This post may contain affiliate links. Please read my disclaimer for more information.
Tea and coffee are the go-to hot beverage serving humankind for centuries now. With similar properties and brewing processes, it’s no wonder tea and coffee are the choice of millions of people to start their day.
Depending on your flavor profile, if you want more caffeine or less caffeine, you can either choose coffee or tea.
Tea has comparatively less caffeine than coffee. On the same note, if you want antioxidants, tea is more beneficial than coffee.
Surprisingly, some teas do taste like coffees. If you want to cut the caffeine content from your diet but do not want to lose the coffee’s taste, these teas will serve as the best option without the caffeine and the acidity.
Please note: Teas will still have a subsequent amount of caffeine, but it’s not in a greater quantity. These three teas will give you the robust taste of coffee without much caffeine and acidity.
Teas have multiple flavor profiles resembling coffee in many ways—for instance, the nutty flavors, astringency quality of the beverage, fruit undertones, etc.
Is there a tea that tastes like coffee?
Yes, tea is similar to coffee in a lot of ways that you can imagine.
- Components: First, their composition has a strong, bitter taste of caffeine and an acidic flavor profile of astringency.
- Brewing method: Second, tea and coffee have the same brewing process. Both are a product of hot infusion. You heat water and coffee/tea together to brew a hot beverage. So, it’s not surprising for tea to taste like coffee.
- When oxidized and steeped longer, teas start to have a darker, smoother, creamier taste.
Usually, teas that taste like coffee are made of tree pods, roots, nuts, grains, seeds, etc. These tree parts are dried and then crushed to make herbal teas. Please note: herbal teas do not contain caffeine. They are 100% caffeine-free teas that taste like coffees.
Carob tree.
The carob tree is one such substitute for coffee. A native of the Mediterranean and the middle east, carob’s pods, are famous for their sweet-bitter chocolate profile. These edible pods are used as animal feed but are now being popularly used as a chocolate substitute.
When carob pods are dried, naturally-roasted, crisped, they can be powdered to make choco chips and chocolate bars. Carob pods have a familial resemblance to cocoa powder when crushed and ground.
If that rings a bell, cocoa powder and cacao powder are also similar in many senses. Cocoa powder is for coffee, and cacao powder is for chocolate. Carob powder is an excellent substitute for both cocoa and cacao powder.
This evergreen flowering tree produces carob pods throughout the year. When these pods dry from their green and lively form to brownish-black color, you can turn them into a coffee/chocolate substitute.
Carob pods have a dark-chocolate profile with dominant sweetening flavors. This specialty of carob makes it an excellent substitute for teas that taste like coffee. Also, carob tree edible pods are caffeine-free.
Acorn
Acorn, or also popularly known as the oak nut, is a nut from the oak tree. It has a similar body to the walnut but a completely different flavor profile.
Acorn is sweet until the bitter taste of tannins kicks in. This nut can be as sweet as the maple syrup and as sharp as the medicine before leaching.
Once the leaching is done, you can experience a sweet-bitter taste in the nut with nutty and spicy undertones. Leaching is the process of soaking the nuts in cold water for the tannins to exit out. It can take days for the nuts to get rid of tannins completely.
Once the acorn’s color changes, you can dry and crush it to prepare a coffee substitute. Its sweet-bitter profile, spicy undertones, and nutty body similarities a lot with coffee. Thus, acorn, when leached and roasted, is used as a coffee substitute.
Acorn was broadly used as a coffee alternative in world war II when the confederates were cut off from coffee supplies.
Acorns are also caffeine-free teas. Also, this tree was native to America and was widely used as a raw food substitute at times of famine (after leaching to get rid of the bitter taste).
Dandelion roots
Dandelion roots have been used as an affordable coffee substitute for a long time. Its history can be traced back to the Egyptians, Romans, and Greeks.
Dandelion roots or the flowering plant in totality was/is used as a medicinal plant in many countries, including China’s traditional restorative practices.
The dandelion plant is known for its detoxifying quality that removes/detoxifies your body from toxic elements. It also helps in inflammation and constipation.
The dandelion plant is used for a sweeter tea, but dandelion’s roots, when dried, cut, and roasted, are a great alternative to dark coffee.
These roots have an earthy, dark, bitter, nutty profile. This profile resembles the sweet-bitter taste of coffee with spicy and nutty undertones.
