cinnabarfaun

Unfortunately for every tea drinker in an American hotel, most coffee makers (at least the drip kind) will make any water boiled inside taste like coffee, unless they've been used exclusively for plain boiled water. Maybe a combo tea/coffee drinker wouldn't mind, but I've always found it intolerable.

But it's a good point about the grid - we have plenty of appliances for coffee that are principally glorified water boilers, and there's no evidence that our appliance voltage has hampered their popularity at all.

I think this is the largest reason right here. People are naturally going to reserve their limited counter space for the stuff they use daily. For Americans, that's more likely to be some kind of coffee maker than an electric kettle.

Growing up where I did, I knew a lot of families that regularly made iced tea. But they usually made a gallon at a time, once or twice a week, and still drank coffee every day - so they had counter top coffee makers, and stovetop kettles that could be stored away the rest of the week.

Great video on this from technology connections. tl;dr it takes more time, but not, like, that much more. We mostly just don't have a huge tea-drinking culture here.

My family (American) did drink a lot of tea. Surprise surprise, we had a kettle. I did not die of old age from the cumulative weight of all that waiting.

Idk, I cost can be the issue. I live in a city with pretty decent public transit, and there's a reliable transit line that will take me to a friend that I visit pretty regularly. It's like 5-10 minutes to drive and maybe 20 to take public transit. More time, but if public transit was free I would definitely take it at least 80% of the time.

The problem is, if my boyfriend and I both go, it costs us ~$10 for the round trip. It's hard to justify spending that when I already have a car, and the gas to get there is a negligible expense. I do okay money wise (hence why I have a car at all), but if you ride often enough that expense really adds up.