Choosing a pod coffee machine?

OOI, can you remember when you first got a taste for coffee?

I though the British were renown for the love of tea and tea drinking and only 'the foreigners' (especially the Yanks and Italians?) drunk coffee? ;-)

I can't remember having coffee at home (although we probably did) but neither my parents, the In-laws or we have ever had any specific coffee making paraphernalia, outside a jar of instant and a spoon (AFAIK/CR). ;-)

We have been given the chemistry set stuff when round other peoples houses but would generally ask for instant if the alternative meant waiting for them to get it all going. Same in a cafe.

So I still 'enjoy' a mug of tea and will 'have' a cup of coffee for a change (and it's 'ok').

The guy next door loves his coffee (one of those who seems to need it to function) as I'm reminded, every time I notice the back between our houses flooded and I clear his drain out. ;-(

That's put me in the mood for a mug of tea and one of my home made vegan rock cakes. ;-)

Cheers, T i m

I certainly remember us getting ground coffee delivered from a company in Portsmouth - to Berlin. Back in the very early 1960s. We had some sort of percolator with a glass "dome".

I think I can remember it being much more expensive (than tea) and therefore possibly used more sparingly?

Cheers, T i m

Afraid I can't remember how much coffee my parents used!

They also got tea delivered - which is why I feel as if I have always known of Broken Orange Pekoe.

?Cona

No - I meant a small dome on a metal lid. Something like this:

I still remember being told in a restaurant that I couldn't have coffee in the afternoon, It appeared that I'd asked for something terribly naughty - or foreign. This was in the 1960s.

Oh yes, so you could see it bubbling over. I remember those too.

That's because you know f*ck all about history.

Coffee preceded tea in to the UK - hence the proliferation of *coffee shops* that drove the City as the place to do business.

Tea came later and was cheaper than coffee - and easier to source as the Empire expanded. Hence it's establishment as the nations drink of choice (egged on by cheap sugar). The reason Europeans lost the taste for tea was the British control of the market.

The reason the Americans lost the taste was entirely due to the Boston Tea Party. Something USAphiles would do to remember as they climb ever further up the nations back passage. If you judge a nation by it's beverages, then the US is firmly in thrall to it's *European* not British antecedents.

And it was *coffee* shops, not Lyons Tea Rooms that were the centre of the 1950s London Beat boom. My Dad being overjoyed that you could actually get a decent coffee in Britain after he left Italy. Although our penchant for fresh ground Mokka coffee remained exotic well into the 80s. I used to take a flask to school to questions from teachers ...

There used to be a chain of shops: "Importers" with a branch in Ealing (just near the Green) that roasted coffee on the premises and had every variety you could think of, plus tea from averywhere. Sadly all gone. The closest you might get is Whittard - and they are a bit identikit.

Same principle as a Mokka ? NOt true espresso though.

Sounds about right. People witter on about the 60s and 70s like a f****ng golden age ...

ISTR a branch just outside Waterloo Station.

It was .... if you 'worked' for British Leyland

Tea was an expensive luxury when the Chinese would not sell it to us. Then some plants were smuggled out and planted in India and the rest is history.

well I have made my mine up. I like the idea Of bean to pod, but a far to expensive. I am going for the Tassimo pod, "Happy by name and I hope by nature. I do not feel that I have enough time on this earth to get value from the bean version. Sorry to all you environmentalists.

Not sure if they were a London/SE or national chain.

Roasting coffee is a smell on a par with baking bread for yumminess.

I think the Indians were into tea long before the British got there, although the introduction of Chinese variaties may have affected tastes.

Guildford - 'Importers' at the top of the high street and 'Friary Meux' brewery at the bottom - was a smell to remember forever.