How do you take your tea?

How do I take my tea? I don't !
With the rare exception of hot tea, (preferably Jasmine), with Chinese food when eating in certain Oriental restaurants.
Used to drink unsweetened iced tea, but quit a number of years ago. Really don't care for it. Adding things to it, such as lemon, sugar, etc., just makes it worse in my opinion.

Count my vote on that! This clearly should have been an option. Just as I'd expect a coffee poll to say, "I don't". :) But I am a through and through coffee drinker, preferably Shade grown to benefit the birds I enjoy so much.

Earl Grey, with just enough hot water to steep, then cold water poured over top with 2 sweetener packets.

im definitely a sweetened iced tea type of guy, but i picked "other" because i also have a nice hot cup of chamomile every night before bed

Constant Comment decaf.....a hot cup in winter or 4 bags in a carafe of cold water and put into the fridge for summer. it's like sun tea without the sun.

Herbal only, sweetened with honey, preferred hot.

I love the hibiscus teas which have the benefit of vitamin C. Rose hips will increase that benefit. And locally harvested honey which helps build allergen resistance.

Sounds medicinal but it really is tasty...

Interesting on the locally grown honey Podster, I didn't know that.

Sweet iced tea. Love it. lol.

I agree with podster. I drink only herbal teas, esp the hibiscus and rose hip teas with sweetener. I love it hot or cold. In the summer I drink it as ice tea. I fill up bottles and freeze it, than drink it as it melts. In the winter, I like hot tea.

I can attest to this. We get local, raw honey produced about 15 miles from here. And this has done wonders for the grass pollen allergy sufferers in our household. They used to have to get steroid shots just to make it through the season. Too bad it doesn't help for outdoor mold spore allergies. This gets one of my sons badly.

We are planting a bunch of natives and we've got bees galore, native to the US and honey bees. I wonder how far the honey bees have travelled to come here. I am not aware of any neighbors with hives, but we are rural with only a couple of homesteads in sight of the house.

Sorry to go off topic, but as I mentioned, I do not drink tea. I was forced to by a midwife years ago to drink Red raspberry leaf tea. I choked it down, but ick... Why did she not tell me about the capsules that I later learned about? :/

I drink sweetened ice tea when we go out for dinner, which is pretty rare. I drink hot tea with sweetener and milk at home when it is not hot outside, which means that I haven't had any for several months. This is black, green, or white tea. I do not like herbal tea.

This message was edited Aug 19, 2014 8:26 AM

I love unsweetened iced tea in the summer but don't drink a lot of it. I am really a coffee drinker (half-caff) in the morning only. In the winter I often drink decaf hot green tea.

I don't drink a lot of tea, but I do enjoy the occasional glass of sweetened iced tea or hot cup of tea, especially Jasmine green tea and Earl Grey. Although I grew up in a family where iced tea was the primary beverage and was kept on hand at all times, I never acquired that habit. I'm more of a diet cola fiend myself but will have tea, iced or hot, every now and then. I do keep several varieties of tea on hand.

I like most , no matter how ,
Green tea most often

I love all kinds of teas, herbal and regular, warm in the winter and iced in the summer. Coming from the south I am a true aficionado of iced sweet tea in the warm weather but I try to avoid excess sugar so it is only a special treat. So few places know how to make good sweet tea anymore; it is always either too, too sweet or it has been brewed too long and has a nasty taste. A new favorite is Acai tea, it is great cold brewed like tracks mentioned above.

I take coffee instead.

Black tea (Salada) with milk and sweet n low,
Oolong, Gunpowder, green white only Sweetener
Mint, ginger and lemon with local honey

Chillybean, bees will travel 2 1/2 to 3 miles for nectar and pollen sources. My dentist keeps bees and while it is about 5 miles by road to his house, his bees visit all the time. There's another beekeeper over across some fields on another road that has visiting bees to. How do I know who's bees they are? When they are loaded up they take off in a direct line for their homes.

I am probably an equal opportunity consumer of teas and coffees.
Iced or not and sweeteners depending on what it is.

Iced tea, unsweetened with lemon. It can be regular tea or herbal. Herbal after 3 pm to avoid the caffeine surge.
Martha

My favorite iced tea (no close 2nd) is Tazo Black Ice Tea. Favorite hot tea ( 2 tied for first) PG Tips, Twinings Earl Grey. I have completely cut soft drinks out of my life. Cutting back on alcohol is next. Gene

I prefer a strong iced tea with enough sweet, but not too much! I also love iced coffee, no cream at all. Hot or iced depends on time of day and temperature of my world, which is hot and humid this time of year!

