>was wondering if these can be used to heat plain
> water too. Or perhaps even brew tea.
>
> http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00...d_rhf_p_4/102-
> 2122271-2012161?%5Fencoding=UTF8&v=glance&n=284507


Hi. Any of those coffee urns can be used to brew tea. I see them used
all the time. They're cheap too. So that's an added bonus. We used to
make tea like that a long time ago. But I forget exactly how we did it.
All I remember is we used an inexpensive loose leaf oolong tea, and
used a very small amout of leaf to water - so the resulting brew was
very weak - with only a very faint taste. Basically, it was just
colored water. You can do a stronger brew too.

But I would pre-brew a couple urns full of tea first - and dump it -
just so there's no funky taste left from a new machine when you
actually brew tea for a group of people.

Some Chinese herb stores, and at least one tea store in Toronto uses
these coffee urns to brew ginseng tea, and they hand out free cups of
ginseng tea to all their customers. But some people also use them to
brew oolong tea too.

For the type of tea they used, the coffee urn didn't leave any
noticeable disagreeable taste. Just don't serve the tea in styrofoam
cups. Styrofoam will interfere with the flavor of the tea.

Anyway, it can be done.