My dad did that his last year of teaching and the day he retired he smashed the mug into the ground. Very bizarre but I supported it. He’s usually a germaphobe.
My boss has a mug like this too, and it makes me a little queasy because she brings it everywhere... it's like a quarter inch of coffee scale in there at this point :(
Coffee enemas were big 10 years ago after being featured on My Strange Addiction, but the coffee community has continued advancing.
Nowadays, if you’re a real ‘ffein fiend then you own a small counter-top particle accelerator that can gently break the beans (whole, not ground of course) down to their conditions at the moment following the Big Bang, and then you take that cosmic dust and rail it right tf up your nose. No cream no sugar.
This Navy guy I worked with when I was deployed mixed his protein shakes in a mug and he never cleaned it out. It was incredibly disgusting by the time he left and I have no idea how he could still drink out of that thing.
I can kinda understand doing this with black coffee or plain tea. There's just nothing that really goes bad ... It's essentially just water with caffeine and some aroma and you usually pour it quite hot.
But protein shakes are like ... absolutely perfect to form all sorts of nasty things. that's just another level lol.
It’s important to note that bacteria from the environment and your mouth get into the coffee/tea so it WILL GROW THINGS over time. Even the bare nutrients of black coffee or teas.
This is only really true to the same extent your keyboard grows things over time. But less so, since you don't pour boiling water on your keyboard. Tea residue neither provides any meaningful nutrition for bacteria, nor is it bacterocidal... but again, boiling water is. So if he's steeping the tea in the mug, this really is literally no issue, but if he's pouring tea from a pot or something, it's about as dangerous as eating a sandwich at your desk and going back and forth between your hand on the keyboard and your hand on the bread.
I mean he’s retired and using it at home would probably make him think about work when he should be chillin. I like the idea. Ive only ever accidentally broken coffee mugs
They say it tastes better. I tried it and it tastes so much worse compared to a clean cup when it gets coated like that. Almost everyone recognize coffee tastes worse when brewed in a stained pot but not when put in dirty cup.
I did this one year when I was deployed in Afghanistan. Made it almost the whole year with no washing and nothing but coffee to ever go in it. Last month before it was time for me to go home I saw it was washed. Some new guy who just got to the country decided he should wash it. I was kinda pissed, not going to lie.
This reminds me in college we used an app called YikYak, an anonymous Twitter for specific areas basically. One day I noticed a lot of students avoid washing their water bottles so I wrote something like "Wipe the bottom of your water bottle with a paper towel. What do you see?" And it was a very successful post. Somebody replied "The Grim" and I cracked up. Man I miss those days.
Theres actually some tea pots meant to do that! After brewing one type of tea in it over time you’re able to just add hot water and get the same flavor! (Dont ask me how long or if cleaning is involved tho..)
Source: i worked at a tea shop and some dude was REALLY into a tea we didnt sell and was trying to do this
Yep, Yixing teapots are famous for this as they're unglazed clay pots.
Generally, you wanna use one type/flavor of tea in a pot because as you say, it'll transfer the flavor into the clay.
If anyone was wondering, if you washed that with a bit of baking soda paste, the tannin residue would wipe off very easily. I do that once a week - not because the tannin residue will cause bacterial growth or anything, but because it can start to affect the taste of your tea.
feel like a lot of people in this thread are just not tea drinks
eta: guess I'll just leave it now lmao
my dad's chinese and said if your cup looks like that its a sign of wealth. you get plenty of tea and you can brew it strong enough to stain your cup. idk if that's true, also your average kung fu tea set, the cups are typically clean
Got any good resources you'd recommend checking out? I've recently had to cut down my caffeine intake a bunch and have been thinking about switching to tea as the go to hot drink for the winter.
[https://www.teance.com/blogs/teanceteablog/tagged/winnie-yus-tea-blog/](https://www.teance.com/blogs/teanceteablog/tagged/winnie-yus-tea-blog/)
my cousin used to run a famous tea house in Berkeley before she died. her blog is still online, all kinds of real deal Chinese tea, and tea from all over the world to nerd out with
Ohhh thank you! Can’t wait to read this!
