this post was submitted on 08 Nov 2025
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I grew up drinking orange pekoe tea from the time I was born. I've seen my mom prepare tea with milk and sugar in a baby bottle for my younger brothers so I can safely guess she did the same for me.
And we liked to make it strong! We'd have a giant metal pot that held about 2 liters of liquid, get it at a rolling boil, throw in eight tea bags and let it continue boiling for a minute until the liquid turned into coffee.
I left home when I was 20 to live in other parts of the country and I've never met anyone else that made tea properly.
I've seen people mildly heat water or microwave it.
The best one was a restaurant I used to go to for great breakfast ... I asked for tea a few times because I'm always nostalgic for it. They always made shitty tea and I wondered why .... until one day the waitress admitted to me that the hot water tap wasn't so hot today and she didn't know why ..... THEY USED HOT TAP WATER TO MAKE TEA!!!!!
Tea with milk and sugar in a baby bottle...?
But why? Do they want a cranky baby that doesn't sleep?
My parents were old time hunters and trappers who were born in the wilderness ... so they weren't up to date with the latest pediatric recommendations at the time.
I’m sorry what? There’s a lot to unpack here
I'm indigenous Canadian and I'm the first generation in my family to be born in a modern hospital. My parents were born and raised in the wilderness and lived a very traditional nomadic life for about the first 30 years of their lives. They had a bit of education and they were very bright people but they had no understanding of many modern things ... things like feeding a baby caffeinated drink. All they understood is that it was nutritious and filling.
And it didn't do me any damage .... I think?
I mean, the fact that you’re on here means you must be damaged a little. But damn that is an amazing backstory
Babies can't process caffeine in the same way as adults. If anyone is reading this and thinks it's a good idea to give your child black tea of any sort, you should absolutely wait until the kid is at least 10-12 yrs old... The kiddo will be absolutely wired and it negatively impacts their ability to sleep. Overall this is a very bad idea.
Edit: also refined sugar is a big no no for kids younger than 2 yrs old.
faucets and secondary taps for sinks that can deliver filtered boiling or chilled (or even sparkling) water do exist.
This was an old time diner style highway restaurant .... they were using the same hot water to make tea as they were using to wash the dishes
In my experiance, the water for washing dishes at resteraunts can get extremely hot, easily hot enough to burn you. I think the idea is that the heat helps steriloze the dishware and more easily break up the fats and oils. Ive never personally seen boiling water from a resteraunt tap, but i have seen water at about 175° which im guessing is around 80° C
Edit:79.4 degrees C, damn im good
I agree, restaurant tap water can be very hot ... there is even a faucet in some places I've seen from coffee machines that can dispense hot water. But all of them fall just below the threshold of boiling water which is 100 degrees C.
Tea needs boiling water at least for a moment in order to brew properly. I don't know the science of it ... I just know from experience and having had tea all my life. If you place an orange pekoe tea bag in anything but boiling water, it will never steep properly. In any other heated water, orange pekoe tea just comes out bland and not as tasty. Like I mentioned in my early comments, my family used to throw tea bags into boiling water and let it stay in rolling boiling water for about 30 seconds and it immediately brews a potent mixture of dark red liquid that has as much caffeine as coffee.
The only other great sin to steeping tea is to place the tea bag in boiling water and immediately mix it all with milk - that guarantees a ruined steeped tea. You wait about five full minutes for the tea to steep before mixing anything with it.
I've been frustrated by friends and family all my life who didn't grow up drinking tea because they'll boil some water, leave the water sit for a minute or two until it cools off from 100C or even wait several minutes until it cools off to 80C and then try to make a cup of tea. It drives me nuts when they serve me luke warm tea and then pour in a bit of milk into it all and everything turns white.
As you might have guessed ..... I love my tea.
Have you ever had sun tea? You get a clear glass container, preferably the kind with a nozzle for dispensing drinks from, then you fill it with water and load it up with a bunch of tea bags, maybe 10 per gallon(?), then you close the lid and set it somewhere in direct sunlight in the morning on a hot summer day. By mid afternoon you can take the tea bags out and put the tea container in your refrigerator.
It's just as dark as regular tea, but it has a smoother flavor. Typically you drink it iced, since it's a summer drink for hot days.
How to make bacterial soup 101
You drink it within a day or 2, before it can grow a significant amount of bacteria.
Not saying it does, ive drank stuff thats been sitting out for a very long time sithout getting sick. This is basically just a tangentially related fun fact but: in the absence of a limiting factor, bacteria grows following the law of exponential growth. A single bacteria that is not restricted from replicating ever would be able to convert the entire surface of the planet into that bacteria in two days. If the medium is right, it can fill that cup in minutes.
Have you ever heard of Labrador tea?
Absolutely .... I've never met anyone outside of the northern communities who knew about it.
In our language we call it 'KA-KEE-KEH-POO-KWA' .... I think the word stems from the word 'KA-KEE-KEH', which translates as 'forever' ... because you can even find this plant frozen in the wilderness in the dead of winter and still make tea from it.
However, it makes a very weak mild tea ... highly nutritious but it doesn't taste like much. I got the bright idea one summer to make it extra strong and boiled a small bushel to make a dark tea. A more scientific friend of mine later warned me that the drink has to be mild because in stronger doses, it can be poisonous.
I like the flavor, maybe I make it too strong, I just put enough leaves to cover the bottom of my tea strainer/brewer thing. I like the flavor.
If you wanna try something flavorful and no caffeine, try the Aveda tea. Brew it hot, but drink it lukewarmish. Somehow it tastes much better cooler.
Poisonous flower, hmm? Id be willing to bet its related to the nightshade family even though there are a ton of poisons that are not
Yeah I learned that the hard way washing my hands at my buddies house one time in the kitchen.
The water heater in my house can be set all the way to 85c and it's right behind my kitchen tap, so it gets to that temperature within seconds. I've been wondering for a while if I could use it to just make tea instantly instead of putting the kettle on first, especially since I've read multiple times that 100c water is actually bad cause it can burn the tea leaves.
So far I haven't been able to try it because of some circumstances, but I might in the future.
In the US there is sometimes sludge at the bottom of the water heater that collects. You shouldn't drink hot tap water in the US.
Pretty sure your not supposed to drink the tap water at all in a lot of places. I know my city sends a letter multiple times every year saying not to drink the tap water. Cookings fine thiugh :/
Apparently, don't cook with it either:
https://www.epa.gov/lead/why-cant-i-use-hot-water-tap-drinking-cooking-or-making-baby-formula
It's not just the lead, it's heavy metals in general.
I just looked it up for my country and you're right. They don't recommend regularly drinking the hot water. There goes my experiment lol
That's really gross what the hell
This reminds me a little of butter tea, which is drank in Tibet and Central Asia.
Very neat .... we actually have a survival drink we made with the things we got from Europeans. Old time hunters and trappers travelling in the wilderness would make a drink called 'Tea Ploss' .... a mixture of making really strong, hot, boiling tea (usually over a camp fire) and then quickly mixing in flour, sugar and lard (all raw food items you got from the Hudson Bay Company).
It's absolutely disgusting and I've tried it many times. My parents loved it but I think it was more nostalgic than anything. About the only time I ever enjoyed it was being out in the wilderness in the winter time, freezing cold, tired, hungry, worn out and sipping on this drink.