[Superpredator]

I make several cups of iced tea at work every day. Here is the recipe I am currently using:

1. 1 bag Clipper white tea,
2. 2 bags Republic of Tea white tea
3. 1.5 packets of raw sugar
4. 4 oz hot water
5. 2 oz organic peach or pear juice (also called nectar for some reason)
6. 12-15 ice cubes (use fresh ones, otherwise your tea will taste like frozen corn - fill a 12-oz cup about 3/4 full)

• steep tea for 2.5 minutes in hot (but not boiling) water
• add sugar and 2 ice cubes, stir until sugar dissolves completely
• add 3 ice cubes to bring temperature of tea down
• pour over ice
• add juice, stir

The result is something like Honest Tea--sweet but not too sweet, and it tastes like the actual tea you brew (as opposed to Snapple, Lipton, etc., which I used to drink but now taste something like candy water to me).

I was making fruit teas with actual fruit a lot last summer but it's a hassle to strain out the pulp (and not practical at work), so I've turned to juice. It's working out well so far.

Some teas I've made with fruit:

1. watermelon white
2. mango white/green
3. cantaloupe white/green
4. pineapple green
5. lemon-lime oolong
6. peach oolong

I'm looking for more ideas from the Tea-Fi crowd.

 

[Duggeh]

1.5 packets of raw sugar to 6 fluid ounces of liquid?

How big are the packets, im presuming smaller than I imagine.

I dont like flavourings in my iced tea. Just brewed up green or brown tea, refrigerated. Maybe with a little sugar but usually not.

 

[grawk]

Teabags in glass jar, with water, lemons, and sugar, set in the sun, wait a day

 

[Samgotit]

I buy the cheapest, brandless, highest count box of tea bags I can get my hands on. Next, I put ~6 cups of water into a pot and boil. I keep tossing tea bags into that until tearing off the octagon tags at the end of the steeping strings starts to annoy me (I call it a steeping sting, but it's the string you'd use to bob the bag if you're a one cup person. I'm not going to take the time to google what that string is actually called, but I bet it has its own name). Finally, I pour the brew into a gallon jug and fill with tap water. I use about the same number of ice cubes in a glass, except I don't consider their age. Unsweeted for me. I love the way the tannin makes my mouth feel. It causes a good friction 'tween my mouth's roof and my tongue.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Superpredator /img/forum/go_quote.gif 1.5 packets of raw sugar

Live a little Superman - throw that extra 0.5 of a packet in your next glass. Let your hair down, unbutton your pants, and let us know how it goes.

 

[Rav]

This is coming from a Brit, so take it with a grain of salt (or sugar, in this case)

1: Make a very strong cup of tea with your preferred brand of tea bag (i use PG Tips). Let it brew for a good 5 minutes, stirring as often as you can be bothered.

2: Squeze out the teabag very well, getting all the strong stuff into the cup.

3: Sweeten well (i find i need about double the amount of sugar i need for regular tea).

4: Get a strong glass (half pint is about right) and fill to the brim with ice.

5: Pour hot tea over ice and stir like crazy. Add extra ice as needed.

 

[Homeless]

I was just talking to my wife about making some iced tea yesterday. I'll have to try some of these recipes. The pear juice one sounds good...

 

[Superpredator]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Duggeh /img/forum/go_quote.gif 1.5 packets of raw sugar to 6 fluid ounces of liquid? How big are the packets, im presuming smaller than I imagine. I dont like flavourings in my iced tea. Just brewed up green or brown tea, refrigerated. Maybe with a little sugar but usually not.

A fair amount of the ice melts immediately, so it's not 6 oz, it's more like 9 or 10. Each sugar packet contains 5 grams of sugar, so with the fruit juice we're probably looking at about 9.5 grams / 8 oz. Compare that to Coca-Cola (27 grams / 8 oz) or Snapple Lemon Iced Tea (23 grams / 8 oz) or Honest Tea Mango White (9.5 grams / 8 oz) and I think you'll have some idea how sweet it is. If you're tasting the sugar in your tea I imagine you're using at least 5 grams per 8 oz.

Also consider that I'm using 3 tea bags per 9 or 10 oz, and white tea tends to get bitter after 60-90 seconds of brewing.

I like unsweetened iced tea as well. What the heck is brown tea?