Please note: Dandelion roots must be two years old to be dried, cut, and roasted to become a coffee substitute.
Chicory Roots
Chicory is another native to the Mediterranean and European regions and popularly used as a coffee substitute for ages. Chicory, just like the dandelion, has edible parts like edible leaves and roots. Chicory roots have a dark, nutty, and earthy flavor resembling that of coffee.
Chicory has a darker/robust flavor profile with zero caffeine and sugar. It has been used as a coffee ingredient in both coffee and non-coffee beverages.
Chicory is widely used in french coffees for its smooth body and anti-acidic policies. Yes, chicory reduces the acidity of the coffee and gives a bold, smooth flavor to the beverage.
Chicory has no caffeine but has a dark-sweet taste like coffee. Chicory comes from the same botanical family of dandelion and dates back to World war II as a coffee substitute or a popular dark coffee ingredient.
Barley grains
Barley grains are so rich in body and flavor profile that they are commonly used as an espresso shots substitute in Italy. Orzo is a famous barley coffee in Italy. It is made from freshly roasted barley grains.
These roasted barley grains are often used directly in an espresso machine or traditionally brewed in Moka pots.
Barley coffee/orzo has been used and drank as a coffee substitute since world war II. You can either consume a single-origin barley grain espresso shot or finish it with other coffee ingredients.
Barley coffee is a coffee-substitute for children in Italy. People in Italy prefer orzo to cut down their caffeine content and still enjoy espresso shots.
Barley grains accentuate their coffee-like flavors after being dried, roasted, and ground well. They have a nutty sweet-bitter malty coffee taste after a slow roast. Barley coffee is also caffeine-free.
A coffee substitute is either brewed with one of these single ingredients or brewed, combining all these ingredients appropriately. Most coffee-substitutes will have chicory in their composition.
Every different root/seeds/pod will give a different flavor profile with a base-flavor of coffee and nutty-spicy undertones. You can try every different flavor to find your perfect coffee substitute.
Three famous teas that taste like coffee
While you can roast natural/herbal teas at your own home, they take longer to age and be prepared as a coffee substitute. Fortunately, many tea brands create coffee substitutes without caffeine and sugar.
These three famous coffee substitutes will either have dandelion roots, carob pods, acorn nuts, chicory/barley, or a blend of them all together. Depending on your flavor profile and dietary content, you can choose between these three brands.
1. Teeccino
Teeccino is the go-to coffee substitute for coffee lovers who can no longer afford the caffeine or acidic content. Teeccino creates one of the best coffee substitutes with main ingredients- roasted carob, roasted chicory, and barley.
All these three ingredients are best known for their coffee-taste. Teeccino also adds natural flavors to accentuate and enhance the coffee taste.
It further includes the sweet flavor profile of dates and figs, natural chocolate/dark-chocolate taste, natural coffee flavors, cocoa powder, and almonds.
Teeccino offers many combinations if you are not adaptable to barley grains. If barley grains are restricted in your diet, you can opt for a dandelion root Teeccino bag. These dandelion roots Teeccino will still have chicory and carob, but not barley grains.
Pros
- Unlike the leaf form, Teeccino comes in ground form, which is suitable for many coffee makers. You cannot use leaves in many coffee makers, but Teeccino grounds can be used in almost all the machines.
- Teeccino offers many roasts. If you prefer a lighter roast, you have the choices. If you prefer darker and chocolatey roast, maca chocolate (darkest chocolate) and mocha (medium chocolate) are available coffee Substitutes for you.
- It’s caffeine-free.
- Prebiotic: Promotes healthy bacteria growth to accelerate digestion and aid stomach aches with Inulin. Inulin is derived from chicory, a healthy soluble fiber that helps in gut protection.
- No acidic content to increase acidity in your stomach.
- It’s affordable.
Cons
- Teeccino adds additional natural flavors like cocoa powder. Cocoa powder does have a considerable amount of caffeine. Although teeccino has a very minute amount of caffeine, it’s not 100% caffeine-free.
- The dark roast and the suggested recipe are very dark and bitter to taste. You might need to tone it down with water/milk for it to taste better.
- It’s not 100% organic. Expect Teeccino bags to be 70-75% organic.
