Iced tea

Gettin' powerful warm around these parts, so I whipped up the first batch of iced tea of the season. Many more will follow.

When it comes to iced tea, I'm decidedly lowbrow. It's designed for my 11 year old (no sugar, no caffeine), and I like it this way too.

For ~1/2 gal:

Brew 6 Bromley decaf bags in 1-2 cups of boiling water for 3 min. Add cold water to cool mixture, and add to covered pitcher loaded with ice. Add cold water as needed. Throw in a couple of shot glasses worth of Splenda to taste, seal container, shake the living crap out of it, et voila. Pennies a glass, and no kids bouncing off the walls

I said it was lowbrow.

Nice, I on the other hand need the caffiene or I start getting the jitters. Summers rolling around here in Arizona and I can definitely start feeling it, I usually drink Vietnamese Iced Coffee, here's how!

http://www.instructables.com/id/Vietnamese-Iced-Coffee/

Indeed, I just brewed my first batch of iced tea of the season as well. Mine is about as lowbrow as yours. Though the caffeine in tea is not enough to cause me worry for my son (6 yr) I do lower the sugar for him. If it's just me, then it's 1 cup of sugar for half a gallon. I just heat up the entire half galon of water and brew 2 'family size' bags for about 5 minutes. I might start experiments with duplicating some of the better 'iced chai' drinks I've had at coffee shops. Anyone have any recipes?

If I'm in the mood for coffee, I'm gonna try your guy's recipes about cold brew coffee concentrate with the french press. Currently I just brew a batch, sugar it, then refrigerate it. Then mix 1/1 with milk.

I've always preferred my tea (iced or otherwise) unsweetened. I make the iced variety one of 3 ways:

Take a moderate to low quality black tea and brew it at double strength. Add in 1 part cold water and 1 part ice for every 2 parts tea concentrate.

Sun tea: take a glass or plastic bottle, fill it with water, put an appropriate amount of tea bags in, and set in the sun for an afternoon. Pull the bags out and stick in fridge.

Cold brewed tea: buy specialty "cold brewing" tea. Lipton makes one that is marginal, but cheap and easily available. Stash tea makes one that is significantly better, but is more expensive and requires an internet order. Either way, you put the bag(s) in with the appropriate amount of water and leave it in the fridge for a while. The directions I think say an hour, but I think it's better at 6-12 hours.

With all three methods, take your ultimate product and pour over a tall glass of ice and enjoy. Garnish at your discretion.

I take my iced tea without sugar but with caffeine and add an equal part of lemonade for ye olde Arnold Palmer!

My wife boils a small pot of water (about 4 cups I think), takes it off the heat and adds 4 family-size bags of Luzianne, puts the cover on and lets it steep for about 10 minutes. Then it gets poured into a gallon jug, 2/3 cup of Sugar in the Raw is added, and filled up with cold water. Then it's poured over ice with big lemon wedge squeezed into the glass.

I grew up in Tennessee, where the ubiquitous pitcher of "eyec-tea" or "sweet tea" is a constant.

Somehow (probably the damn relocation to Colorado 18 years ago) I started drinking it unsweetened. Now when I visit my folks, the syrupy tea almost makes me gag even as the smell brings me back to my youth. Funny about that, huh?

Ever since I gave up soda for New Year's 2007 (going on a year and 4 months), iced tea has become my drink of choice. Here in Arizona, you can drink it pretty much year round. My electric kettle gets a lot of use.

I like to alternate between iced black tea and iced green tea. Unsweetened all the way.

For me, ice tea has always meant the southern style stuff that is almost maple syrup on the rocks. My wife drinks it year round, lightly sweetened if at all, so I'm used to that now. But decaffeinated tea just tastes like dirt to me.

I have tried to like decaf tea, but somehow it always tastes kind of flat to me. We have always used Lipton's tea bags, the regular "hot" tea ones, to make iced tea. But I think I am going to try some of the fancier iced tea blends from www.specialteas.com, next time I place an order with them.

Badger Boo said:

Ever since I gave up soda for New Year's 2007 (going on a year and 4 months), iced tea has become my drink of choice. Here in Arizona, you can drink it pretty much year round. My electric kettle gets a lot of use.

I like to alternate between iced black tea and iced green tea. Unsweetened all the way.

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Congratulations on making it this far...I'm still surprised that I've made it since November without drinking a soda
did I mention that's November 2004?
anyway, back to tea...
I've been using this recipe for awhile now:
3 family size bags lipton black tea
3-4 individual bags lipton green tea
large glass measuring cup (4 cup anchor hocking, I believe) full of water, tea bags soaking just enough to be submerged, then microwave for 5 minutes (something I've only recently started doing)
then mix with heaping 1/3 cup of Splenda & sugar blend, add water and ice to fill gallon container.
before I started using the Splenda blend, I found some packets of splenda specifically packaged for gallon size applications, tea, kool aid, etc. they're about $.60ish cents a pack, but quite worth it, I just found I like the blend better

I also tend to go the southern sweet tea route, since it allows for interesting concoctions involving soda water, or other such unsweetened additives.

Oddly, I've also found the cheaper Lipton or Nestea style black teas seem to work better for sweet tea. Higher quality tea seems to take on a bit of a grassy/off taste.

sol92258 said:

Congratulations on making it this far...I'm still surprised that I've made it since November without drinking a soda
did I mention that's November 2004?

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Congratulations! What was your motivation for giving it up?

I do miss soda sometimes. There are days where I watch someone drinking an ice cold Coke and I imagine how great it would taste. But I've come so far that I would hate to "fall off the wagon."

D@mnyankees with you unsweetened stuff. Sweetea is one word, if God had intended it any other way, He would not have given us the blessed beet and cane. Bad enough that those of you in northern climes drink "grass water," but as y'all have come south you are demanding the same crap here. Seriously, I will not frequent an establishment that does not serve sweetea. If you don't like our tea, stay up north. Having gotten that off my chest, I drink Adagio's Citron blend with a quarter cup of sugar per quart. I used to make mine in the microwave, ala Cook's Illustrated, but I use my Mr. Tea brewer now out of pure laziness. Loose tea in a coffee filter makes for perfect steeping without bitterness. I ice it after the sugar has disolved.

Think that lowbrow? HA!


Stick 8 tea bags (I use Lipton cuz I am cheap ) into a half gallon coverd jar. Place outside for a few hours. Sweeten yourself.

Doc Mottern said:

Sweeten yourself.

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My mommy thinks I'm sweet enough as it is, but I'll try...

neverwhere said:

My mommy thinks I'm sweet enough as it is, but I'll try...

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Life could be sweeter...........always.

And she said Special, not sweet.

We just throw a few bags into a glass container and leave it in the sun for a few hours. Whatever tea suits our fancy, Lipton, Green Tea, fancy fruit tea, etc.

I do easy tea here in NJ.
Everyone has an old coffee maker. Everyone.
My tea is on the light side, refreshing and not too sweet.
Fill the coffee maker with water. Put (2) tea bags of your choise into the glass carafe. This method allows you a universe of options for flavors as well. You can also use a tea ball with loose tea in it for one or both of the tea bags. (see it's ingenious!)
Run the maker......
Split the brew between (2) hal gallon containers. I have 2 matching ones from Tupperware(tm). Add a half cup of splenda to each pitcher and top up with fresh h2o. Chill in the fridge. Add a mint sprig with a few cubes on a hot summer day.....shoot

Two Lousianne bags/two qts., steeped in boiling water.....Sugar in it hot to melt it...add water and ice, with lemon in the glass.....Simple goodness....