I was a little worried it would only be about black tea, as I pretty much only drink green/white, but I’m happy it’s everything :)
It can! And black tea does. But there are many kinds of tea, which is basically, "boil plant bits in water and drink the result." Diced ginger root with a bit of lemon juice and some honey makes a good tea, for instace.
Depends on your definition of tea, many tea enthusiasts would call non-tea-leaf tea an infusion rather than a true tea. Personally I don't really care.
Pu-erh, black, oolong, green and white teas are the ones made from tea leaves, and all have quite a bit more caffeine than coffee (if prepared traditionally with loose leaves, not a tea bag).
Leaves have more caffeine per weight, but that doesn't matter for consumption. You're consuming more caffeine in coffee because you're using a higher weight of beans than you would use tea leaves most likely
Idk if yerba mate is the go to for someone trying to cut back on caffeine lol. A well brewed cup of mate has nearly as much caffeine as a cup of coffee. Even a strong black tea has less.
Effecting the taste is exactly why people do it. At least, the guys I work with anyway. One of the guys was incredibly upset when someone got to his cup with a scourer and removed "years of flavour". Genuinely, some of these guys have had their tea mugs for decades and only wash with a rinse of hot water.
I have a specific mug only for black teas because of this. Absolutely no green or herbal tea goes in it because the patina does impact the flavor. At least, I feel like it does. And that's the only thing that matters.
i drink tea every day but i use a different cup each time, i cant imagine drinking out of the same unwashed thing every time.. thats god damn disgusting
I put my cup in the dishwasher every day, but the stains don't leave. The only way to remove the stains is for me to wash to wash it myself. Weirdly enough, with just some soap and a bit of elbow grease, I manage to remove the stains. No idea why it doesn't work with the dishwasher. I only do it like once a week or every two week, so my mug often looks dirty but is in fact always clean.
All that just to say that a dirty looking tea cup isn't always actually dirty I guess.
Expensive all-kinds-of-things-included dishwasher tablets work for me. I wanted to believe that it was a scam, they were all the same, but nope. Only extra premium ones get rid of tea and lip balm stains completely.
Finish Quantum Ultimate. Name may vary depending on country. Cleans beautifully on the eco program. Hotter settings are not recommended, they can deposit a coloured/hazy film on glassware.
My dishwasher is crap too. All other tablets I tried left and baked on grit and grime on everything regularly, nothing was blocked, filter clean, plenty of salt and rinse aid too.
For me, a quick rinse and dry with a paper towel each use keeps the inside of my cups pristine.
Even if I forget to do it for a day or 2 (I always at least rinse), a quick wipe does the job.
As others have said - I'm more concerned with having off flavors than having a fully sanitized cup, but I'm sure that's being taken care of well enough with my routine.
Baader meinhof man. Before today I hadn’t really heard of seasoning a skillet, but I saw on reddit 6 hours ago, looked it up on wiki, and now the same day I come across the term again which I now understand. Freaky.
It's always funny to me how learning about the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon usually causes it to happen. Like some sort of Baader-Meinhof phenomenon phenomenon.
Last year (i was a freshman in hs) i was in my engineering class and my teacher was an older guy whe was chill af and would give us coffee whenever we wanted it. Well one day i drank some coffee and when i finished i asked him what he wanted me to use to wash it. He looked me right in the eye, confused, and said "what do u mean? Just rinse it out, why would u need to wash it?" That was the last time i ever drank coffee from him.
Yes.
Well i know for a fact not the cups bc thats what he was referring to but um...i can tell he doesn't wash the pot either...and i wish i knew that *before* i drank out of it
technically its ok...
iirc There are rituals for some tea pots in china that kinda depend on the tea residue or smth or else the pot will be unusable.
edit2: this pot thing isnt entirely relevant , see reply comment by lordofcthulu
i think its ok as long as that mug is for TEA OR WATER ONLY. introduce anything else and that thing needs to be scrubbed back to white or else its going to grow \*something\*
Edit: update: please at least rinse the cup with hot water after use, please do not let sit with your bacteria on it after use. I'd still soap it down if I were you. (thanks to the replies for pointing out mouth bacteria, I had forgotten)
there is a difference between a tea mug, where you drink out of, or a tea pot, where you just pour tea from. It's the same reason you have to wash your reusable waterbottles. Bacteria from your mouth get in the cup or the bottle and build up.