2. Traditional Original Dandelion Roots Tea
Dandelion roots are a medicinal herb with healing properties and a coffee taste. Although dandelion flowers have been considered a weed, history and its avid use as a herbal plant in many traditional medicinal practices say otherwise.
Dandelion supports healthy digestion and stimulates the liver. Some cases and individuals have seen promising results of healthy liver and kidney functionality after trying dandelion roots tea.
Organic dandelions do not have artificial flavors or ingredients for a sweet taste. The herbalists make sure individuals experience the real sweet-bitter taste of coffee without caffeine and fake sugar.
Since dandelion is grown 100% organic, it’s non-GMO, kosher-certified, and 100% caffeine-free. Organic dandelion has a taste similar to mild sweetness and coffee’s bitterness.
Suppose you are someone who enjoys dark, robust coffee or black tea. In that case, these organic dandelion roots will give you a strong morning punch with healing properties without the harshness of acidic astringency or the caffeine component.
Pros
- It’s medically proven and has significant health benefits.
- Dandelion roots help lose weight and promote a healthy gut.
- It has many antioxidants to create a nutritional beverage.
- Unlike your morning coffee, you can consume as many organic dandelion roots teas as you’d like without a burning stomach and over caffeine intake.
- Dandelion roots have a nutty body with a bitter coffee-like taste.
- The taste is mild and not very dark. You can even drink it without additional sweeteners and milk if on a strict diet.
- This tea keeps you hydrated.
Cons
- It has a mild taste and isn’t as bold as other brands.
- You will need to steep the tea bag for an extended period to attain a bette flavor
- It doesn’t come in a smaller size to try before you buy a larger bag
3. Special tea loose tea leaf
Almond fruit blend tea will leave you with a different experience regarding taste and the beverage’s body. SpecialTeaCompany’s almond fruit has an entirely contrasting flavor profile with apple pieces, beetroots, cinnamon, etc.
The dominant flavor of the Almond fruit blend is its caramelizing nutty flavor obtained by the perfect combination and ratio of almonds with caramel. Please note: SpecialTea’s almond fruit blend is too sweet and carries an incredible amount of carbs; if you are on a strict diet, avoid this combination.
Specialty offers many flavors, and almonds fruits are one of the most-liked coffee-like teas. Almond-fruits blend comes in leafy form.
That is, you are not delivered ground coffee, but it’s dried leaves. The lush form of teas preserves the essential oils and flavors inside the coffee for longer, unlike ground tea that goes stale sooner.
SpecialTea is caffeine-free and acidity-free; it doesn’t go harsh on your stomach or your overall health but still offers a sweet yet tangy fruity flavor with an earthy nutty body.
Pros
- Healthy ingredients and tasty flavors.
- The sweet, oily combination of almonds and fruits. It has a smooth, lovely body.
- It comes in the leafy form and preserves the ingredients for a longer time.
- Specialty comes in sealed packaging and a zip bag to store the freshness for longer.
- Hand-picked in the U.S.
- It’s acidity-free. Your stomach won’t hurt after drinking the tea.
- Caffeine-free.
- It has the unique taste and color of beetroot.
Cons
- It’s a little sweet, some people don’t like that
- The coffee-like tea isn’t strong enough for a bold cup.
What makes tea taste like coffee?
Coffee’s flavor profile is unique, and the credit goes to the many single and blended origins that produce coffee. Every coffee from a different land will have distinct flavors.
A single-origin coffee will have consistent flavors complementing the soil. It can either be fruity and tangy like the Arabica beans or earthy like Sumatran. Unlike single-origins, blended origins have a beautiful entanglement of various flavors combining.
What differentiates coffee from other hot beverages; its bold bitter-sweet flavor with a smooth, nutty body and spicy aroma. Fortunately, many teas are bold, smooth, and spicy together.
The bitter-sweet taste of some distinctive teas like the chicory and carob resembles that of coffee. Although the taste wouldn’t be the same, it would be similar nonetheless; what’s better than to taste something similar to coffee when you cannot drink coffee.
Second, the nutty flavor: Acorn nut from the oak tree has a robust nutty profile with bitter-sweet flavors after leaching resembling the coffee’s oily-nutty profile. Along with the flavors and undertones, these pods, legumes, seeds, roots have a smooth body like coffee.
