I like coffee
Coffee drinkers are usually failed by the teas they get recommended, which tend to be delicate. These are chosen for the opposite qualities: roast character, body, and enough presence to survive a mug.
Who this is for
A coffee drinker who finds most tea thin and wants something with body and roast.
What you should come away with
At least one tea that does the thing you actually want from a hot drink, rather than one you are supposed to appreciate.
Leg 1 · Roast, without the caffeine
Hojicha is the closest thing in tea to a roasted flavour, and it is nearly impossible to brew badly. Start here rather than with anything green.
Starting point. Everything after this is measured against it.
Lighter and sweeter than leaf hojicha, with a caramel note and essentially no bitterness at any brewing strength.
Why this step follows
Stem hojicha is the sweeter and more common form in Japan. Leaf hojicha is what gets exported and it is noticeably more bitter.
Roasty and gently sweet with essentially no astringency — the Japanese green tea for people who dislike green tea, and a common evening choice for exactly that reason.
Leg 2 · Body and malt
A change of category. Assam is the fullest-bodied thing in tea and takes milk the way coffee does.
Starting point. Everything after this is measured against it.
Strong and straightforwardly malty, engineered so that milk and a short steep produce the same cup every morning. Judged as a single origin it is unremarkable; judged as a blend it is a piece of consistent engineering.
Why this step follows
The blend’s dominant component, on its own. The first useful step out of blends is usually meeting one of their parts.
Thick and malty with a firm astringent grip. The second flush is the one worth seeking: it carries a rounder, almost stewed-fruit sweetness under the malt that the first flush has not yet developed.
Leg 3 · Roast taken seriously
A third category, and the one that will hold a coffee drinker's attention longest. Charcoal roasting over months gives a depth nothing else in tea reaches.
Starting point. Everything after this is measured against it.
Baked fruit and caramel over the familiar rolled-oolong base, with far more warmth than the modern light style.
Why this step follows
Both roasted Taiwanese oolongs, one moderate and one taken to the edge. The step up is in roast depth rather than in oxidation.
Deeply roasted without being charred, which is the whole difficulty of the technique. Poor examples taste of nothing but burnt sugar.
Read alongside
- Why roasted teas taste nutty
Sustained heat on finished leaf drives browning reactions that generate toasted, caramelised and nutty compounds — the same broad family of reactions that browns bread, and a completely separate step from oxidation.
- A tea guide for beginners
What to know before buying anything, in the order it becomes useful. Most of the difficulty in starting with tea is not the tea — it is that the vocabulary assumes you already know things.