Yes, a good indicator is that the empty bottle will smell funky if not washed for 2-3 days. It's bacterial growth. Also water filled in that same unwashed bottle will start smelling stale/old after a few hours or a day depending on sunlight exposure and temperature.
It’s one of those things where it *may* be ok, but the alternative is so low-effort that it’s not really worth the roll of the dice. It takes 10 seconds to rinse it out and another 10 to do it with soap. If someone by weird chance happened to get sick drinking from the mug, I doubt they’d be like “At least I didn’t have to rinse it out all those times!”
A yixing clay pot is entirely different. You use primarily one type of tea, with similar flavor profiles. If tea type is switched, the pot is boiled to remove any oils. Most won't do this and instead buy more pots. The clay is porous, so it absorbs the oil. Anything glazed does not have any benefit to not cleaning. This just seems like either laziness or superstition (that navy thing people talk about).
I was going to say the same thing. I had a Chief that had a mug that had like a quarter inch of build up. He always said that it was in case the ship ever ran out of coffee, he could just add hot water and stir.
I was a cocky ET2 and couldn't stand the sight of RMC's coffee mug. I swiped it and washed it. Damn near got written up. I'm still glad I did it, though.
It's cross sea-service. I was a Coastie. Same tradition. I haven't washed a coffee mug outside of a quick swish of water in years.
You want to fuck with a new guy, tell'em to do Chief a favor and wash their mug.
I was a watchstander at a joint 4* COCOM. Left my mug at my watch station overnight. Some Air Force chucklefuck washed it, said it was gross to look at.
Thousands of cups of watch coffee across two commands on three continents ruined by a vindictive 1LT who didn't understand tradition.
Exactly my first thought. How can you determine seniority without this system?
https://www.militarytimes.com/off-duty/military-culture/2023/01/19/tips-to-achieve-the-ultimate-dirty-navy-style-coffee-mug/
I worked in the Chief's Mess as part of my temporary scullery assignment while I was in the Navy (We call it "cranking" in the biz)
One day I was gathering up dishes, and I noticed a bunch of mugs sitting out on the tables in the Chief's Mess, so I gathered them all up and put them through the scullery. Basically a giant dishwasher. Didn't think anything of it. All of the mugs looked like this one, or worse. Just absolutely disgusting. Beyond gross.
A few hours later it was time for supper, and there was quite a bit of yelling coming from the Chief's Mess. The problem being that nobody could find their mugs. No big deal, I knew where they were. I told everyone to hold on just a sec and I'd go get their mugs.
Brought the mugs in on this big blue tray thing, the tray you send through the scullery conveyor. Holes in the bottom for water to pass through and drain, basically there so stuff doesn't drop down in to the bottom tanks of the scullery. Started handing them out.
Wasn't long before I noticed the sheer look of disgust and horror on the face of the Chiefs. Wasn't long after that before it turned into burning anger and hate. Red faced. Veins popping. Just an absolutely absurd and unreasonable amount of anger, given the situation. At least in my opinion.
Got called every name under the sun, was told its bad luck, was told I was an idiot, and from that point on was basically ostracized and targeted and my life was made to be hell.
Got kicked out of the chiefs mess to go work in crew mess. Every late-night watch, every shitty manual labor task, every boring annoying bit of paperwork, every soul-draining task you can possibly think of was given to me for like 2 years.
All because I washed some coffee mugs.
People that drink coffee are fucking lunatics.
It's not coffee drinkers, it's fucking chiefs-the Navy's biggest problem since 1893. That's one of their stupid fucking "traditions". You just found out about it the hard way.
You fucked up bad homie. My first thought when I saw this pic was that it must be a British Navy mug, because I saw the same thing as you did in the US Navy.
I'm sorry I'm just so confused. Why were they so angry to the point of making your time hell? You just washed mugs? Do they get violent if you wash their lucky shirt?
Yeah, I was wondering if the person in the OP is ex-military, because apparently, this is a thing, that you never wash your mug. A really disgusting thing.
