Hello!

Your question seems to have two parts (correct me if I'm wrong)

• Where is America's tea time (or equivalent)? Part of the answer is that High Tea, in the form of a small afternoon meal featuring a caffeinated drink, is not very widespread. Yes, people around the world have caffeinated drinks ritualized in one fashion or another, but High Tea, the tea ceremony in Asia and Mate all have strong aristocratic roots. They are not what would have been any kind of widespread throughout the entire population. A plowman in London in the 17th and 18th century would not have been stopping at 3:30 for tea. It's likely he didn't have any tea at all. These are some of the reasons behind the absence of a formal afternoon tea tradition in the U.S. North America was rough, there was neither the time nor the funds for most people to indulge in this kind of aristocratic indulgence until much later in our history, unless you were one of the rare Boston elite. Between the time where High Tea became part of British culture and the time where the United States would have had enough aristocrats to sustain a critical mass of people having High Tea to pass it into the cultural zeitgeist, we had the Revolution. Which brings me to my next bit.

• So why isn't tea as influential to American culture as it is in other countries? The answer is the American Revolution. In the mid 18th century, in the Colonies, tea and coffee were both quite popular, likely on an equal footing. There was a bit of a tradition in Boston for public houses to also serve as coffee houses, so coffee was available rather widely, almost as much as tea. The Revolution tilted the balance decidedly in the favor of coffee. After the war broke out, tea became harder to get because commerce with Great Britain was impossible in any legitimate way. Coffee, however, could be imported rather easily from Spain's colonies, without the British having any say in the matter. So, coffee became different from tea. Coffee became patriotic, tea became a symbol of British domination. Coffee meant independence, tea meant servitude. So, coffee became the drink of choice in the Thirteen Colonies.

So, to resume, since tea in the Colonies had to be imported and the source of said tea was British trade, it became a harder good to get, and at the same time made demand much lower. By the time tea again becomes widely available it has been completely replaced by coffee in U.S. culture. The tea culture was easier to break because of the nature of life in the colonies and it died because of war-time realities cutting off the supply.

So that's pretty much it! You do need to know however, that while the United States does not have High Tea, it did invent the Coffee Break.

My primary source was Uncommon Grounds: The History of Coffee and How It Transformed Our World by Mark Pendergast (beware the title if you read it, its very U.S. centric, in spite of the "Our World" part of the title. Still a good read though.)

The American Revolution wasn't really about tea, it was about representation and taxation. Tea was just a very publicly taxed item. The American colonies began a boycott on English goods in 1767 in response to the Townshend Acts which created taxes on imported goods. Duties were placed on paper, paint, glass, lead, and tea. I won't get into to the details and back story on this because that isn't really what you're asking, but it covered goods that were imported and not manufactured in the colonies.

At any rate, tea was just as popular in the American colonies in the 1760's as it was anywhere else in the British Empire. With the boycott, and the Revolution, tea was seen as unpatriotic. Furthermore, while tea was popular in North America, it was difficult to grow. I won't go so far as to say no tea was grown in the Thirteen Colonies, but if there was some it was experimental or small scale. After about two decades of boycott and war, tea had fallen out of favor in place of Coffee.

In the 1860's tea came back into popular consumption as a fancy drink of iced tea with sugar and sometimes fruit. Tea cultivation became more successful in the 1880's, increasing the domestic supply as well. As refrigeration became more available iced tea turned into a common drink we usually call sweet tea in the American South. By this time "tea culture" had long since died off in America, and it was just another drink.

From John Adams letters to his wife, a post script dated July 6, 1774:

'I believe I forgot to tell you one Anecdote: When I first came to this House it was late in the Afternoon, and I had ridden 35 miles at least. “Madam” said I to Mrs. Huston, “is it lawfull for a weary Traveller to refresh himself with a Dish of Tea provided it has been honestly smuggled, or paid no Duties?”

“No sir, said she, we have renounced all Tea in this Place. I cant make Tea, but I'le make you Coffee.” Accordingly I have drank Coffee every Afternoon since, and have borne it very well. Tea must be universally renounced. I must be weaned, and the sooner, the better.'