One of the easiest ways of enjoying loose leaf tea is to batch prepare it and serve it over ice. Your family will love the taste, and if you've got a cupboard overflowing with tea flavours that you wouldn't otherwise be steeping up (say, if it wasn't your cuppa) then making this iced tea recipe will help get through those blends.
Here at Herbal Infusions we've done our fair share of iced tea recipes. The quickest way involves a few household utensils and a little bit of your time but it's definitely worth every second. When we pack up our vehicle and attend summer festivals here in Toronto we offer up refreshing iced tea accented by local garnishes. Right now (August) here in Ontario we are heading into the thick of blueberry season, so naturally we love to garnish our iced teas with blueberries but we encourage you to go ahead and be creative!
So without further hesitation lets jump into the ultimate iced tea recipe!
You will need:
- 4 teaspoons of your favourite tea (we are using Strawberry Justice Black Tea)
- plenty of ice
- liquid sugar (honey, agave, cane sugar, maple syrup)
- garnish (blueberries, cherries, lime/lemon wheels or strawberries - be creative!)
- tea steeper
- timer
- cocktail shaker & strainer (julep or hawthorne or any strainer willl do)
- elbow grease!
Step 1:
The first step in our iced tea recipe is to put your tea into the tea strainer and add hot water. For our Strawberry Justice Black Tea we are adding boiling water and steeping for 5 minutes. Hint: you want to add a little bit more tea and steep a little longer than a hot tea because there will be some dilution occurring with the ice
Step 2:
While your tea is steeping go ahead and load up the cocktail shaker and glassware with ice. You can also add any sweetener at this time directly onto the ice in the cocktail shaker. We prefer to use liquid sweetener since it dissolves more readily in cold liquids. If you try to use granulated sugar often it will not fully dissolve so if you are going this route just make a simple syrup using your white sugar.
Step 3:
Once your tea has finished steeping strain out the leaves and pour the hot tea directly into the cocktail shaker. You want to ensure that there is ample ice in the shaker, otherwise the heat will expand the air in the shaker when you put the top on and shake it. There will likely be a mess of tea everywhere! We learned this the hard way so the more ice the better as it creates a vacuum suction effect. It also helps to cut down on the amount of dilution. With less ice it melts quicker when shaking. Remember: you can always put less ice in your glassware. Now comes the elbow grease part! You want to shake shake shake!
Step 4:
Using your strainer of choice, pour your tea into your glassware and garnish. Voila! Congratulations. You've just helped to clean out your tea cupboard and accomplished our ultimate iced tea recipe in record time.
We hope you enjoyed our ultimate ice tea recipe. There are many ways of making iced tea, and by no means is this the only way. But if you are looking to use up some tea sitting around in your cupboards and you have company coming by shortly then this is definitely the best way to go!
Did you try out our iced tea recipe? How did it go and what tea did you use? Share with us in the comments section below!