The Perfect Iced Tea to Cool Yourself on Those Hot Summer Days

There is barely a time I can remember when it wasn’t a summer tradition to sit on the back porch and sip sweet tea in the summer, it’s practically religion where I come from. I have had a lot of tea in my time, both the good and the bad. Unfortunately for those seeking the perfect glass, there are as many different recipes as there are different kinds of tea, sometimes they aren’t so great.

The first debate on iced tea is do you use tea bags or loose leaf tea? Many traditional Southerners deem using loose leaf tea tantamount to being a snob. My mother makes a fine pitcher of tea using only Lipton brand family size tea bags. I myself prefer to use Loose Leaf tea as it adds a whole other depth of flavor to it. For this I use a simple Chinese F.O.P. grade tea. F.O.P. stands for Flowery Orange Pekoe and denotes the type of leaf used off the plant. It’s a good size and pick for iced tea, plus it is one of the cheaper varieties available.

I should take a moment to talk about water here. Tea and Coffee both take on flavor variants from the water that surrounds them. Because of this, some people seem to think that using certain areas water is better than the rest. I prefer to to taste the tea, however, and not the water. I think good filtered water will provide the best tea around.

You have the tea, you have the water, you are ready to make tea right? Wrong. Black Tea boils best around 190 degrees (f). Due to the dilution of being iced, we will need to steep more, or steep it for longer. The latter is where the idea of Sun Tea got it’s popularity. This is a method where tea bags are suspended in water in a sunny place and left there for the entire day, but we will not tough on that in this article. No need to get out a thermometer, iced tea (unlike hot tea) is not an exact science. Simply pull you water off the boil and let sit for about half a minute, you will have roughly the right temperature.

I would not recommend steeping any iced tea for longer than 15 minutes, as this will start pulling out compounds that will result in a bitter final product. The perfect amount of tea is 2 teaspoons (or bags) per cup of water.

Now we are on to the final step, sweetness. Some people swear by sweet tea, and some people hate it. My advice, leave it unsweetened. This does not mean to leave a bowl of sugar out because everyone who’s ever tried to stir sugar into cold tea knows this is a terrible idea. Make a simple syrup with a ratio 2:1 sugar to water (as in 2 cups sugar to 1 cup water) and serve it with the tea. Just bring the water to boil, and stir in the sugar. For added kick you can throw some oranges or other citrus fruit into the syrup, AS IT COOLS.

One final tip before we make an actual recipe, don’t stick the hot tea straight into the refrigerator. Let it cool to room temperature and then put it in the chiller. When you cool the tea too fast, tannins leach out of solution and cause the tea to be cloudy. By slowing down the cooling to 2 steps, you can prevent this.

Ice Tea:

4 Tea Bags (preferable Orange Pekoe)
2 Cups cold filtered water

1) Bring water to boil, let sit for 1 minute.
2) Add Bags or Loose Leaf Tea and let steep to desired strength: 5-15 minutes.
3) Remove bags and let sit on counter until it meets room temperature.
4) Chill

Syrup:

2 Cups Sugar
1 Cup water
Citrus Wedges (optional)

1)Bring water to boil
2) Stir in Sugar
3) As the mixture cools, toss in fruit and let sit until syrup is at room temperature. Remove and Discard

4) Enjoy!