but as usual YMMV-

Genmaicha- Green tea with puffed rice grains. Very nutty and grassy.
Lapsang Souchong- Smoked black tea. High in caffeine, kind of tastes like a campfire. Very pleasant.
Earl Grey/Cream of Earl Grey/Lady Grey- I honestly like every single permutation of Earl Grey I've ever had. Smooth black tea with bergamot, easy drinking but kind of perfumed.
Silver Needle- Kind of spendy, but very nice as a treat. Delicate flavor, but it's white tea so people sometimes scald it not knowing they aren't supposed to use water that's too hot with any tea, but especially not this kind.
White tea and peach- I've never had one of these I didn't like. It's pretty good as unsweetened iced tea, too.
Pumpkin spice chai- The jokes write themselves, I know, but the spice combo is great.
Matcha- a bit more involved as far as preparation goes. I like how grassy it is, and I like to make a latte or iced latte with it as a treat.
 
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Wally world sells cases of green tea in cans. It's tasty. The full name is Arizona green tea with ginsing and honey. It's what I'm using to replace my pop addiction. I don't know what the calories are tho.
 
I'll hold out the heathen side of this discussion. Use multiple green or oolong tea bags and throw in a herbal tea bag to flavor(something like mint or lemon).

I have the same caffeine addiction, and the only liquid I drink in significant amounts during the day is tea. The above method is how I do my daily gallons. Yes, it is heretical but it is cheap as hell, and tastes decent.
 
Null said:
I'm thinking of picking up tea to replace my 16 hour a day caffeine drip. Google says Yerba Mate is the most caffeinated. Any tips of getting into it and maybe successfully replacing soda?
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I like yerba mate - if you get reasonable quality leaves, you get a nice range of flavors over the course of a few hours with a single gourd. Starts off a little bitter and earthy, as you'd expect, and gets sweeter over time. I use a gourd I got off of etsy and a decent bombilla from Circle of Drink. Just be careful with the really cheap bombillas out there, I've had more than one of them flake off some bits of metal into the straw and damn near swallowed them. There's also wooden and metal cups you can use for it if you don't want to deal with the fuss of maintaining a gourd (once you know what you're doing with it, it's not hard). If you do go with a gourd, you have to make sure your water is the right temperature - boiling water will cause them to crack. Get a decent electric kettle with temperature control if you don't already have one. You don't want to overboil your mate anyways because it ruins the flavor, but it's just one more thing you have to be meticulous about if you go the traditional route. Because you're going to be reusing the same leaves over and over again every time you make a mate gourd, you should keep a thermos with a decent pour-spout handy so that you aren't constantly getting up to refill from the kettle. Packing the gourd at the start properly keeps the process pretty straightforward and easy to manage for however many hours you're going to end up drinking from that same mate.

In terms of add-ins, mate is pretty flexible like most any other tea-like drink - you can add basically anything to it if you want a different flavor profile. Mixing in tisanes and spices and dried fruits is a pretty decent way of changing things up. I never add syrups, cream, or honey to mine - I'm afraid it'll encourage mold growth in the gourd. That's obviously not going to be a problem if you use a metal cup, though, so that's there if you want it. I don't generally add those things to more conventional teas either, though, so I'm not in a position to say how well that would work in the first place.

That's what I've got off hand with it. I've drunk mate off and on for about a decade now. Hardly an expert, just relating what my experience has been. I like it, but it's like any other herbal drink - definitely an acquired taste.
 
I also like oolong tea, but I've been recently getting into jasmine tea. The lighter flowery taste and smell are pretty good.

I also used to drink a lot of peppermint tea from Celeste, I didn't like their raspberry tea, though.
 
Someone already said green tea + honey. But also, I've been enjoying a citrus tea lately that has orange and lemon in it.

I'd recommend both.
 
I had to kick an all day coffee habit, recently, because it makes me feel fucking weird after the second cup & my sleep was being affected. I've been able to do English Breakfast nearly all day, with a little Stevia or a splash of almond milk, and still won't even get to half the caffeine I drank when I was on coffee. But I, too, need better tea recs, because all I know is PG Tips & Twinings.
 
Null said:
I need something I can drink basically continuously without too many calories. It's why I can't drink coffee to replace soda.
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It's not tea, but I wanted to recommend Zevia to anyone with a soda habit. Just carbonated, flavored, water sweetened with stevia leaf, some have caffeine. Don't know how easy it would be to get them overseas though.

www.zevia.com

Cola

Zevia Cola is zero sugar, zero calories, with no artificial sweeteners. Enjoy your favorite traditional cola flavor with none of the bad stuff.
www.zevia.com www.zevia.com

Black, homemade cold brew is the best all-day, health-conscious caffeine junkie drink. Sounds like you don't like black coffee, but cold brew tends to be less bitter so it might be worth a try.
 
Best tea is good ol english breakfast with milk accompanied with with half covered digestives for dipping
 
I'm not fussy with tea. Unless it's the economy teabags made of dust and sadness.

Favourites of mine are Earl Grey and its derivatives, a good strong chai and a breakfast tea.

Still trying to hunt out a decent black all dayer that's robust but not overpowering
 
Null said:
I'm thinking of picking up tea to replace my 16 hour a day caffeine drip. Google says Yerba Mate is the most caffeinated. Any tips of getting into it and maybe successfully replacing soda?
Click to expand...
I tried getting into mate tea for the exact same reason, even getting the fancy traditional sieve-straw and gourd to prepare it, but it just tastes like absolute shit to me. I don't mind drinking stuff I don't really like for the caffeine, but mate was just too fucking disgusting. Couldn't even finish what I ordered.

I'd recommend trying some loose earl grey or darjeeling black tea, putting it into tea filter bags or a tea egg for maximum caffeine. The taste is very tolerable to me.
 
Null said:
I'm thinking of picking up tea to replace my 16 hour a day caffeine drip. Google says Yerba Mate is the most caffeinated. Any tips of getting into it and maybe successfully replacing soda?
Click to expand...
Making mate is too much effort and kinda autism because you need special equipment. I would recommend getting a nice assortment of loose leaf green tea to try instead and brewing it either in a large teapot or with those paper bags for loose leaf tea (the metal strainer balls suck imo because the leaves cant unfold properly).
Also you can get some fruit infused flavors for variety, calorie free too.
 
Null said:
I'm thinking of picking up tea to replace my 16 hour a day caffeine drip. Google says Yerba Mate is the most caffeinated. Any tips of getting into it and maybe successfully replacing soda?
Click to expand...
Just drink whatever you enjoy and take no-doze as needed if you want caffeine but don't like caffeinated drinks.
 
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