Third, the fruity undertones: Many teas mentioned in the article have a natural sweet tendency resembling fruity/tangy/chocolatey tones. Carob is used as a natural sweetener and is also used as a substitute for chocolate choco chips.
Fourth, smooth body: When dried and roasted right, acorn, carob, chicory maintain a balanced body similar to coffee after correct brewing and steeping.
Does black tea taste like coffee?
Yes, black tea is usually darker than green tea with dark ruby pigmentation and bold flavors. Apart from appearance and taste, black tea also resembles coffee’s component.
Caffeine: Black tea contains a heavy amount of caffeine with every serving. Although it’s less than compared to coffee, the caffeine is still there and in enough quantity to give you a strong morning punch.
Comparison: One ounce of an espresso shot (29.5ml) will have 64mg of caffeine. On the other hand, 240ml of a regular black tea will only have 47mg of caffeine. Espresso is a concentrated beverage; other brewed coffee will have slightly more caffeine than black tea. A 240ml of regular drip coffee mug will have 90+mg caffeine.
Robust taste: Black tea is darker because it’s oxidized for longer than other green/white teas. Black tea contains caffeine, tannins, theobromine, and polyphenols. All these components result in a darker taste resembling the taste of coffee.
Malty flavor: Black tea is mildly sweet with a malty taste. This malty taste can be described as sweet-nutty, caramelly, beer-like, or coffee-like. The malty flavor profile adds sweets to the dark composition of caffeine and tannins. The robust-malty flavor of teas resembles the taste of coffee.
Organic tea that tastes like coffee
Organic roots, pods, seeds, and leaves are naturally going to be bitter; it’s natural for them to be bitter. With different drying/roasting/leaching processes, these seeds and roots start to lose the bitterness and begin to extract sweetening flavors.
Although most of the bitterness is gone once the seeds/roots/pods have been leached and roasted, the bitter undertone traces are still found in organic teas. This bitter taste of untreated teas resembles that of the bitter caffeine taste of coffee.
Once the leaves, pods, roots, etc., are treated well, they start to extract sweet undertones. Most of these bodies have a nutty flavor like the acorn or sweet, tangy flavors like the chicory, or dark-chocolate flavors like the carob.
Carob, Acorn, chicory, barley are all organic components to produce organic tea. When blended with natural sweetness, these have an uncanny resemblance to the coffee’s flavors.
Also, these organic/herbal teas have nutty undertones. For instance:
- The chicory has a woody and nutty taste. Coffee also has a woody, nutty profile.
- Carob has a dark chocolatey taste. Coffee does, too.
- Acorns have a nutty bitter-sweet flavor profile.
- Dandelion flower and leaves make a sweet cup of tea, but dandelion roots make a dark cup of tea similar to coffee.
- Barley has a malty flavor, which is also similar to coffee.
All the mentioned teas are herbal and organic to their roots. They are a great coffee-substitute because they taste bitter-sweet without caffeine or acidity. Please note: they might have slight astringency characteristics, but it depends on different plants and their composition.
Most of the organic teas will be 100% caffeine-free unless they have artificial ingredients. If you want a complete caffeine-free tea, please choose a mild-tasting tea like the dandelion rather than other varieties to have 0% caffeine.
Questions to ask when buying tea
As a coffee lover, being told that you can no longer cherish coffee and its fragrance is a significant milestone. Fortunately, many teas will take you back to coffee taste without coffee’s side effects.
It’s important to ask yourself these questions about your tea before actually buying one because, after all, it should be the perfect coffee substitute for you to move on from coffee truly.
If your doctor has wholly cut off coffee from your diet, you should be very precise about the tea’s content you will be choosing, the amount of caffeine, astringency it contains, the ingredients used to make tea, flavor profile, etc.
These questions will help you with your health and overall well-being. Knowing the correct content of the tea you will be consuming will eliminate additional risk factors.
Flavor profile
It’s challenging to let go of coffee, so finding a suitable substitute with a complete flavor profile is crucial. The exact flavor of your tea mimicking your coffee will help you move on from coffee better.
So, what exactly is the flavor profile? The undertones, smooth body, aromas, and taste your coffee/tea offers is the flavor profile. As a coffee lover, you must know coffee offers many distinct flavors and varied flavor profiles.
Some popular flavor profiles coffee offered were:
- The earthy, spicy, and mild flavor profile of the Sumatran coffee beans.
