It’s absurd that as a country you drink so little tea that you wouldn’t need electric kettles.
At least, I can totally see how it would seem as such to anyone from the UK (and most of the world).
At least, I can totally see how it would seem as such to anyone from the UK (and most of the world).
For my part, despite working at it for years, I still don't really like cheap tea (the stuff I could actually afford to drink every day, and that can be found without seeking out rare-in-the-US tea shops or ordering online), though higher-end tea is really good.
We drink a ton of iced tea, but that's easily made on the stovetop in a large pot, and can be bought in gallon-quantities at the grocery store. Having a kettle doesn't improve iced-tea-making very much.
[EDIT] Part of it may be that we drink on-the-go more than other countries. Just a guess, but might be true. Iced tea and coffee (hot or cold) are both much better for that than hot tea—one doesn't usually make a thermos-full of hot tea and drink it straight from the thermos, I'd expect (but maybe I'm wrong?) but that's normal for coffee.
I forgot about iced tea, but I'm under the impression that how popular it is depends on the region of the US you're talking about. I don't see a lot of people drinking iced tea in my area, and I don't think I've ever seen anyone make it for themselves.
Sweet tea is quite regional (the South).
Iced tea's popular in much of the country, but I think making it at home has dropped off just like making many other things at home has (how many people make their own stock or broth anymore?). These days, a gallon of store-brand iced tea is just about the cheapest drink most grocery stores stock—barely more expensive than making it at home, really, so why bother?
[EDIT] For foreigners wondering WTF the difference is between proper sweet tea and normal iced tea with sugar added: you add the sugar during or before steeping, while the water's nice and hot, and, usually, you add a lot of it. The difference in the finished product is kinda like the difference between making a mixed drink with simple syrup, versus using granulated sugar. You can cleanly dissolve a lot more sugar in hot water than cold (see again: simple syrup), and it tends to stay well-dissolved even when it cools. It's commonly believed that it also affects the flavor, not just texture and level-of-sweetness, but that may just be in our heads (I think it does, too, but can't explain why—it's not like we caramelize the sugar or anything like that)
Old-school restaurants, and especially diners, may have a mid-sized glass jar[0] of sugar with a metal lid and little metal flap on it (that flips up if you tip it, allowing some sugar out) left on the table, mainly used to sweeten coffee and iced tea. This is getting less common, in favor of little trays of sweetener packets, but you still see it sometimes. Used to be very common, 1990s and earlier.
True sweet tea (huge in the South, i.e. the part of the country that seceded during the Civil War, but much less ubiquitous outside it) is incredibly unhealthy. It contains more dissolved sugar than is easily achievable in room-temp-or-lower water/tea, by adding it during the boil, same as how you can super-concentrate sugar in water when making simple syrup (though it doesn't go that far) and it retains that sugar even when it's refrigerated. Sweetened iced tea has a much broader range of sugar levels, and may be relatively healthy, with only a little sugar, or very sugary.
Outside of the South, you'll often get sweetened iced tea if you ask for "sweet tea". It's fairly uncommon to see the real thing in Northern or Western restaurants. This sometimes leads to confusion, with non-Southerners going to the South and ordering sweet tea and getting something offensively sweet compared to what they're used to, or Southerners ordering it elsewhere and being disappointed with what they're served.
[0] Diner-syle sugar pourer: https://img1.etsystatic.com/040/0/6766475/il_570xN.635748831...
Note: this does not apply to bottled/canned teas, which are usually close to "half and half" in sweetness.
Most restaurants here serve soft drinks from a fountain rather than individual cans/bottles, so refills are free. If a restaurant uses individual containers for service, you will have to pay for refills. However, iced tea has free refills everywhere I've ever seen.
They're easier to find these days but still rare. If you ask for a hot tea at a restaurant, you'll often get a suspicious-looking teabag that has spent at least 6 months in the cupboard (iced is more available). I'm sure you can guess at the quality of most of the teas in an American grocery store; I usually wind up ordering from specialty tea shops instead.
("sun tea" is made by sticking a big glass pitcher or jar outside on a warm sunny day, with water and teabags and maybe some citrus slices in it, and waiting for it to become something resembling tea, which you may drink at its natural somewhat-warm temperature, drink over ice, or refrigerate).
Curiosity got the better of me and I had to look this up. The US is the 35th most tea-drinking nation! And overall, there are slightly more male tea-drinkers than female. At least according to this site:
https://teahow.com/is-tea-popular-in-america-what-tea-they-d...
Also, looking at the age breakdown of US tea drinker perhaps explains the difference in our experiences. 18.5% of people in my age group (50+) drink tea. 46.2% of those in the 25-49 year age group drink tea.
I think you're right. There is a table showing the popularity breakdown of the different types of tea, including herbal, but I think that's the global breakdown, not US.
It didn't provide a stat for it, but the page does remark that the majority of black tea consumed in the US goes to making iced tea.
It sort of feels like a generational flip-flop thing to me between tea and coffee.
Men drink (black or lightly sweetened/dairied) coffee or "energy drinks", women drink espresso-based mostly-milk drinks that don't taste like coffee, or tea (often green or herbal, and also often mixed with a bunch of milk or sugar, unless herbal). Not that there isn't plenty of overlap, but that's how the landscape looks to me, to call out the two big bubbles on this particular Venn diagram.
I call those "milkshakes".