Tea K-cups

Welcome Joel!

We’ve got a Keurig machine at work and the (admittedly very) few times I’ve tried the tea K-cups I’ve been very disappointed. I find the tea that comes out very weak and often with a bit of coffee flavor. I personally think that the water just doesn’t spend enough time in contact with the tea to get the full tea “effect”.

(Granted I think the same for the coffee side of the Keurig too. But on the rare occasion that I want to have coffee I prefer using my French press, so overall I just may not be your average Keurig user)

Thanks.
That’s what I thought. Isn’t this site called "steep"ster for a reason? If there’s no steeping how would it be any good.

I have tried a few different kinds of the tea k cups. As well as the reusable k cup that you can out your own tea in. Some teas are good some are not so good. I use it mostly to make iced tea. I brew the tea into a cup of ice. I prefer regularly steeped tea over Keurig though.

I don’t know if it was a keurig or not, but I tried something similar in a hotel once. It was a twinings earl grey and it was absolutely horrid. Mind you, the machine was also used for coffee drinks out of, so far as I could see, the same spouts and things, so I imagine there must have been some contamination. Still, it wasn’t something that neither I nor Husband was particularly interested in introducing to our home. It was good fun trying to work out how to use it with no instructions, though.

(On the other hand it was my first cup of tea as someone’s wife, so I’m having really good thoughts about a really awful cup of tea. Paradox!)

I love my Keurig! I mostly use it for tea but have never noticed coffee taste after my mother makes a cup.

I like the Celestial English B-fast and they now have Tetley British Blend which I’m in love with.

I have had one K-cup in my Keurig because it came with it. Celestial Seasonings Sleepytime blend. It is a tea I grew up drinking and I was really surprised at how well it turned out as I was expecting a weak cup. It was actually really good. I did notice that the k-cup was very full of leaves, much more so than I expected.. & probably more than 2 tea bags worth, maybe 3. I was tempted to take the cup apart to see how much was really init, but I could tell it was quite full just be feeling it. I would expect you would have to do the same to get a decent strength cup of any tea.

I will mention that I rinse my Keurig after any beverage that might leave a flavor in the machine. We often just use it for hot water for hot chocolate or bagged teas. We use it for coffee on occasion.

I did try putting some tea bags in a cafe cup to see if it would work the same … No go. Poor, weak, nasty tea came of it. I think there would be a lot of effort in trying to get the right blend & amount of tea to get a good cup every time.

The tea is terrible from a Kcup. I was visiting my ex-boyfriend’s parents once, and his mom bought me a pack of celestial seasoning Earl Grey because she knew I was a tea drinker, and I drank it of course. And it was so much worse than bagged tea even. It just was wrong. I can’t explain what was wrong with it, except that it was super super bitter and also somehow whatever bitter taste was there hid the taste of the tea itself. I spent a week dumping as much milk into my tea as possible, not finishing my cups of tea, and sneaking coffee when ex-boy’s mom was not around to see me not drink the tea. I think the issue is that the tea doesn’t steep, and to make up for that, there’s a lot of really powdery tea in the KCup, and thus the cup of tea is weird.

My mom though, once pointed out that tea Kcups are kind of pointless, since you can run water through the machine and brew tea in a cup if it’s bagged tea or whatever. And she’s right. There’s no need to use a Kcup for tea… But they do seem to sell I think, so people do use them.

Anyway, I realized that the Keurig is programable temperature wise (between a really random span of 182-192 degrees or something. I know 182 is the lowest temp the one my parents own will go. I can’t quite remember the upper temp, but it’s not even at 200.) So I use one of my tea infuser cups with tea in it, and run the water at the temperature I think will work to brew the tea. It works okay, although my kettle is definitely more reliable and has more temperatures. (It’s really hard to brew green tea using the Keurig, because the water has to be 182 degrees or above.) And I feel like I should mention that I take out the black cup cradle thing, because it tends to have a lot of coffee grinds in it. And I also run a full mug of water through it before I brew tea so the coffee contaminates my tea as little as possible.

Anyway, the tea Kcups don’t taste right to me in any way, and they also seem to be way too expensive for something totally unnecessary. However, the Keurig itself is not useless for tea, because you can control the water temperature somewhat. When I go home to my parents for the holidays, I’ll probably just pack down some black and oolong teas that will brew well within the odd temperature span the Keurig allows.

EDIT: And I dislike using it for herbals, because I like brewing my herbal blends right at boiling and the Keurig doesn’t actually produce boiling water. I imagine it would do a fine job with herbal teas though. And it looks like in this thread people have had luck with that. I also would imagine herbal blends would work better as a Kcup themselves, because they aren’t as difficult to brew as tea, and thus would probably still taste good even with the limitations of the KCup. If that makes sense. I feel like I’m totally not making sense. The lack of steeping would be an issue, but the tea wouldn’t taste bad, just maybe weak. And that’s all speculation. I haven’t actually used any of the herbal Kcups. I might be totally off the mark.

I just noticed that Harney and sons announced some of their teas in K cup form. Price seems reasonable compared to some of the flavoured coffee k cups you can buy. I would definitely be willing to try Paris in k cup form.