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Iced Tea Recipes
Let's Celebrate the "Invisible Drink"
This summer, celebrate “the invisible drink” with us as we sample our favorite iced tea recipes.
Many people come into our shop and exclaim they don’t drink tea, and yet they enjoy iced tea everyday with their lunch or dinner without realizing it. Iced tea is as American as apple pie, even though it is often taken for granted.
Every day we’ll be sampling a new iced tea recipe
and then posting it every week to our teaembassy.com
website. Share your own recipes with us at carol@teatreasures.com.
Iced Tea Tradition
By Bob Sims
"I don't drink tea," it is often said to me when I talk to someone in Texas or the Southeast. This person might be named Bubba and he just finished lunch at the local bar-b-que shack.
"What did you drink with your brisket today?" I will ask in fun, knowing that tea is so much a part of our culture it is invisible.
Then I often get a laugh or an embarrassed response about the two 30oz. glasses of iced tea or southern-style iced simply loved as "sweet tea" Bubba downed with his BBQ.
Tea came into American culture before it hit London, finding its way into New Amsterdam through the Dutch traders who first brought it to what is now New York in the mid 1600's. That started a love affair Americans only put aside twice during times of war.
In recipe books and other literature, however, the iced version of tea appears all throughout the 19th Century especially but not exclusively in the South. Early versions included green tea mixed with wine (probably muscadine) and add sweet cream and sugar. This was called tea punch.
My father drank oolong tea in Alabama mail-ordered from New York. He told me that in the A&P Grocery Market where he worked as a kid, a significant percentage of tea was loose leaf green and oolong, bagged by the grocery clerks at the point of sale. Some historical references say up to 30 percent of tea before WWII in the U.S. was green and oolong loose leaf.
The Upton Tea Quarterly, Summer 2004, reprinted a recipe from "Housekeeping in Old Virginia," published 1879. This recipe must be typical of tea drunk by planters in the Old South back into the 18th Century (who loved green tea so much they locked it up in tea caddies and wore the keys around the neck): includes a quart of hot water, two teaspoonfuls green tea left to sit all day, then poured without stirring into sugared ice with a squeeze of lemon for the astringency.
The 1904 World's Fair popularized the modern form of iced tea in the U.S. with an historical accident. The heat wave that rocked the hot tea pavilion moved the organizer, Richard Blechynden to pour the tea on ice.
After WWII, the U.S. continued to perfect the trends begun by necessity in war to make food instant, less perishable and faster. In the 1950's it was discovered by a Yerba Mate grower in Argentina that varieties of asian tea plants that lend readily to "dusting" leaf particles grew well in that land.
This stream of tea production, mass mechanization or bags and rapid (though less complex in flavor) infusion of color and flavor regardless of temperature, gradually took the U.S. tea market into what it became until the 1990's, a commoditized market.
Mechanized or not, tea is still a great American drink regardless of the loss of whole leaf tea and the ritual it affords worldwide to all cultures. Bubba drinks black tea from Argentina but he still puts lemon and sugar in it.
Modern "sweet tea" in the South differs from sweetened tea in that usually a cup or so of sugar is in the pitcher with the steeping teabags (usually.) This method, which is so predominant in the Southeast it is standard when ordering tea at a restaurant, gives the drink a special flavor because the tea infuses into the hot water and the melted sugar to give the time-honored taste.
In China, certain varieties and manufactures of green tea are drunk in the hot south china climates. Dragonwell, often called Lung Ching or variations like Long Jing, is grown and crafted to promote a cooling effect on the mouth and esophagus and is as popular in that hot climate as iced tea in the Southern United States.
Regardless of the method, tea is the most popular beverage in the world and as American as Apple Pie even if it is under the radar of our culture.
Tea Embassy Iced Tea Suggestions
Mango Medley
Hot Cinnamon Spice
Lychee Black
C.S. Lewis
Capital Blend
Black Currant
Thai Tea
Clarksville Cordial
Margarita
Masala Chai
Almond Cake Green
Almond Cookie
Sundew
Kyoto Cherry Rose Sencha
Morccan Mint
Lemon Ice Green
Berry Brew
Austin Ambrosia
Raspberry Mint
Peach Ginger Mate
Blueberry Rooibos
Peach Rooibos
Iced Tea Recipes
Almond Iced Tea
Steep 6 teaspoons of Snow Flake Black Tea in 6 cups boiling water for 4 minutes.
Add 1/2 cup Almond Agasweet (Almond Flavored Agave Nectar) or to taste
2 Tablespoons of Almond Extract
Chill and serve over ice.
Iced Berry Brew
Steep 6 heaping teaspoons of Berry Brew in 6 cups boiling water for 10 minutes
Add 2 Tablespoons of Lemon Agasweet
Chill and serve over ice
Spiced Cinnamon Iced Tea
Steep 6 teaspoons of Hot Cinnamon Spice tea in 6 cups boiling water for 3.5 minutes
Chill and serve over Ice. No sweetner.
Lychee Iced Tea
Brew our delicious Lychee Black iced tea (6cups) 3.5 minutes
Chill and serve over frozen blueberries and ice.
Strawberry Chill
Steep our Strawberry Cream Green tea 180 for 2 minutes. (6 cups water/6 tsp tea)
Add 3 T vanilla Agasweet. Chill overnight. Serve over ice.
Peach Rooibos Delight
Steep 6 heeping teaspoons for 6 cups of boiling water for 10-30 minutes.
Stir in while still hot 1 great big Tablespoon wildflower honey.
Chill. Serve over iced with fresh lemon juice.
Delicious athletic drink!
Lemon Ice Green
Steep 6 tsp Lemon Ice Green tea with 6 cups water 180 for 2 minutes.
Add Lemon Agasweet, 3 T or to taste. Chill. Serve over ice with fresh lemons.
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