Iced Tea

This is Anna’s favorite cold drink for a hot summer’s day: Homemade Iced Tea.

Anna’s basic recipe is easy to modify and quick to make. Just be sure to include cooling time!

I’ve included my comments in Italics.

The Ingredients

Here’s what you need to make 2 quarts—or 2 liters; the two are close enough that you can use the same recipe—of delicious iced tea:

Because I used loose leaf green tea, I boiled the water in the water kettle, then poured the hot water over the leaves in Anna’s French Press. Remember to let the water cool down a bit if you’re using green tea.

Ingredients

– 1 quart/1 liter of boiled water

– 5 teabags of your choice OR 5 tablespoons of loose leaf tea of your choice; I made my iced tea with loose leaf organic green tea

– sugar, raw sugar, or honey, or Stevia to taste

– Ice cubes

– Optional: Lemons, frozen berries, mint, or other tasty additions of your choice

Here’s some of my favorite sweeteners: local honey, whole cane sugar and Stevia. Additional flavorings: lemon and lemon balm. Often I include frozen raspberries or fruit.

Other

– Container to boil water that you can put the teabags in

– 2 quart/2 liter pitcher

– Metal spoon for mixing

The tea steeping for 2 minutes. With the French Press it’s easy to press down the leaves and pour the tea into the pitcher. When pouring hot water into a glass pitcher, you better warm up the pitcher with hot tap water and place a metal spoon into it.

Instructions

1. After your water comes to a boil, steep your tea for 1-3 minutes in the hot water, according to your taste and the instructions of your tea sort.

2. Remove the tea bags or leaves. The easiest way to remove the leaves is by straining the tea into another container.

3. Mix your sugar with the still hot water. Stir well.

4. Cover your sweetened tea and leave it at room temperature until it cools down.

5. Once your tea is lukewarm, it’s time to mix it into the pitcher. Pour your tea into the pitcher and then add 1 quart/liter of cold water. Check the sugar and add more if needed. Remember that the tea will have a sweeter bite to it once it’s ice cold.

6. Refrigerate until ice cold. Serves four to six.

Enjoy!

If you’re craving an extra bite of flavor, add a couple lemon slices or use frozen berries instead of ice cubes in individual glasses. I love using frozen raspberries (Anna’s favorite!) to flavor iced tea. It works great for plain water, too!

What’s your favorite way to stay refreshed during summer?

Posted

June 4, 2013

Recipes

Marina Hoffstrom

Tags:

cold drink, how to make iced tea, iced drink, iced tea, iced tea recipe, iste, jäätee

Comments

One response to “Iced Tea”

Earl G. Edwards

June 7, 2013

I first saw this pitcher when I was looking for the same thing but with an ice core instead of the infusion core (which just happens to be made by the same company). I thought it was a great concept; and since I’m always looking for ways to add more water to my diet (without having to drink plain old ordinary water), I decided to give it a try. I was immediately hooked!Here are a couple of things that I’ve observed:Distilled water works best.Depending upon what type of fruit you use in the core, it can take up to two days (or more) to get a really good infusion. Citrus fruits tend to take longer to infuse than berries.It’s a good idea to add water to it each time you pour yourself a glass. Two reasons: first, the newly added water will mix with the already-infused water and will take less time to become flavored. If you wait until the pitcher’s mostly empty, it’ll take a while to get a good infusion. Second, a smaller amount of “new” water will take less time to chill than if you were to add a whole bunch of new water.And here’s a hint: If you make your own lemonade (from scratch), try using orange-infused water to your lemon juice instead of plain, unflavored water. It adds a wonderful touch of “something” that you can’t put your finger on (you KNOW there’s something else in the lemonade, but you just can’t figure out WHAT).And, lastly, a suggestion: don’t wait for berries to come into season! Just use frozen ones (strawberries, raspberries, mixed berries, etc.) Because they’ve been frozen, they tend to infuse better than fresh ones. I recently used half a package of frozen raspberries. As they thawed they immediately began to turn the water red and by the time they were completely thawed, I had a lovely shade of red raspberry water. Being a “sweetaholic”, I add a packet of stevia (AKA Truvia, but I prefer the Whole Foods brand of stevia) to my raspberry water and it tastes like a healthier version of raspberry Kool-Aid!

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