My query: "We're having a discussion about the use of coffee and tea in the Middle East in the period 1200-1500. Would not our Templar friends (and their native friends) know of coffee and tea in the Middle East or would they have considered these to be horrific concoctions until later?"

and his response:

Coffee wasn't known in the Middle East until the very end of that period. The following is lifted from the Miscellany, a book my wife and I self-publish:
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Coffee

The coffee plant is apparently native to Abyssinia. The use of coffee in Abyssinia was recorded in the fifteenth century and regarded at that time as an ancient practice (EB). I believe that there is a reference in one of the Greek historians to what sounds like coffee being drunk in what might well be Abyssinia, but I have not yet succeeded in tracking it down.
Coffee was apparently introduced into Yemen from Abyssinia in the middle of the 15th century. It reached Mecca in the last decade of the century and Cairo in the first decade of the 16th century (Hattox).
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A question like "Do you drink coffee in the morning?" and "You can't drink coffee??? What *do* you drink in the morning??" are EXACTLY the kinds of questions you have to answer at events. It's a good thing to know. If we don't have the real answer, we're left to bumble along with speculations. You can see that I didn't know the answer- now we both do!