- Fruity, sweet, mixed with the chocolate flavor profile of the Arabica beans.
- Dark chocolate, almost bitter, but intense energy punch flavor profile of Robusta beans.
- A sweet, bitter blend of Arabica and Robusta coffee.
- Blend origin of different flavors mixed. They can be as weird as sweet and spicy or as juicy as citrus fruits and tangy flavor profiles. Overall, blend origin can surprise you with strange yet tranquilizing tastes.
- Single origin’s fruity taste.
- Plain earthy taste.
- Caramel and chocolate.
- Wild-nutty taste.
- Bitter-plain taste, etc
Fortunately, the teas mentioned in the list and the organic/herbal popularity of these roots, pods, and seeds have a wide variety of flavor profiles. As a beginner, you might think teas can never satisfy you with a flavor profile, but give it a try before you stumble on conclusions.
Teas indeed have a wide variety of flavor profiles that are entirely natural without any side effects, caffeine, or acidity.
The flavor profile of the famous teas:
- Carob: Carob has a chocolatey taste, i.e., sweet, muddy, and bitter. It has the closest resemblance to coffee’s flavor.
- Acorn: Acorn has a bitter-sweet nutty flavor. It’s too bitter before leaching. After leaching, the bitterness reduces down and extracts a sweet texture. Acorn is a nut, so the nutty, oily flavor blooms out after roasting it dark or dark-medium. As a coffee lover, you must know how potent that nutty, oily taste is for the crema and overall composition of coffee.
- Dandelion roots: These roots have a close resemblance to the Sumatran coffee beans. You will taste something very earthy, spicy, and nutty when trying out dandelion roots. It has a mild flavor but many health benefits.
- Chicory: It’s similar to dandelion roots with earthy and spicy flavors. Chicory also has a very similar taste to coffee, just like the Carob pods. Unlike carob, chicory has a robust, dark flavor profile suiting the dark taste of coffee.
- Barley grains: After roasting, these grains have sweet, malty flavors similar to tangy fruits and bitter-sweet jazz.
Many roasteries combine most of these roots, seeds, pods, and nuts to create different and new flavor profiles for individuals with different taste buds. This blend allows you to taste weird combinations coffee used to offer.
The most popular blend is mixing carob, acorn, chicory, and barley to create a diverse taste of chocolate, nuts, robust texture, earthly, and yet fruity tea. It’s one of the best resemblances of Arabica coffee beans.
Some roasteries/tea companies will add artificial flavors to resemble the coffee taste; please avoid these manufacturers if you are strictly prohibited from drinking coffee. Artificial additives will increase the caffeine content of the coffee.
Please note: All these roots, pods, nuts, seeds will have a naturally bitter taste resembling coffee.
Similarly, black tea will also be very similar to coffee, but they will have much caffeine in their content. So, if you are not allowed to consume caffeine whatsoever, avoid black tea. If you are okay with reduced caffeine, it’s the closest to coffee.
Does it have caffeine?
If you are professionally asked to cut down your caffeine content, looking at the tea’s composition is necessary. Caffeine has many health benefits, but caffeine overconsumption can lead to many psychological changes in your brain.
- Overconsumption leads to anxiety and depression. In minimal quantities, caffeine boosts your performance, but extreme amounts can overload your brain with the stimulant resulting in confusion, stress, and anxiety.
- You can fatally overdose on caffeine. The correct amount of caffeine throughout the day should not exceed 400mg. You shouldn’t drink 400mg all at once either!
- Too Much caffeine leads to sleep loss and insomnia.
If you cannot consume caffeine even in the smallest quantity, please avoid black tea or teas filtered down with artificial or natural cocoa powder.
Organic/herbal coffee would be the best alternative for coffee lovers on strict probation for caffeine. Make sure to choose a manufacturer who doesn’t add additional artificial sweeteners or coffee flavors.
These artificial sweeteners can either have caffeine or acidic content to upset your stomach or caffeine level.
Unless you can consume caffeine but in a lesser quantity. If so is the case, then one or two cups of black tea wouldn’t hurt that bad. You can even try natural sweeteners like cocoa powder/cacao powder or coffee additives for a better-tasting coffee.
Dandelion roots tea is the best option for a 100% caffeine-free tea.
