Mar 16, 2026
Making good quality coffee is an art. Making good quality tea is an art. Both are not the same kinds of art. The quality of coffee is affected by several details outside the brewing process quite more than tea is. This makes good quality tea much more accessible.
Let us make a distinction between knowledge and skill.
For the sake of this post, knowledge will only refer to symbolic information. The names of things, the specific properties of things, the numeric values and indices of different things - stuff like that.
And skill refers to the practised ability to execute something with your body. A physical skill, like bowling or dancing.
With these definitions, how good your coffee turns out depends almost equally on your skill and your knowledge. Skill being handling the coffee, grinding it well if your grind it yourself, pouring/pressing with care — all of those things. Knowledge being what kind of of beans you use, what effects different temperatures have, what flavor profiles they create, etc.
In terms of tea, there aren't that many things in the first place. A tea is a herb brewed in water. But even if made with milk (which is different to a latte; tea is often boiled after adding milk), the skill factors in significantly more than the vessel/method/tea-type. Almost any popular off-the-shelf tea leaf brand will make good tea in the hands of someone who knows what they're doing.
Obviously, a skilled brewer will make better coffee from cheap quality beans than from a newbie, but, the ceiling of the potential quality is much lower.
And that makes me happy. It makes making chai so rewarding. Making good coffee just makes you feel like a genius. Making good tea makes you feel like a wizard.