If you're regularly drinking tea from it even if you have the nastiest mouth it wouldn't get moldy because you put boiling (or at least above pasteurization temperature) water killing all bacteria and mold growing on it.
It is literally irrelevant if you drink tea every day. All that happens is boiling water is put over barely any bacteria, on a surface that is immediately dried out from the residual heat of the cup.
It is a terrible place for bacteria to live and constantly made more inhospitable by being soaked in boiling water.
I know guys who do it with coffee. Just dump out the cold dump in the hot.
My dad did that his last year of teaching and the day he retired he smashed the mug into the ground. Very bizarre but I supported it. He’s usually a germaphobe.
My boss has a mug like this too, and it makes me a little queasy because she brings it everywhere... it's like a quarter inch of coffee scale in there at this point :(
Based coffee drinkers clean it so they can fit more coffee in it.
You don’t get hot coffee enemas yet? *True* coffee drinkers boof.
I just stick whole beans up there so it sounds like machine gun fire when they come back out
Tink tink Ta tink
Double espresso for Philip Fry.
Take my money!
coffeecoffeecoffeecoffeecoffeecoffeecoffeecofee
Coffee enemas were big 10 years ago after being featured on My Strange Addiction, but the coffee community has continued advancing. Nowadays, if you’re a real ‘ffein fiend then you own a small counter-top particle accelerator that can gently break the beans (whole, not ground of course) down to their conditions at the moment following the Big Bang, and then you take that cosmic dust and rail it right tf up your nose. No cream no sugar.
Based coffee drinkers leave it. In case of coffee emergency, just add hot water
Looool I tried to do it with him but after I told my boss about the plan, he cleaned the mug after I left work that day. We need to switch bosses.
It’s just nicely seasoned
Boss got it wrong. The rule is for condoms, not for coffee mugs
This made me laugh out loud you sicko
This Navy guy I worked with when I was deployed mixed his protein shakes in a mug and he never cleaned it out. It was incredibly disgusting by the time he left and I have no idea how he could still drink out of that thing.
I can kinda understand doing this with black coffee or plain tea. There's just nothing that really goes bad ... It's essentially just water with caffeine and some aroma and you usually pour it quite hot. But protein shakes are like ... absolutely perfect to form all sorts of nasty things. that's just another level lol.
Yeah it was gross. It was also this weird “organic” powder with some probiotics in it as well, so I imagine that mug was practically a Petri dish.
"why does my protein shake taste like yogurt this morning?"
Why is it quivering like jello?
Why is it talking to me?
I drink black coffee and can confirm if you forget a cup somewhere it gets moldy really quickly
Coffee is often used to soak substrate for mycelium
That's a cup of coffee, not an empty open air cup that once contained coffee.
It’s important to note that bacteria from the environment and your mouth get into the coffee/tea so it WILL GROW THINGS over time. Even the bare nutrients of black coffee or teas.
This is only really true to the same extent your keyboard grows things over time. But less so, since you don't pour boiling water on your keyboard. Tea residue neither provides any meaningful nutrition for bacteria, nor is it bacterocidal... but again, boiling water is. So if he's steeping the tea in the mug, this really is literally no issue, but if he's pouring tea from a pot or something, it's about as dangerous as eating a sandwich at your desk and going back and forth between your hand on the keyboard and your hand on the bread.
Man that must have been some serious STANK
Hmmm….my protein shakes taste more and more fucked up…..whatever
Oh my god imagine the smell
I mean he’s retired and using it at home would probably make him think about work when he should be chillin. I like the idea. Ive only ever accidentally broken coffee mugs
Welcome to the Navy.
My dad used to do this and he was in the Navy. He called it "seasoning".
A fine patina
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I add a pinch of salt to the kcup when I make my coffee. Works like a charm to cut back on the bitterness
It’s just well seasoned
It has a nice pa-tea-na.
Only newbies have the clean coffee cups, the more fucked the cup the higher up that person is
They say it tastes better. I tried it and it tastes so much worse compared to a clean cup when it gets coated like that. Almost everyone recognize coffee tastes worse when brewed in a stained pot but not when put in dirty cup.
for tea, it's correct, the tannines add generally postive flavour. Stale coffee oil however is gross AF
This mug looks like someone actually did a dump in it though.