Ingredients
Organic teas can either be a blend of many herbal roots, seeds, and pods. They can also be a single root/pods/seeds combination.
You can either choose a ground form of the teas or a leafy form.
Teabags can be very vague about the content. On the other hand, leafy teas can tell a lot about your tea content. The leafy form will have dried and roasted roots, pods, seeds.
Ingredients of organic teas are minimal. Even if you choose multiple components, organic teas won’t serve you additional sweeteners or natural cocoa powder, or any other natural flavoring agents.
The same cannot be said for inorganic teas or teas that are not 100% organic. Most of these teas will be 60-75% organic with additional sweeteners (natural or artificial), cocoa powder, coffee flavors, etc.
If you choose a sweet barley inorganic tea, you will be surprised with many different tastes. If you are on a strict diet and are trying to avoid calories, it’s best not to choose barley tea or inorganic teas.
How to prepare?
How you brew the tea can depend on the physical matter it comes in. Teas can either be in-ground foam, leafy foam, coarse ground, or grind tea bags. Ground tea has the closest resemblance with the coffee ground.
Ground tea: If you order loose ground tea, you can easily brew it like coffee in different coffee makers. Ground coffees can be used in drip machines, manual coffee makers like the French press, Moka pots, Aero press, etc. For French press, use a coarser ground tea and for espresso shots, use barley grain ground.
Barley grain ground makes the best espresso shots, and the resemblance is uncanny.
- You can use fine ground tea in espresso machines, and the process is pretty much similar. Play with the buttons and extract the tea shot in 25 seconds.
- For drip coffees: Add ground tea in the filter and turn on the machine, let it brew for the carafe.
- For french press: Steep the coarse ground in the french press for 4-5 minutes.
Similarly, with ground tea, you can follow a similar procedure for every coffee machine.
Leafy foam: You can either brew lush tea through traditional brewing or with the help of a tea infuser.
- Boil the water in the kettle, tea infuser, or container.
- Add tea leaves and allow the water to boil along with. When you add tea leaves at an early stage, you will witness a darker extraction.
- Add milk and sugar if you’d like in the container or heat them for later.
- Serve and strain the leaves with the help of a filter in the mug.
Teacups: Teacups can be brewed in a Keurig K-cups coffee maker. Please find the size that the machine allows. The procedure is pretty much similar. Place the Tea-cup in the cup holder, close the lid and turn on the device.
Teabags: Tea bags are the easiest. Boil the water in the boiler. Once it reaches the correct temperature, dip the tea bag. It’s advised to strain the tea bag once you take it out for maximum flavor extraction.
Loose-leaf Tea or Teabags
It’s not a debate that loose leaf tea is better than a casual tea bag and for all obvious reasons. While tea bags can be filtered down and weighed up with dusts and unnecessary fillers, leafy tea is bare to the eyes.
Loose-leaf teas have their content at display for consumers to analyze the ingredients. Thus, loose leaf teas are of higher quality with healthy ingredients. Although not all tea bags are bad, the cover of tea bags can be used to add many infiltrates to pollute your tea’s content.
If you opt for tea bags for convenience and less mess, choose a tea bag company that offers quality services and quality products. Apart from the higher quality, loose-leaf teas also store the freshness and essential oils of the tea intact for a longer time than tea bags.
Freshness: Unlike tea bags with crushed tea leaves and ground state, tea leaves have a bigger circumference and adhesion. A leaf holds the content of the tea inside longer with a more significant surface area than ground tea bags.
Ground tea crushes down into particles leaving no space for the essential oils to sit in place. The same goes with the content; the crushed tea leaves hold no place for flavors or freshness.
The state of ground tea loses a lot of freshness because it has a lot of space. The same is not the case with leaf teas. Leaf teas hold together and offer a lot of surface area for the oils to stay longer.
Restricted extraction: Tea bags have a barrier for the water to mix with the ground tea inside the bag. On the other hand, leaf teas directly contact the water.
Their brewing process also makes a lot of difference between the extracted flavors. Tea Bags usually give away stale, extra mild tea because they are not as fresh as the leaf teas and neither allow proper extraction.
You cannot brew water and tea leaves together with a teabag. You will need to steep the tea bags in hot water for 2-3 minutes and not on the direct heat. Tea leaves are brewed with the water on constant heat. Heat works as a stimulator to extract the best flavors out of tea.
