Blueberry Lemon Iced Tea

Blueberry Lemon Iced Tea

4 pints of fresh blueberries or 2 (16 ounce) packages of frozen blueberries

1 cup fresh lemon juice (about 6-8 lemon)

8 cups water

6 TBSP Black tea (we recommend Java Kertasarie)

1 ½ cups sugar

Bring package of blueberries and lemon juice to a boil in a large saucepan over medium heat. Cook, stirring occasionally, 5 minutes.

Remove from heat, and pour through a fine wire-mesh strainer into a bowl, using the back of a spoon to press out juice. Discard solids.

Heat 4 cups of water to just below boiling. In 2 cups of the hot water, steep the 6 TSBP of the Java Kertasarie for 3-4 minutes. Strain tea leaves from the tea. In the other two cups of hot water, dissolve the 1 ½ cups of sugar. Remove and discard teabags.

Add the blueberry juice mixture. Into pitcher pour the other 8 cups of water and add the tea/blueberry mixture. Cover and chill 1 hour. Serve over ice.

Garnish with lemons and blueberries if desired.

Iced Apricot Tea

Ingredients

8 TBSP Apricot Allure black tea (or your favorite black tea)

9 cups water (I always use spring water)
2 sprigs of rosemary
6 fresh apricots, halved, pitted and sliced
2 1/2 cups apricot nectar

1. Heat four cups of water to 175°F. (Steam should be slow and lazy. Do not allow water to boil. Steep tea and rosemary in the water (alone, in a tea bag, or in a tea ball or other infuser) for 3 minutes 30 seconds. Remove tea from water (strain if necessary)

2. Add tea to the remaining water.

3. Stir in the apricot nectar.

4. Serve over ice. Garnish with the sliced apricots.
(If desired top off with a splash of sparkling water for a surprising fresh spritzer)

Strawberry Iced Tea

What a great combination! Freshly ripe strawberries and loose leaf tea! Yum!

Strawberry Iced Tea
2 cups whole strawberries (cleaned, hulled and frozen)
4 cups of fresh water
2 Tbsp loose black tea (in a large tea ball, TSac, or cheesecloth)
¼ - ½ cup of white sugar (to taste)
¼ cup freshly squeezed lemon juice (about 1 ½ lemons)

1. Heat two cups of the water to just below boiling.
2. Dissolve the sugar in one cup of the hot water
3. Place the tea leaves in the other cup of hot water and steep for 3-4 minutes
4. Remove the tea leaves and discard (great mulch for roses, azaleas and rhododendrons). In a heat-proof pitcher, add the hot tea to the remaining 2 cups of water.
5. Set aside 4 strawberries.
6. Place remaining strawberries in a blender or food processor and purée until smooth.
7. Strain the puréed berries and discard the seeds
8. Mix together the puréed berries, tea and lemon juice.
9. Chill until ready to serve. Serve over ice, using reserved strawberries as garnish.

Our favorite teas for this recipe are Darjeeling Gopaldhara or Ceylon Labookellie as the black teas for this recipe, although Longjing green tea and Ti Kuan Yin Royal oolong also result in a lovely strawberry iced tea.

Graduation Tea Punch

Hosting a graduation party? Here's a punch that's healthier than most!

Graduation Tea Punch

Ingredients
3 cups near boiling water
8 Tbsp loose leaf black tea in tea ball, TSac or cheesecloth
3 cups sugar
6 cups cold water
3 cups orange juice
1½ cups lemon juice
3 cups fresh strawberries, sliced
1½ quarts ginger ale (48 oz.)

Directions

1. Pour hot water over tea leaves.
2. Steep for 4 minutes. Strain and cool.
3. Pour hot tea over sugar. Stir until dissolved.
4. Add cold water, orange and lemon juices, half of the strawberries, and the ginger ale.
5. Chill.
6. Garnish with thin slices of fresh strawberries and oranges.

Makes 35 cups.

Enjoy! And congratulations to the graduate!

Peachy Iced Tea

A southern classic. Iced peach tea with a sprig of mint.
Though no sugar is added to the recipe, this tea is plenty sweet due to the addition of peach nectar. A best bet for the peach tea lover in your family!

Ingredients
8 Tbsp loose leaf black tea
1 tsp hibiscus
8 cups water
1 16oz bag frozen peach slices, thawed or 3-4 medium size peaches, sliced
1 11.5oz-12oz can peach nectar
1/4 cup of peach liquor (optional)
Fresh Mint

Directions
1. Bring 4 cups of water to just below a boil.
2. Steep tea for 3-4 minutes in the hot water
3. Add 12 oz. of the peaches (or 3 peaches, sliced) to a blender and puree until it reaches a smooth consistency.
4. Combine the tea, peach puree, peach nectar, peach liquor (optional) and remaining slices of peaches to a 3-qt glass pitcher.
5. Serve over ice in tall glasses. Garnish with a spring of mint.