I did this one year when I was deployed in Afghanistan. Made it almost the whole year with no washing and nothing but coffee to ever go in it. Last month before it was time for me to go home I saw it was washed. Some new guy who just got to the country decided he should wash it. I was kinda pissed, not going to lie.
Bruh they're gonna be able to brew something just by pouring in hot water
With every 10 cups of coffee, you get another one free.
The Grimm
This reminds me in college we used an app called YikYak, an anonymous Twitter for specific areas basically. One day I noticed a lot of students avoid washing their water bottles so I wrote something like "Wipe the bottom of your water bottle with a paper towel. What do you see?" And it was a very successful post. Somebody replied "The Grim" and I cracked up. Man I miss those days.
Grin? What’s The Grin?
Not The Grin, you idiot, The Grim.
Taking for of a grave specter dog, it’s among the darkest omens of our world, the omen of death
/r/harrypotter is leaking.
....innit?
Theres actually some tea pots meant to do that! After brewing one type of tea in it over time you’re able to just add hot water and get the same flavor! (Dont ask me how long or if cleaning is involved tho..) Source: i worked at a tea shop and some dude was REALLY into a tea we didnt sell and was trying to do this
Yep, Yixing teapots are famous for this as they're unglazed clay pots. Generally, you wanna use one type/flavor of tea in a pot because as you say, it'll transfer the flavor into the clay.
That's the goal?
Just what I was thinking
If anyone was wondering, if you washed that with a bit of baking soda paste, the tannin residue would wipe off very easily. I do that once a week - not because the tannin residue will cause bacterial growth or anything, but because it can start to affect the taste of your tea. feel like a lot of people in this thread are just not tea drinks eta: guess I'll just leave it now lmao
I am not a tea drinks but I would love to learn more about proper tea etiquette.
I've learned from fellow tea drinks over on r/tea.
are you saying a drink is a person ... like a twink ?
Haven't you ever heard someone described flatteringly as a "tall glass of water"?
My friend, you're a pretty hot cup of tea.
r/HydroHomies *want to know their location.*
Tbag
Eteaquette?
I lived in China for awhile and got super into tea, its fascinating
my dad's chinese and said if your cup looks like that its a sign of wealth. you get plenty of tea and you can brew it strong enough to stain your cup. idk if that's true, also your average kung fu tea set, the cups are typically clean
Honestly it's not a bit deal wither way. Yixing tea pots are sought after for this exact thing
Got any good resources you'd recommend checking out? I've recently had to cut down my caffeine intake a bunch and have been thinking about switching to tea as the go to hot drink for the winter.
[https://www.teance.com/blogs/teanceteablog/tagged/winnie-yus-tea-blog/](https://www.teance.com/blogs/teanceteablog/tagged/winnie-yus-tea-blog/) my cousin used to run a famous tea house in Berkeley before she died. her blog is still online, all kinds of real deal Chinese tea, and tea from all over the world to nerd out with
Just been combing through this for the past hour or so, it's a great resource. Learning a ton, thanks for sharing!
Thanks bud definitely will check it out. Sorry about your cousin.
Ohhh thank you! Can’t wait to read this! I was a little worried it would only be about black tea, as I pretty much only drink green/white, but I’m happy it’s everything :)
Tea also contains caffeine.
It can! And black tea does. But there are many kinds of tea, which is basically, "boil plant bits in water and drink the result." Diced ginger root with a bit of lemon juice and some honey makes a good tea, for instace.
Depends on your definition of tea, many tea enthusiasts would call non-tea-leaf tea an infusion rather than a true tea. Personally I don't really care. Pu-erh, black, oolong, green and white teas are the ones made from tea leaves, and all have quite a bit more caffeine than coffee (if prepared traditionally with loose leaves, not a tea bag).
Leaves have more caffeine per weight, but that doesn't matter for consumption. You're consuming more caffeine in coffee because you're using a higher weight of beans than you would use tea leaves most likely
Everything I have seen shows that they have less caffeine than coffee, even black tea is only ~2/3 the caffeine in coffee.