Price
Tea is cheaper than coffee, much affordable, and much healthier. Tea will cost you ⅓ of what your homemade coffee costs. Plus, you will not be spending on those expensive coffee machines either unless you want to brew your tea like coffee.
Overall, different teas will have different prices. A leafy tea product will be more expensive than a ground loose tea or tea bag because it displays high-quality leaves to the eyes.
Secondly, the price also depends on the ingredients used in the tea. A tea with more elements like cocoa powder, natural sweeteners, caramel, and coffee flavors will be more expensive than a plain-tasting tea.
Similarly, the prices will also depend on the natural ingredients used in the tea; If the roots/pods/leaves are rare and expensive to grow, the tea will be costly compared to other teas.
Please avoid cheap tea bags; first, they don’t promise quality and openness. Second, they are a significant threat to our environment. Third, they don’t extract enough flavors!
If you do want to use tea bags for their convenience and less mess, you can buy eco-friendly tea bags and add your leafy tea/loose ground tea in them and dispose of them eco-friendly once done using.
Coffee Vs. Tea: Pros and Cons
Coffee and teas both have been known for their stimulating effect on the brain. Although tea has a minimal amount of caffeine, it has an antioxidant named L-theanine that works as a slow stimulant to boost energy.
Both coffee and teas have multiple benefits that have been going and around since olden times. Coffee’s caffeine content gives the dopamine a charging boost to soothe your body and increase your heart’s activity healthily when consumed in maintained quality.
Similarly, caffeine also blocks adenosine to stop promoting sleep-inducing hormones.
On the other hand, tea, when consumed as a herbal drink, has lasting health benefits, including detoxification, improved gut health, liver progression, kidney protection, energy boost, and much more.
Please note: Everything must have a limit; when overconsumed, these hot beverages can do more damage than you can imagine.
This list of cons and pros will help you decide the amount of coffee and tea you must consume per day to ascertain all the health benefits and avoid their side effects.
Tea’s pros
- Before anything, tea works as an energy-stimulant to awaken your mind and morning with its low caffeine content, L-theanine, and many other antioxidants.
- Antioxidants: Tea has many antioxidants, much more than coffee. These antioxidants are so potent that they can fight cancer. The famous antioxidants, namely theaflavin, thearubigins, catechin, are responsible for prohibiting lung and colon cancer cell growth.
- These antioxidants promote vessel relaxation, blood pressure, prohibition of cancerous cells, and plaque formation. Prohibiting plaque formation lowers the risk of heart attacks.
- L-theanine relaxes your mind, body, and soul. It’s not a surge of dopamine to rush you into an exciting thing but a relaxation effect on your brain waves for a soothing evening effect.
- Teas help in reducing weight faster.
- Polyphenol in teas is responsible for healthy gut health, prebiotic activities.
- Tea regulates your liver and kidney; regular intake can also allow you to avoid kidney dialysis.
- The herbs used in teas are good for overall health.
Teas’ cons
- As said, overconsumption of any beverage or anything at all is never good for health. Although tea has the least amount of caffeine, it’s still rich in brain-stimulating antioxidants. When overconsumed, these can have adverse effects on your body and brain.
- Tea can overstimulate your body into stress, anxiety, and depression.
- It can reduce your sleep hours and might lead to insomnia.
- Addiction of its effect.
- Physiological changes including random headaches, dizziness, nausea, restlessness.
- Caffeine quantity in black tea.
Coffee’s Pros
- When consumed in the correct quantity, caffeine stimulates your body with dopamine and blocks away sleeping hormones.
- Coffee also has shown cancer-fighting properties.
- It boosts energy.
- It reduces the risk of Diabetes (type 2)
- Coffee helps you lose weight with its caffeine content.
- You will be more active, allowing extra energetic working hours.
- It lowers your risk of Parkinson’s disease and Alzheimer’s disease by releasing a significant amount of dopamine.
Coffee’s Cons
- Too much leads to stress, anxiety, and depression.
- You might lose your sleep completely.
- It causes heartburns and acid reflux because coffee has it a lot.
- Overstimulation can lead to psychological changes.
- It dehydrates your body.
What can you have instead of coffee to wake you up?
There are many alternatives to coffee to wake you up in the morning without caffeine. First, there are multiple teas in the never-ending list of stimulants with soothing effects.