 

[vagarach]

Here is a recipe I invented while in uni and desirous of some procrastination for 'iced tea', which doesn't actually use any heat, so I don't know if it's actually considered to be tea

.

Items:
1 Bag Twining's Darjeeling
1 Bag Twining's English Breakfast
1 Bag Twining's Green Tea (of the sencha style)
Some nice honey

Now I add 1 litre of water to my 1 litre Nalgene bottle, add enough honey to completely cover the bottom, close the lid, and vigorously shake until the honey has nicely dissolved and a little foam has been created. Add the three teabags less the little paper things on the end, and gently (very gently, don't want tea leaf bits in your drink) upturn the the capped bottle to let the tea bags soak in the honeywater, and return to right-side-up.

Now let the whole contraption sit in a fridge for at least 12 hours, remove teabags, and enjoy! I would remove the green tea teabag after just a few hours, however, so as to prevent oversteeping.

The combination of the muscatel from the Darjeeling, smokey grass kind of flavour from the green tea, and the very familiar flavour of the English breakfast works very well I find. You could always add Lady Grey or Earl Grey for some bergamot/citrus notes as well.

The other day though I did the English breakfast brewed tea, two teaspoon sugar, and fresh lemon method, and it was quite satisfactory.

 

[Superpredator]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Samgotit /img/forum/go_quote.gif Live a little Superman - throw that extra 0.5 of a packet in your next glass. Let your hair down, unbutton your pants, and let us know how it goes.

I just ewwed that. Refreshing drinks, unbuttoned pants and hair is not a pleasing combination for the brain.

 

[Awk.Pine]

Well, I can tell you that brewing normal tea, adding sugar, and then bottling it results in floating bits of brown stuff and isn't recommended.

Tastes fine, though.

 

[warubozu]

A few of my favorite iced tea recipe:

Pinepple iced tea:

INGREDIENTS:
6 tea bags
1/2 cup sugar
4 cups boiling water
fresh mint
juice of 3 lemons
5 tablespoons pineapple juice

PREPARATION:
Place tea bags and sugar in a 2-quart pitcher.
Add 4 cups of boiling water.
Steep for 15 minutes.
Remove tea bags.
Steep fresh mint leaves in tea for at least 3 minutes.
Remove mint leaves.
Add lemon and pineapple juices.
Fill the pitcher with cold water.
Serve over ice.
Garnish with pineapple and fresh mint leaves.

Hawaiian plantation iced tea:

INGREDIENTS:
1 Pitcher of your favorite Ice Tea
½ Quart Pineapple Juice
1 Pineapple sliced lengthways

PREPARATION:
Stir the Pineapple Juice into the Iced Tea and garnish with the Pineapple “spears”. You may remove the skin of the Pineapple or leave for that “rustic look”.

Jamaican iced tea:

INGREDIENTS:
3/4 oz vodka
3/4 oz gin
3/4 oz Myer's® dark rum
3/4 oz triple sec
2 oz pineapple juice
2 oz sweet and sour mix

PREPARATION:
Best if prepared in a mixing cup with ice, shaken, and poured (ice and all) into a hurricane glass. To serve in a Collins glass (which is usually somewhat smaller), cut the bottle pours back to 1/2 oz each, and mixers back to 1 oz each.

To make a flag garnish, spear whatever fruit you are using (in this case a split chunk of pineapple) all the way through with a toothpick. Stick a maraschino cherry on the exposed top end of the toothpick, then hang the whole thing on the side of the glass.

 

[Tech2]

I use regular Lipton tea in an iced-tea-maker. Add some sweetener and lemon. Beats the tar outta the bottled stuff, which is basically undrinkable to me.

 

[Samgotit]

This "Tea-Fi" thread resulted in my having very bad gas. Tea has never given me gas before, but I tried some of the wild concoctions here. A few hours later... Whamoo! I was in Target when it happened. I was strolling down the main aisle. If there were a way to visualize the trail left by my hinny's vulgar breath, I'm sure it would've resembled beads-on-a-string. Aviation buffs will recognize the image below as the theoretical contrail of a scramjet; it's also been described as beads-on-a-string. This is exactly the kind of trail I left down Target's main aisle.

I know it's crude, but it's true. No more Tea-Fi for me.

 

[GlendaleViper]

I think tea is a diuretic... perhaps you shouldn't have tried ALL of those concoctions at once, Sam?