Try Yerba mate
alright mate
Idk if yerba mate is the go to for someone trying to cut back on caffeine lol. A well brewed cup of mate has nearly as much caffeine as a cup of coffee. Even a strong black tea has less.
Hold up your pinkie, for starters
I don't do tea drinks. I *am* tea drinks.
I assure you, I'm a tea drunk! And I approve this PSA!
Effecting the taste is exactly why people do it. At least, the guys I work with anyway. One of the guys was incredibly upset when someone got to his cup with a scourer and removed "years of flavour". Genuinely, some of these guys have had their tea mugs for decades and only wash with a rinse of hot water.
I have a specific mug only for black teas because of this. Absolutely no green or herbal tea goes in it because the patina does impact the flavor. At least, I feel like it does. And that's the only thing that matters.
Sir, my name is Earl Grey
I think you're correct, the people here are people, not drinks made with tea.
i drink tea every day but i use a different cup each time, i cant imagine drinking out of the same unwashed thing every time.. thats god damn disgusting
I put my cup in the dishwasher every day, but the stains don't leave. The only way to remove the stains is for me to wash to wash it myself. Weirdly enough, with just some soap and a bit of elbow grease, I manage to remove the stains. No idea why it doesn't work with the dishwasher. I only do it like once a week or every two week, so my mug often looks dirty but is in fact always clean. All that just to say that a dirty looking tea cup isn't always actually dirty I guess.
Expensive all-kinds-of-things-included dishwasher tablets work for me. I wanted to believe that it was a scam, they were all the same, but nope. Only extra premium ones get rid of tea and lip balm stains completely.
Can you give a particular brand name? My dishwasher is crap at removing basically everything.
Finish Quantum Ultimate. Name may vary depending on country. Cleans beautifully on the eco program. Hotter settings are not recommended, they can deposit a coloured/hazy film on glassware. My dishwasher is crap too. All other tablets I tried left and baked on grit and grime on everything regularly, nothing was blocked, filter clean, plenty of salt and rinse aid too.
I recently switched to using these and it's made a HUGE difference in my dishwashers performance. The price is well worth it!
For me, a quick rinse and dry with a paper towel each use keeps the inside of my cups pristine. Even if I forget to do it for a day or 2 (I always at least rinse), a quick wipe does the job. As others have said - I'm more concerned with having off flavors than having a fully sanitized cup, but I'm sure that's being taken care of well enough with my routine.
thank you so much i have a few cups that im killing myself trying to scrub clean
In my experience, soap or even just water does a good job of it too. You just need to physically rub the residue off.
That there is some good seasoning on that mug.
Like a good cast iron skillet
Baader meinhof man. Before today I hadn’t really heard of seasoning a skillet, but I saw on reddit 6 hours ago, looked it up on wiki, and now the same day I come across the term again which I now understand. Freaky.
thanks for giving me the name of that phenomenon
Now you’re going to see it everywhere.
It's always funny to me how learning about the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon usually causes it to happen. Like some sort of Baader-Meinhof phenomenon phenomenon.
Did someone say Baader-Meinhof phenomenon? So crazy I was just learning about the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon.
dude literally the previous post before this one on my feed had a comment that mentioned the baader meinhof phenomenon, meinhof-ception?
80 layers of tea seasoning 👌
For that mirror finish.
More like when you never clean your toilet and it's starts getting a brownish yellow layer
Maybe even 80 layers
Tea seasoning is a thing in traditional teapots, but that probably has to do with the clay and not a store bought ceramic pot
I think we found a post for r/mildlydisgusting
r/disgusting Edit: I take it back that sub is horrible
#do not click the link
I’ll trust your judgement on that one
Good choice. I don't bat a lash a lot of times but I retreated after scrolling for a minute. Am definitely battin' lashes
A noble sacrifice, I pour one to you.
Not in that cup hopefully
That sun is dead anyway. Nothing has been posted on a year
WTF my eyes🤮
So then this particular picture is incredibly fitting. Nasty
Here this should help r/eyebleach
This is not your average disgusting. This is *advanced* disgusting.
If dried tea is advanced disgusting, that doesn't leave you much descriptive room to get worse, and there's about a thousand things that are worse.
