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Well - I suppose if you buy your coffee in gas stations and the similar places you'd get that impression - possibly get your wish, as well.
Like beer, American coffee's come a long way. Sure, you can still buy Budweiser and Nescafe* Instant, but only because you don't know any better. That's OK.
The Brits still make the tea too damn strong and then can only drink it with milk to neutralize the corrosive effects. If your tea needs milk to make it drinkable then there's no point to it at all. Also, the mainly drink tea from India - and the climate and tea species make for a great aroma and a poor taste.
Your turn.
* Yes - that brand was picked deliberately !
| Ravings en masse^ |
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| "The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein | | "If you are searching for perfection in others, then you seek disappointment. If you seek perfection in yourself, then you will find failure." - Balboos HaGadol Mar 2010 |
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De gustibus non est disputandum.
Not having tasted American beers recently, I can't comment on them. I'll stipulate that I'm not an expert on every coffee blend available in the US, and that some US blends may be palatable.
As for tea, I've drunk many different varieties (South African Rooibos, Japanese green tea, several types of Indian tea, some Chinese tea - I forget which). I've drunk Indian and Rooibos tea with and without milk. Of all the varieties I've tried, I prefer the Indian with milk (or freshly-squeezed lemon).
Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.
-- 6079 Smith W.
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If you need lemon in your tea then you must be drinking the wrong kind of tea or be an American - who don't know how to make tea properly - or that it's supposed to be hot!
- I would love to change the world, but they won’t give me the source code.
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Forogar wrote: or be an American
Them's fighting words! 
We have a lemon tree in our garden. Some teas go very well with freshly-picked and -squeezed lemon. Just the thing, IMO, after a heavy meal.
(I would never insult tea - any type - by making it with less than boiling water. My grandmother, who introduced me to English tea-making, would spin in her grave.)
Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.
-- 6079 Smith W.
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De gustibus non disputandum est.
FFY.
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That should teach me not to quote Latin from memory.
Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.
-- 6079 Smith W.
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Your memory is pretty good, apparently.
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Try Lapsang Suchong - you'll love it or hate it. But it's never bitter. I've had some Indian Green tea (not very common, it seems) and it was better than most. Indian tea, however, gets bitter very easily - Chinese tea does not.
If you want tea a little less scrupulously pure, my second favorite (behind lapsang suchong) is Lychee black tea. It's cured with Lychee flowers (which are removed). It smells more like tea than any other tea.
For green tea? Loong Jing (Dragon Well). However, there are a great many varieties. Some are amazing - some? Not so much. That's probably the most "traditional" Chinese green tea, but traditions do vary by region. Taiwan has a lot of Jasmine tea (not high on my imaginary list).
For me, some years ago (I think during graduate school) my tea "taste" kicked in. Suddenly the tea really did matter. It was some cheap India tea that triggered it, Taj Mahal. Nasty stuff by current standards (mine). Around the same time I developed "a taste" for single malt scotch.
Having a taste for something (call it gourmet) is not something I feel lucky about. I can't enjoy the plain stuff. It's actually a loss of flexibility. Luckily, it didn't happen with coffee. I still greatly prefer darker roasts - mostly buying Latin roasts these days (oddly enough, very inexpensive in a Latin-oriented supermarket). The old style taste in American coffee? Too lightly roasted. Often too weak. Still available, but not very common. Even swill-markets, like Drunkin'-Donuts and McDullards are trying to compete with Starbucks by serving real coffee and making much hoopla about it. Luckily, though, only bad and weak coffee bother me. Tel-Aviv espressos went down well. Cafe Turkai - every now and then, the mood strikes (although now I make it without the sugar).
But, continuing the whip-saw, once the "craft beer" craze struck and stuck, you can easily get good beer. IPA's, for me, even before they were in fashion. A good thing because it ultimately increased availability and decreased prices (on some).
Enough of this lecture. My coffee's getting cold.
Ooops. One more thing: how to repair nasty coffee: put star anise in your cup, or if possible, brew it onto the star anise. Takes the edge off and adds richness. Don't use so much that it gets a licorice taste. Also reuse them a lot of times. For a while, due to their thick woody nature, they actually become more effective with the first few uses.
| Ravings en masse^ |
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| "The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein | | "If you are searching for perfection in others, then you seek disappointment. If you seek perfection in yourself, then you will find failure." - Balboos HaGadol Mar 2010 |
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I bow to your superior knowledge of tea.
As for coffee, I also prefer the Latin roasts and blends, when I'm not drinking Turkish coffee (the only decent coffee available at work).
Personally, I prefer Bushmills single-malt for "everyday" drinking, and the more peaty single malts (Talisker, Laphroaig, Ardbeg, …) for special occasions. I'm not really a beer person.
Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.
-- 6079 Smith W.
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The dark roasts used to attract me but caffeine is reduced the more it is roasted so these days I go for medium roasts so get enough kick to stay awake the whole day.
Of course, 48 oz per day does keep me going! 
- I would love to change the world, but they won’t give me the source code.
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Minister lied face to face (10)
"It is easy to decipher extraterrestrial signals after deciphering Javascript and VB6 themselves.", ISanti[ ^]
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Time is up... and I for one have no idea what the answer is.
What's the solution?
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Missionary. Can you see it now? Was it a bad clue?
"It is easy to decipher extraterrestrial signals after deciphering Javascript and VB6 themselves.", ISanti[ ^]
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I like it! Good clue, in my opinion.
Although it was too difficult for me, I was struggling to get anything for "face to face".
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There are two theme options. I know which one I would choose.
"It is easy to decipher extraterrestrial signals after deciphering Javascript and VB6 themselves.", ISanti[ ^]
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That's rather good! Maybe a tad too difficult and not entirely KSS, but it is rather good.
Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect. - Mark Twain
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...It was an ether/oar situation! 
Ba-tish!
Anything that is unrelated to elephants is irrelephant
Anonymous
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The problem with quotes on the internet is that you can never tell if they're genuine
Winston Churchill, 1944
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Never argue with a fool. Onlookers may not be able to tell the difference.
Mark Twain
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With that sort of friend, who needs enemas?
Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.
-- 6079 Smith W.
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At the barbers today I asked to have my hair cut like Tom Cruise.
So he gave me two cushions to sit on.
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Setting up a new laptop for one of my wife’s coworkers.
Seriously. What.The.Actual.F*ck?!
".45 ACP - because shooting twice is just silly" - JSOP, 2010
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You can never have too much ammo - unless you're swimming, or on fire. - JSOP, 2010
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When you pry the gun from my cold dead hands, be careful - the barrel will be very hot. - JSOP, 2013
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If someone had given MS the perfect user interface they would have moved away from perfection on their very next release - making for a less useful product.
Which version of Windows was their most usable - and how far away from it are we now?
I, for one, like Roman Numerals.
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watch it! even the tiniest hint of badness coming from redmond will have the fanlemmings all riled up.
(btw: redmond literally means red mountain, wish the idiots running ms and the flocks of lemmings that worship them would jump off the bloody thing.)
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the goat in your machine wrote: even the tiniest hint of badness coming from redmond will have the fanlemmings all riled up.
You must be confused with the hardcore Linux fans. Those can be rabid beyond scary. There's no comparable thing as a "Redmond fanlemming", as you put it. The most you'll probably get out of some Windows users, especially on a site like CP, is perhaps an admission that they're making a good living writing software for the platform. But most wouldn't call themselves "fans".
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