Coffee & Tea Quiz — 7 Free Questions

Question 1

Which method steeps coarsely ground coffee in cold or room-temperature water for 12 to 24 hours and then filters it, producing a smooth, low-acid, low-bitterness concentrate that keeps for days in the fridge and is diluted with water or milk to serve?

Question 2

Which drink, sometimes called the house wine of the American South, is black tea brewed strong, sweetened heavily with sugar while still hot so it fully dissolves, then chilled and served over ice in large glasses, often with lemon?

Question 3

Which Chinese vessel is a small lidded bowl, usually of porcelain, sitting on a saucer, used to brew loose tea and then either sip from directly, holding the lid ajar to hold back the leaves, or to pour off the infusion into cups?

Question 4

Which strong, malty, coppery Indian black tea comes from a hot, humid, low-lying river valley in the northeast, is made from a broad-leaved variety of the tea plant found growing wild there by a Scottish trader in the 1820s, and forms the backbone of most 'breakfast' blends?

Question 5

Which coffee species is hardier, grows at low altitude in hotter, wetter conditions, carries about twice the caffeine, yields a harsher, more bitter, rubbery cup with a thick crema, and is the mainstay of Vietnamese production and of most instant coffee and cheap espresso blends?

Question 6

Which country has been the world's largest coffee producer for over 150 years, at times supplying a third or more of the global crop, grows mostly on large, increasingly mechanised farms, and saw prices spike worldwide after a catastrophic frost hit its plantations in 1975?

Question 7

Which term, now widely misused by hotels and abroad for an elegant spread of tea and cakes, originally meant a hearty early-evening meal for working families, eaten at a full-height dining table after a day's labour, with hot dishes, bread and butter, and strong tea?

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About Coffee & Tea

Coffee and tea are the two drinks that most of the world reaches for first thing in the morning, and between them they have started wars, funded empires, built cities of conversation and reorganised whole economies. This quiz covers about eighty things you can know about them: the plants and how they are processed, the brewing gear and the drinks it makes, the growing regions and their famous names, and the history that runs from a Yemeni Sufi lodge to a New York merchant's accidental tea bag.

Every question describes one, a species, a method, a style, a term, a place or a person, and asks you to name it from four choices. The explanation then fills in the detail: what oxidation actually does to a tea leaf, why a flat white is not a small latte, how the honey process got its misleading name, what a peaberry is, and why Ceylon grows tea at all.

A few threads run through it. Both drinks are really one plant each doing many jobs: all true tea, from white to black to aged pu-erh, is Camellia sinensis handled differently, and most of the world's coffee is one of two species with very different temperaments. Both were spread by empire and conflict: a botanist sent to steal China's tea secrets for British India, the opium trade built to pay for the tea habit, a leaf-rust fungus that turned Ceylon from a coffee island into a tea one, a tax revolt in a Boston harbour.

The quiz gives real weight to the gear and the vocabulary, because that is where most people get lost. On the coffee side: the moka pot and the French press and the pour-over and the AeroPress, and the difference between a ristretto, a lungo and a doppio, a cortado and a flat white, an americano and a long black. On the tea side: the gaiwan and the yixing pot and the samovar, the six colour classes and what oxidation and roasting and post-fermentation each do, and the named teas, Darjeeling and Assam and Keemun, Longjing and Tieguanyin, sencha and gyokuro and matcha.

The quiz also settles the everyday confusions: that 'chai tea' means 'tea tea', that decaf is not caffeine-free, that high tea is not the fancy one, that most 'wasabi' is fake and most 'kopi luwak' worse, that iced coffee and cold brew are different drinks. Where a photograph of loose tea, a device or a bean would not simply give the answer to someone who already knows it, it is shown; the instantly recognisable ones are left as text.

The payoff is that the cafe menu and the tea aisle stop being a wall of jargon. Learn what distinguishes an oolong from a black tea, a ristretto from a lungo, a washed coffee from a natural one, and you can order, and brew, with intent. Every claim has been checked against reliable sources, and the wording is kept plain.