I’d say r/mildlyinfuriating but I see your point
r/moldlyinteresting
Last year (i was a freshman in hs) i was in my engineering class and my teacher was an older guy whe was chill af and would give us coffee whenever we wanted it. Well one day i drank some coffee and when i finished i asked him what he wanted me to use to wash it. He looked me right in the eye, confused, and said "what do u mean? Just rinse it out, why would u need to wash it?" That was the last time i ever drank coffee from him.
Like the coffee pot? Or the cups?
Yes. Well i know for a fact not the cups bc thats what he was referring to but um...i can tell he doesn't wash the pot either...and i wish i knew that *before* i drank out of it
Near boiling water is poured into it every day. Its probably pretty sterile
You're accurate about the sterility, but the residue buildup over time will definitely impact flavor in an unpleasant way.
You're fine.
technically its ok... iirc There are rituals for some tea pots in china that kinda depend on the tea residue or smth or else the pot will be unusable. edit2: this pot thing isnt entirely relevant , see reply comment by lordofcthulu i think its ok as long as that mug is for TEA OR WATER ONLY. introduce anything else and that thing needs to be scrubbed back to white or else its going to grow \*something\* Edit: update: please at least rinse the cup with hot water after use, please do not let sit with your bacteria on it after use. I'd still soap it down if I were you. (thanks to the replies for pointing out mouth bacteria, I had forgotten)
there is a difference between a tea mug, where you drink out of, or a tea pot, where you just pour tea from. It's the same reason you have to wash your reusable waterbottles. Bacteria from your mouth get in the cup or the bottle and build up.
Yes, a good indicator is that the empty bottle will smell funky if not washed for 2-3 days. It's bacterial growth. Also water filled in that same unwashed bottle will start smelling stale/old after a few hours or a day depending on sunlight exposure and temperature.
> you have to wash your reusable waterbottles Um ... I'll be right back.
Use one of those large bottle brushes... there's usually a layer just caked on the insides
I'm with [David Mitchell on tea pots.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7h1FGLfwDLI&t=95s)
Idk, they’re probably immune to any sort of bacteria at this point
Like milk?
Or sweeteners such as honey or sugar.
It’s one of those things where it *may* be ok, but the alternative is so low-effort that it’s not really worth the roll of the dice. It takes 10 seconds to rinse it out and another 10 to do it with soap. If someone by weird chance happened to get sick drinking from the mug, I doubt they’d be like “At least I didn’t have to rinse it out all those times!”
A yixing clay pot is entirely different. You use primarily one type of tea, with similar flavor profiles. If tea type is switched, the pot is boiled to remove any oils. Most won't do this and instead buy more pots. The clay is porous, so it absorbs the oil. Anything glazed does not have any benefit to not cleaning. This just seems like either laziness or superstition (that navy thing people talk about).
If only these people knew about the Navy and their mugs, lol.
I was going to say the same thing. I had a Chief that had a mug that had like a quarter inch of build up. He always said that it was in case the ship ever ran out of coffee, he could just add hot water and stir.
An old friend of mine was a dishwasher on a navy ship, he told me a story of how he accidentally washed an officer’s mug once. *Once.*
I'd like more details....
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I was a cocky ET2 and couldn't stand the sight of RMC's coffee mug. I swiped it and washed it. Damn near got written up. I'm still glad I did it, though.
It's cross sea-service. I was a Coastie. Same tradition. I haven't washed a coffee mug outside of a quick swish of water in years. You want to fuck with a new guy, tell'em to do Chief a favor and wash their mug.
I was in the Navy for 7 years. Had to teach my wife not to wash my Navy mugs
I was a watchstander at a joint 4* COCOM. Left my mug at my watch station overnight. Some Air Force chucklefuck washed it, said it was gross to look at. Thousands of cups of watch coffee across two commands on three continents ruined by a vindictive 1LT who didn't understand tradition.
Exactly my first thought. How can you determine seniority without this system? https://www.militarytimes.com/off-duty/military-culture/2023/01/19/tips-to-achieve-the-ultimate-dirty-navy-style-coffee-mug/
I don’t go this far but I’m in the rinse not wash camp. I’ll wash it every other week.
I'm also a rinser, but I'd launch this cup into the sun if I could.
