The basic idea is the same: use hot water to pull the flavors and whatnot out of some plant matter. So why pour water right through coffee grounds but let tea steep for several minutes?
In: Chemistry
Often they are not – French press coffee and putting a tea bag in a cup of hot water are the same thing.
Coffee is done pour-over/drip style largely for its ease and consistency in flavor. You load the coffee grinds, water, push a button and walk away. Most commercial and retail brands are ground for this style of brewing, because most people have absolutely 0 idea what they’re doing when it comes to making espresso grind for the machine vs coarse grind coffee for a French press vs a grind for a Chemex. There are tons of fancy devices for making coffee, like [this one](https://www.espressoparts.com/6-8-cup-cold-drip-coffee-maker-straight-black-wood-frame-32oz), just think breaking bad level science. They exist because they create the chemically best coffee if you know how to use them properly. Coffee is like wine, it’s pretty damn intense. Nobody has the time to learn about all of that, so pour-over drip coffee just makes it easy for everyone, which is why it’s so popular.
It also doesn’t only last a few seconds – the coffee grinds are usually hot and wet for muuuuuch longer than tea needs to be steeped!
Tea is usually not done this way because it’s a little more specific in the requirements for time and temperature. Most coffee is great brewed between 195° and 205°F, but most herbal teas taste better when they’re brewed at 185°-195° for five minutes, green tea at 170°-175° for 1-2 minutes, so on and so forth.
Most coffee shops don’t have the necessary tools to brew water to the proper temperature for tea in this way. If you’ve ever ordered a green tea and gotten a nasty, bitter cup of grass flavored liquid – it’s because your barista blasted your green tea leaves to shit with piping hot 212° water from the hot water tap. Because there are so so so many kinds of tea, and again, ain’t nobody got time for that, most of the population doesn’t really know if their tea has been brewed at the right temperature. Now if Starbucks brewed a whole batch of nasty green tea at 212° every day and only served that, people would start to notice. So they don’t, and instead throw your tea bag into whatever temperature of hot water they have at the moment, and you’re long gone by the time you take your first sip.
While coffee and different types of teas are steeped at different temperatures, the extraction process is largely the same. Fine oils and small particles come out and break off of the tea leaves or coffee beans that “blend” in the water through a process called [diffusion](https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&hl=en&ei=oPbEX6qwCK2bwbkPrZ2_gA0&q=what+is+diffusion&oq=what+is+diffusion&gs_lcp=ChNtb2JpbGUtZ3dzLXdpei1zZXJwEAMyCAgAELEDEMkDMgIIADICCAAyAggAMgIIADICCAAyAggAMgIIADoECAAQRzoECCkQRjoECAAQQzoFCAAQsQM6CAgAELEDEIMBOgsIABCxAxDJAxCRAjoFCAAQkQJQvmNY8XZgsHhoAHABeACAAWyIAZEIkgEEMTUuMZgBAKABAcgBCMABAQ&sclient=mobile-gws-wiz-serp) to make your desired beverage.
TLDR; tea is fancier than coffee and nobody really brews it right. both tea and coffee can be brewed using the same exact method, but we don’t usually do it that way because it tastes better the way we already do it.
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