(Our tea recommendations are Ceylon Labookellie, Assam 1947, Alishan Oolong or Darjeeling Gopaldhara Summer)

Sweet Lime Iced Tea

Ingredients

4 TBSP Lime black tea (or your favorite black tea)

4 TBSP Lime Green Rooibos

1 gallon spring water (I always use spring water)

1 1/2 cup white sugar

4 limes, juice from

1. Heat four cups of water to 175°F. (Steam should be slow and lazy. Do not allow water to boil. Steep tea in the water (alone, in a tea bag, or in a tea ball or other infuser) for 3 minutes 30 seconds. Remove tea from water (strain if necessary)

2. Heat 1 1/2 cups of water to boiling. Dissolve the sugar in the cup of boiling water.

3. Place the remaining water in a gallon pitcher. Add the tea concentrate from step one, the simple syrup from step two and the lime juice.

4. Stir and serve over ice. Garnish with lime, lemons and/or oranges.

Wild Berry Iced Tea

So ... I just came from Wendy's curious to try their new Wild Berry Tea. I watched the employee dispense the tea and squirt some thick berry-colored syrup into the cup and stir with a long iced tea spoon. The taste is predictably sweet, but I don't care much for the seeds in it.

So, I thought, how can I make that tea at home -- without the seeds and maybe a little less sweet...

Ingredients

2 TBSP Pu Erh tea

1 Gallon of Spring Water

6 oz., or so (to taste) Northland Raspberry Pomegranate Goji Juice (or any raspberry blend juice that pleases you -- this is about equivalent to one juice box.)

Yes, this recipe is a little light on the tea, but really so is the Wendy's version I think ...

1. Heat one cups of water to 175°F. (Steam should be slow and lazy. Do not allow water to boil. Steep tea in the water (alone, in a tea bag, or in a tea ball or other infuser) for 3 minutes 30 seconds. Remove tea from water (strain if necessary)

2. Place the remaining water in a gallon pitcher. Add the tea concentrate from step one and the juice. Stir.

3. Serve over ice.

Wendy's Wild Berry Tea (Medium 17oz size) has 100 calories, 15mg sodium, 14g sugar.

Wendy's ingredient list: Water, Tea, Wild Berry Puree (blackberries, sugar, corn syrup, strawberries, water, raspberry, natural flavoring, potassium sorbate, xanthan gum).

SensibiliTeas version (17 oz.) has 13 calories, 2mg sodium and 2.5 g of sugar.

SensibiliTeas ingredient list: water, tea, juice (apple, pomegranate, goji, raspberry, grape and pear juice, natural flavors, vegetable color, citric acid, fruit extracts, vitamin c, vitamin A and vitamin E.)

Boston Iced Tea

Boston Iced Tea

What's that iced tea I had a Red Lobster? It's sooo good...

Boston Iced tea is really just slightly sweet iced tea with cranberry juice added.

Ingredients

8 TBSP Ceylon Labookellie black tea (or your favorite black tea)

1 gallon spring water (I always use spring water)

1 cup white sugar

1 12oz. can frozen cranberry juice concentrate

1. Heat four cups of water to 175°F. (Steam should be slow and lazy. Do not allow water to boil. Steep tea in the water (alone, in a tea bag, or in a tea ball or other infuser) for 3 minutes 30 seconds. Remove tea from water (strain if necessary)

2. Heat 1 cup of water to boiling. Dissolve the one cup of sugar in the cup of boiling water.

3. Place the remaining water in a gallon pitcher. Add the tea concentrate from step one, the simple syrup from step two and the cranberry juice concentrate.

4. Stir and serve over ice. Garnish with oranges, lemon, limes and/or cranberries.

Bottled vs. brewed teas: Study reveals healthiest teas

Labels on bottled tea beverages are typically plastered with declarations of their rich antioxidant content. But a new study suggests, if you're looking for high doses of healthful antioxidants, you might be better off brewing your tea at home.

Many of the popular beverages included in the study contain fewer antioxidants than a single cup of home-brewed green or black tea, the researchers say. Some store-bought teas contain such small amounts that consumers would have to drink 20 bottles to get the antioxidants, also called polyphenols, present in one cup of tea.

"There is a huge gap between the perception that tea consumption is healthy and the actual amount of the healthful nutrients — polyphenols — found in bottled tea beverages. Our analysis of tea beverages found that the polyphenol content is extremely low," said study researcher Shiming Li, an analytical and natural product chemist at WellGen, Inc., a biotechnology company in North Brunswick, N.J., that develops medical foods for patients with diseases, including a proprietary black tea product that will be marketed for its anti-inflammatory benefits.

In addition, bottled beverages often contain large amounts of sugar that health-conscious consumers may be trying to avoid, Li said.

The study was presented Aug. 22 at the 240th National Meeting of the American Chemical Society (ACS) in Boston.

Bottled vs. brewed
Antioxidants are substances that protect cells against damage from unstable molecules called free radicals. They may play a role in preventing a host of diseases, including cancer, cardiovascular disease and Alzheimer's.