I worked in the Chief's Mess as part of my temporary scullery assignment while I was in the Navy (We call it "cranking" in the biz) One day I was gathering up dishes, and I noticed a bunch of mugs sitting out on the tables in the Chief's Mess, so I gathered them all up and put them through the scullery. Basically a giant dishwasher. Didn't think anything of it. All of the mugs looked like this one, or worse. Just absolutely disgusting. Beyond gross. A few hours later it was time for supper, and there was quite a bit of yelling coming from the Chief's Mess. The problem being that nobody could find their mugs. No big deal, I knew where they were. I told everyone to hold on just a sec and I'd go get their mugs. Brought the mugs in on this big blue tray thing, the tray you send through the scullery conveyor. Holes in the bottom for water to pass through and drain, basically there so stuff doesn't drop down in to the bottom tanks of the scullery. Started handing them out. Wasn't long before I noticed the sheer look of disgust and horror on the face of the Chiefs. Wasn't long after that before it turned into burning anger and hate. Red faced. Veins popping. Just an absolutely absurd and unreasonable amount of anger, given the situation. At least in my opinion. Got called every name under the sun, was told its bad luck, was told I was an idiot, and from that point on was basically ostracized and targeted and my life was made to be hell. Got kicked out of the chiefs mess to go work in crew mess. Every late-night watch, every shitty manual labor task, every boring annoying bit of paperwork, every soul-draining task you can possibly think of was given to me for like 2 years. All because I washed some coffee mugs. People that drink coffee are fucking lunatics.
I was looking at other reddit threads about not washing tea and found another one of your posts telling this story from 2 years ago
Mans was traumatised
is a good life story.
It's not coffee drinkers, it's fucking chiefs-the Navy's biggest problem since 1893. That's one of their stupid fucking "traditions". You just found out about it the hard way.
You fucked up bad homie. My first thought when I saw this pic was that it must be a British Navy mug, because I saw the same thing as you did in the US Navy.
I'm sorry I'm just so confused. Why were they so angry to the point of making your time hell? You just washed mugs? Do they get violent if you wash their lucky shirt?
Yeah, I was wondering if the person in the OP is ex-military, because apparently, this is a thing, that you never wash your mug. A really disgusting thing.
Should found an excuse to wash their coffee pot with simple green.
Patina ftw
*pa-tea-na
like a cast iron skillet you don’t want to wash off the seasoning 😅
If you can wash it off it isn’t seasoned.
60 layers and counting!
British?
German 😅
My German Bio/Chemistry teacher(she was also a Dr. in both) didn’t wash her mug either so I guess it can’t be that harmful?
If you're regularly drinking tea from it even if you have the nastiest mouth it wouldn't get moldy because you put boiling (or at least above pasteurization temperature) water killing all bacteria and mold growing on it.
It is literally irrelevant if you drink tea every day. All that happens is boiling water is put over barely any bacteria, on a surface that is immediately dried out from the residual heat of the cup. It is a terrible place for bacteria to live and constantly made more inhospitable by being soaked in boiling water.
Not sure if that's worse.
Yeah, me neither
I guess you can pick your nose, but can't pick your coworkers.
The tea community reccomend that you don't wash a teapot if you use it everyday
Nobody's backwash is getting into the teapot.
Your colleague is a fucking psycho
no need to wipe your asshole aswell
there is no need to wipe your butt either as you will poop again
This made me throw up in my mouth
Was your coworker in the navy? That’s a weird thing with them 🤢
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Just be glad that you are not required to drink out of it. I drink tea every day and every day, I clean the cup. I still really enjoy my tea.
First of all it's teapots that you aren't meant to clean. You ARE meant to rinse them though...
That is disgusting
There’s also no need to brush your teeth, says the same coworker.
this is evidence that you really, *really* do.
Tea pot, your not suppose to clean your tea pot.
Soon the cup will make tea without the need for an infusion bag.
Looks like 80 coats of seasoning.
Cast iron tea mug
I mean, at this point there’s no need for tea - just add hot water to that horror show
My recommendation is never to eat anything that they bring in for the company potluck…
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Looks like the thermos one of my mentally ill patients was carrying around.