Coffee & Tea Quiz — 10 Free Questions

Question 1

Which espresso variation uses the normal dose of ground coffee but stops the shot early, with less water pulled through, giving a smaller, thicker, sweeter and less bitter result because the harsher compounds that come out late in extraction are left behind?

Question 2

Which class of tea is the least processed of all, made simply by letting young leaf buds, often covered in fine silvery-white down, wither and air-dry with almost no rolling or heating, so it undergoes only slight oxidation and yields a pale, delicate, subtly sweet liquor?

Question 3

Which traditional Russian device is a large metal urn with a central vertical tube in which charcoal or a heating element keeps a big reservoir of water hot for hours, with a small pot of very strong tea concentrate kept warm on top and diluted to taste in the cup?

Question 4

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 5

Which tea, grown on steep Himalayan foothill slopes in the far north of West Bengal, is nicknamed the 'champagne of teas' for its light body and distinctive muscatel, floral note, comes in a prized spring 'first flush' and summer 'second flush', and is protected by a geographical indication?

Question 6

What is the name for the small, rounded, single coffee seed that forms when only one of the two seeds normally found inside a coffee cherry develops, filling the space and growing into a pea shape rather than the usual flat-sided half?

Question 7

Which full-immersion brewer steeps coarse grounds in hot water for around four minutes, then traps them at the bottom with a metal mesh plunger pushed down through the jug, giving a heavy-bodied cup with some fine sediment and a slick of oils that a paper filter would trap?

Question 8

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 9

Which British institution, a light mid-afternoon meal of tea with finger sandwiches, scones and small cakes on a tiered stand, is credited to Anna, the 7th Duchess of Bedford, in the 1840s, who took to having a private tray around four o'clock to bridge the long gap before a fashionably late dinner?

Question 10

Which drink combines rolled Chinese gunpowder green tea, a generous bunch of fresh spearmint and a large amount of sugar, brewed in a metal pot and poured from a height into small glasses to build a frothy head, and is offered as a near-obligatory gesture of hospitality?

📚 All Quizzes

Browse every category and see the full list of quizzes on BriskQuiz

→

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.