Which is cheaper- Coffee or tea ( as a obsessive habit that is )

[takeshi]

The tea itself can be pricey, some of the Chinese teas cost hundreds of $$ per kilo, but the equipment to make it well does not have to be.

Good coffee gear costs a mint.

Your first sentence applies to both coffee and tea. It's really a subjective matter. Either can get expensive. Coffee probably has the higher upper range of pricing but you don't have to get expensive with either option. A hand mill and a pourover are certainly viable options for coffee.

I'd say go for whatever you enjoy more if you have to pick.

 

[1Speedster]

Almost anything is cheaper than espresso, but price is not my motivating factor.

 

[SFsc616171]

Switching from coffee to tea ... hmmmm! Which is cheaper, coffee or tea ... hmmmm!
Well, ok, here I go!
RE: cheaper: 19 brand-name coffee 'bags' cost $5.75, in local named Hillshire farms store. 20 brand-name 'English Breakfast' tea bags cost $2.00. You tell me.
RE: switching; coffee drinkers are suggested to purchase 'black teas',i.e., English/Irish/Scot Breakfast teas. Haven't figured out 'why' myself, yet. I will tell you, that a 'Breakfast' tea, can be a good stand-up for a cup a cup of coffee, and will not go bitter, as it gets 'longer in the cup'. For an all-day tea, I have found the store-shelved Tetley, or Red Rose (similar to the old A&P) teas to be the norm, for easy prices. Tetley does make a large box of English Breakfast teabags, and they have a subtlety to them, but won't harm your wallet.
Now, to move up the scale, we have Twinings ... try their English/Irish Breakfast teas, you will note the differences more easily, or Stash Teas along the same lines. Stash Tea has a website, with a large list to choose from, but, the Twinings British teas seem to be more enjoyable, to me.
Lastly, for those that visit bookstore coffeeshops, you might have seen those fancy metal cylinders of different teas by Republic of Tea. (The average price, last time I looked, was $10.00 a can of 50.) They have their breakfast teas, and oh, so many more. Both on those shelves and their website.
Personally, I'm not a slug of this and a dash of that coffee drinker, so some of these higher priced teas, and yes, I have had them before, cannot be justified to my internal accountant.
But that is me.

Do I own a teapot? Of course! I've been attempting to slow down, now that I'm retired, to enjoy a truly civilized 'pot of tea'. (Don't tell the microwave that, please?) My choice of teapot is "For Life" flat-topped 20 oz. model. It's not a 'New England standard Brown Betty', as I knew growing up, but it is functional simplicity, for a guy. I spent 3 years in SouthEast Asia, and when I was off-duty, I was invited to sit with the village grandfathers, drink tea from a sideways-handled teapot, and share stories, and listen to some wisdom. Some of these folks were guerilla fighters during the Japanes Ocuupation, and survived with everything intact! And the tea? It was the old time original brick tea!

 

[avsmusic1]

The only thing I'm pretty sure about is that, in general, expensive teas tend to be a lot better than decently priced good teas, while expensive coffees are only marginally better, if at all. I'm not talking about extravagantly priced, but like $20-40 vs $7. Or even that $15/oz winter oolong vs $7 for 1/4 lb of season's pick assam.

I'm not sure I agree, at least not on the coffee side. For instance, I've had beans for <$20 that completely ruined what most people would consider an average cup of coffee. I had to have a cup of Dunkin coffee earlier this week b/c I was running late. That is probably close to $7 a pound and I couldn't even get through half the cup

 

[Stevew443]

For me, tea is much cheaper. I am not allowed to have any caffeine because I had a very serious case of acute pancreatitis earlier this year (I lost 60% of my pancreas) and caffeine could cause a flare up. I have not found a decaf coffee worth drinking, but I have found several decaf teas that I love. Also when I was released from the hospital after 3 weeks of fasting (living on IV's was not really fun) I found that I could not stand the taste of coffee. It all tasted burned. So, tea is much much cheaper than another trip to the hospital.

 

[P_K]

All depends how far down the tea rabbit hole you want to go. I just paid $35 for 30g of matcha and that was not the very high end. Oolongs? Competition oolong from Taiwan can run several hundred dollars for 75g. Puerh can run the gamut from less than $10 a bing to several hundred for a new release and thousands for high end aged cakes. Teaware? Good quality yixing pots run $50-$300 dollars and on up to thousands from a well know artisan. And some have one pot per tea style! Japanese teaware is quite expensive....kyusu for sencha....chawan for matcha.....houhin or shiboridashi for gyokuro can all run upwards of $50 for decent quality and much higher if you like.

Do you want to age your puerh? Think of a wine cellar and one can imagine just how expensive the tea habit can get when you just keep buying them. It really wouldn't take long to have a puerh collection that was worth $5000. I have seen examples that went into the tens of thousands. Not so unlike a wine collection.

 

[ouch]

P_K brings up a good point regarding cellaring. Good pu'er and oolong can be aged, but I never heard of anyone collecting old coffee. In fact, it's just the opposite- people obsess over freshness. I used to rummage through Jim's garbage cans to retrieve coffee that he discarded because it was four days old.

 

[Doc4]

All depends how far down the tea rabbit hole you want to go. ...

If you want to go down the coffee rabbit hole, you end up knowing what this is:

If you want to go down the tea rabbit hole, you end up being able to tell stories about these chaps ...

 

[nff]

definately tea. wana know why? to words multiple steepings. say you buy some authentic Da hong pao for $600/400g you use about 5g/session and thats around 80 sessions and you can use it about 6 times per session. so 80*6=480 so 600/480 = $1.25/cup and those cups can be made with a $7.50 gaiwan but you can spend a lot on desiner teaware.
now take some kopi luwak at $125/400g you use about 17g /2x shot so thats 48 singles so 125/48=$2.6/ cup and espresso machines can cost quite a bit ($400 ish for a decent one) and grinders can be expensive also ($250 for a good electric grinder) if you go the espresso route. if your going the drip route a decent dripper costs about $125 (bonavita) where as a good one is around $400 (tecnovorm) pour overs are cheaper $60 for a hario v60 and a good french press can be had for around $50

allthough the choice is yours.

 

[Rider675]

Most of the teas I drink are about $8 per 125g. That makes a litre+ of awesome tea every day, for over a month. I only steep once too.