Coffee and tea in depth

The verb that sets the grind is mahlen, and its forms are worth fixing before anything else in this list, because it is a mixed verb. The past tense is weak, er mahlte, but the participle is strong: der Kaffee ist frisch gemahlen, never gemahlt. Its near-twin malen, to paint, sounds exactly the same in the infinitive and is weak all the way through: malte, gemalt. So frisch gemahlen on a bag of coffee and frisch gemalt on a sign by a park bench are told apart in speech by the participle alone, and in writing by the silent h as well. The h carries on into the compounds: das Mahlwerk and der Mahlgrad keep it, der Maler never had it. The rest of the list follows the bean from the roastery to the cup, then the tea leaf into the pot, and ends in the Viennese coffee house.