Please note: Tea will calm your mind for morning yoga; on the other hand, coffee will energize your body for an extensive workout session or morning run. So, coffee and tea both will awaken your morning, but with a different charisma.
- Carob tea: Carob tea, including many other herbal teas, will soothe your mind mentally and your body physically. Herbal teas have not only a soothing effect but also many health benefits, as listed above.
- Acorn tea: Even if they are bitter, don’t consume a heavy drink in the morning. That is, don’t add milk or sugar to sweeten and thicken your morning drink; it will make you lazy.
- Dandelion Tea: This tea is very mild but has more than many health benefits if not taste.
- Lemon juice: Without sugar, lemon juice detoxifies your body and gives a healthy morning glow.
- Lukewarm water: Water is an excellent starter for the day. It’s healthy and hydrates your morning with a good start.
- Golden milk or turmeric milk is a traditional drink that aids cold, cough, unwanted bacteria, and wakes you up. Golden turmeric has many other traditional herbs.
- Ginger tea: A specialty to clear your food pipe and wake you up.
- Coconut water is light-weighted and refreshes you for a great start.
- A cup of normal water.
- Fruit juices with great water content will hydrate you.
- Dandelion tea, Chicory tea.
- Black tea: Black tea has a considerable amount of caffeine. So, if you are not allowed to consume caffeine, avoid black tea at all costs.
All these drinks will have a different effect on you and your body. They will wake you up for a relaxing morning and lead you to a hydrating day.
Don’t skip your morning water and a tea later for the energy your day much needs.
How to make your tea taste like coffee?
There’s no doubt that coffee is a dark beverage unless you drink it with milk, cream, foam, syrups. To make your tea taste like coffee, make it darker, bitter, slightly sourer, and smoother. How to do that?
Brew tea just like you brew your coffee. This is only possible with ground tea because you can use it in various automatic coffee machines. Leafy tea will be fine, too, for manual espresso machines. Since they have less bitterness, steep them longer in water.
Brewing method: Brew and steep it just like the coffee in the same coffee machine to attain a darker taste. For darker results, you can soak it longer than the given time.
Ingredients: The ingredients must contain either carob pods, acorn nuts, chicory, dandelion roots, or barley roasted grains. All these have quite a resemblance to coffee. You can have them all blended, or single will do equally fine.
If you are not strictly restricted, you can add natural cocoa powder for the caffeine taste or mix a bit of coffee to your tea.
Black tea: Black tea is oxidized longer and retains caffeine in its flavors. If you can drink a little caffeine, black tea is the best substitute for coffee.
Strain the leaves or the roots/ground: Straining the extra flavors will add additional flavors to your tee. If you use a teabag, strain it completely, the last bit has the maximum taste.
Can you combine coffee and tea?
It’s a scary thought, but when you are asked to cut down the coffee, what else are you left with except for experimentations?
Coffee and teas are opposite ends of the war, but when your health says otherwise, you need to make amends; coffee and tea doesn’t sound like a bad idea either?
That is, if you still can consume a little coffee with your doctor’s permission. No matter how hard you try, you can never copy the exact taste of coffee in your tea unless you add a bit of caffeine to it.
Coffee+tea is a specialty in hong kong. They add coffee to sweet milked-tea and side dishes. Surprisingly, you can better your tea by actually adding a little coffee to it.
This can be done at the base ground foam by mixing ground coffee to ground tea, or you can mix them later after brewing both of them separately.
Combining the ground will allow your coffee and tea to blend and brew a classy taste, but mixing hot beverages will also give your surprising results.
In the end, yes, you can mix whatever with whatever for experimentation of new taste, and coffee+tea is no different. Plus, the blend of traditional tea and westernized coffee can never go wrong!
Conclusion
Whether it is coffee or tea, both are promisingly healthy when consumed in the right proportion. As a coffee lover myself, I can say it’s downright challenging to let go of coffee and switch to something like tea.
As alarming as it might sound, tea is heavenly when balanced beautifully with milk and a bit of sugar, ginger.
You can try these teas that taste like coffee and enjoy a different beverage for a healthy change without the caffeine and acid refluxes.
Tea has many health benefits and many recipes to try out every new day with surprising tastes to go with. Start your day with something healthier and coffee-like!