Iced teas are great summer drinks. Not only are they absolutely refreshing on a hot day, they are also full of tea goodness such as anti-oxidants and a much healther drink than any soft drinks that are normally the choice for iced drinks. However may of us end up spending big bucks on our favourite brands and with the rising food prices it’s time to learn how to make our own iced teas to tailor it to our taste and save money at the same time, not to mention, we’ll be saving the environment by reducing the amount of plastic bottles we throw away after drinking the purchased iced teas.
Iced teas are so easy to make once you’ve made it once you wouldn’t want to buy another bottle. All we need, are some tea bags (or loose leaf teas if they are available), some hot water, sugar and a flavour of your choice.
THE METHOD
1. Just like making a hot cup of tea, we can firstly prepare some hot water by boiling some in the kettle. While we wait for the water to boil, we can firstly get a big tea pot (or any other pots as long as they are not plastic so it doesn’t melt) and put the tea bags in the pots. These can be black teas or green teas, depending on what sort of iced tea you would like to make.
2. Once the water has boiled, pour it into the pot with tea bags in it. Pour enough to make the amount of iced tea you wish. It’s always a good idea to make a lot do you can store them in the fridge and have iced tea whever you want without having to make them each time you feel like iced tea.
3. Stir the tea bags around. You want your iced tea to be strong enough so the taste of tea will still be there when the tea has been chilled. After about two minutes, take the tea bags out.
4. Now we can add the sugar. Depending on how sweet you like the tea, you should always add a little at a time and taste them along the way. If they are not sweet enough, add a little bit more. Now here is the trick. Once you have your ideal sweetness, you should always add another spoonful or two (depending on how big your pot is) so that the tea taste a little over sweetened. When the tea is chilled, the sweetness usually decreases and you’ll find that an ideal sweetness doesn’t taste the same when the tea has been chilled. Stir well to ensure all the sugar has been melted and stirred in.
5. If you like, this is when you can add in some flavours. Most iced teas has fruity flavours and you can do so too. The most delicious and natural way of adding flavour to the teas are to add real fruits to them. So if you wish to have iced lemon tea, you should add some lemon slices into the tea. For Peach, add slices to fresh peach into the tea and so on. The benefit of using real fruits is you can actually eat these fruits afterwards and they’ll taste delicious as well having been infused in the teas.
6. Leave the tea until it’s cooled enough so you can bottle them and put them into the fridge. If you want to have some right now, you can pour out a glass and add some ice cubes to cool it.
Now that you have lernt how to make iced tea, you can now enjoy your healthy fresh iced tea and a taste that is all your own!