Summertime, pretty much HAVE to have a glass of iced tea every afternoon. Sweet or unsweet. NO lemon.
Strikes me as sort of funny, that in a restaurant its either sweet or unsweet/ unsweetened. Why not just sweet , or plain? chuckle...
Also seems funny that when I try to make it 'half sweet' its not as good as one or the other. to me.

I drink iced tea year 'round. Many. many years ago if I tried to order an iced tea in the winter time, I just got funny looks.

Well-brewed, NOT-sweet icy cold with lots of fresh lime or lemon !

NEVER doctored up with sugar or other sweeteners or other flavorings
such as fruit.... or stuff.

This message was edited Aug 21, 2014 9:50 PM

On my earlier answer, I stated that I drink tea occasionally and enjoy it both hot and cold, but I neglected to address the issue of what I like in my tea. I like my iced tea sweet. I like it super sweet but try to avoid that in favor of mildly to moderately sweet - or sweetened with Splenda. I like it both with and w/o lemon or lime. I enjoy variety and take my tea (and my coffee) a different ways depending on my mood. I take my hot tea plain though, having never acquired a taste for cream, sugar, or lemon with it.

On the subject of variety, I am probably the weirdest coffee drinker on the planet. Unlike others who seem to take their coffee a certain way always, I drink mine black w/nothing most of the time when I'm just looking for a beverage or a pick-me-up, with cream when I'm feeling like a treat, and with cream and sugar on rare occasion when I really want to be extravagant. This really seems to blow people's minds that I can truly love the beverage all 3 ways.

BajaBlue, your 1 line, your description of what you don't like was most mouthwatering to me. Yum. Super sweet w/fresh citrus. I'll have a tall glass of that.

Sally g,
sweet or unsweet? is a southern way of putting it. I have been going down to NC for the last 25 years and the waitresses in the restaurants, even my sister's favorite Chinese place, ask that question. They have iced tea at McDonalds all the time now, but used to be that you could only get it places in the summertime up here in MA with iced coffee all year around. Ask for iced tea after Labor Day and they regarded you as having two heads. Most places serve it year around now.
Martha

Martha, Sweet tea has made huge inroads into this area. So now in Maryland it seems pretty common to ay sweet or unsweet. think this is something that came about in thelast decade or two, seems like Maryland restaurant iced tea used to always be unsweetened.

And I only drink brewed tea, none of the powdered lemoned sweetened spoon into a glass and stir stuff.

When I make tea for groups its one cup sugar in a gallon of tea. That's better than lemonade which calls for two cups sugar per gallon.
(Lemonade is really good too though. Use bottled lemon juice.)

You can get iced tea all year here, too. I never thought about it being seasonal.

Just curious, in areas where iced tea is not common or where it is not common in the winter months, what does one typically serve as a beverage with dinner? Here, of course, the beverage commonly served with both lunch and dinner is iced tea - year round.

I drink iced tea with dinner all the time. I have a MR. Coffee iced tea brewer. I like Mc Donalds because they brew the tea in its own brewer not run it through the coffee pot and they use real tea. If you have Panera, they do the same. I believe Starbucks also. But iced coffee is king here in MA.
Martha

Iced Tea sweetened with Splenda and Lemonade or fresh lemons. Lemons have t/b fresh. I won't use anything but fresh lemons and limes in anything I make. It really makes a big difference. (off topic).
I used to drink unsweetened tea to save on calories before Splenda.

I have learned to really enjoy Hot Tea with (fresh) lemon and local clover honey. So good. I do it as a treat and when I have a sore throat.

In the past, I only drank hot tea in the mornings, but learned to drink coffee in mid life. It has t/b certain coffee, or I don't like it. Milestone Hazelnut with half and half and splenda. I also make iced coffee sometimes with same ingredients, but I like the coffee to be stronger.

Sorry, but want to share an enjoyable, non alcoholic, low calorie drink: Cystal Light Mango, or WM brand Mango, with Sugar Free Coconut Syrup and Pineapple Juice with chipped ice. Pretty tasty!
Also can use a little OJ and/or Sprite.

Iced decaf, with lemon and sweet n low. I usually add a peach black tea bag with two regular black tea bags to make a pot.