Li and colleagues measured the level of polyphenols of six brands of tea purchased from supermarkets. Half of them contained what Li characterized as "virtually no" antioxidants. The rest had small amounts of polyphenols that Li said probably would carry little health benefit, especially when considering the high sugar intake from tea beverages.

The six teas Li analyzed contained 81, 43, 40, 13, 4, and 3 milligrams of polyphenols per 16-ounce bottle. One average cup of home-brewed green or black tea, which costs only a few cents, contains 50-150 milligrams of polyphenols.

Less tea, more water
|After water, tea is the world's most widely consumed beverage. Tea sales in the United States have quadrupled since 1990 and now total about $7 billion annually.

Some manufacturers do list polyphenol content on the bottle label, Li said. But the amounts may be incorrect, because there are no industry or government standards or guidelines for measuring and listing the polyphenolic compounds in a given product. A regular tea bag, for example, weighs about 2.2 grams and could contain as much as 175 mg of polyphenols, Li said. But polyphenols degrade and disappear as the tea bag is steeped in hot water. The polyphenol content also may vary as manufacturers change their processes, including the quantity and quality of tea used to prepare a batch and the tea brewing time.

"Polyphenols are bitter and astringent, but to target as many consumers as they can, manufacturers want to keep the bitterness and astringency at a minimum," Li explained. "The simplest way is to add less tea, which makes the tea polyphenol content low but tastes smoother and sweeter."

Li used a standard laboratory technique, termed high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC), to make what he described as the first measurements of polyphenols in bottled tea beverages. He hopes the research will encourage similar use of HPLC by manufacturers and others to provide consumers with better nutritional information.

(Article posted by MSNBC news 08/22/10)

Blueberry-Lemon Iced Tea

Get refreshed with this antioxidant powerhouse!

Blueberry-Lemon Iced Tea

Ingredients
• 1 (16-oz.) package frozen blueberries
or 1 pint fresh blueberries
• 1/2 cup fresh lemon juice
• 4 cups water
• 2 Tbsp loose black tea
• 3/4 cup sugar

Preparation
Bring blueberries and lemon juice to a boil in a large saucepan over medium heat. Cook, stirring occasionally, 5 minutes. Remove from heat, and pour through a fine wire-mesh strainer into a bowl, using back of a spoon to squeeze out juice. Discard solids.
Boil 2 cups of water. In one cup of water, steep black tea in for 3-4 minutes. Remove tea leaves and discard. In the other cup of water, dissolve the sugar. Add blueberry/lemon juice mixture, the dissolved sugar and 2 cups of cold water to the tea. Pour into a pitcher; cover and chill 1 hour. Serve over ice. Garnish with lemons and blueberries. Enjoy with friends!

Spiced Iced is so Nice!

Who said iced tea has to be fruity, or spicy tea can only be served hot? Spiced teas make surprisingly good iced teas!
Spiced Iced is so Nice!

Ingredients:

3 TBSP loose leaf black tea
4 cups water
12 whole cloves
12 allspice berries
A 2-inch cinnamon stick

Directions:
1. Pour water into a saucepan and bring to a simmer,not a boil. (When steam is slow and lazy and small bubbles have started to appear on the bottom of the pot, remove from the heat)
2. Add tea, cloves, allspice and cinnamon.
3. Cover and steep the mix for about 5 minutes. Strain out all the spices and tea leaves, and then put in the fridge to chill thoroughly. Serve this spiced iced tea over ice. Garnish with lemon slices.

Classic Southern Sweet Tea

Yes, Classic Southern Sweet Tea is loaded with sugar, but it's still far less sugar than any sweetened bottle product contains, and you can control how much sugar is in your iced tea. This recipe is a little less sweet than a deep south sweet tea, but perhaps plenty sweet enough for the Yankee palate.

For each quart:
Ingredients
2 cups near boiling water (175°F-185°F)
2 Tbsp loose black tea (in a large tea ball, Tsac or cheesecloth)
1/2 cup white sugar
2 cups cold water
1 pinch (1/16 tsp) baking soda

Directions

1. Heat 2 cups of the water to just below boiling. (175°F-185°F) 2. Steep the tea with the baking soda in the 1 cup of the hot water for about 3-4 minutes. 3. Dissolve the sugar in 1 cup of hot water. 4. Remove the tea leaves from the brewed tea concentrate. 5. Add the hot tea and the dissolved sugar to the cold water. 6. Chill until ready to serve. Serve over ice. Garnish as desired.
For best results, SensibiliTeas recommends Java Malabar or Assam 1947 for this recipe. Large TSacs for making larger quantities of tea are available at SensibiliTeas. These TSacs are also great for making mulled wine or cider later in the year.

The Basic Iced Tea Recipe

This is the basic iced tea recipe. In any recipe I provide you in the future that makes reference to brewed tea, this is the recipe I mean! Takes only a few minutes and packs 10 times more antioxidants than a bottle iced tea!

For each quart:
Ingredients
2 cups near boiling water (175°F-185°F)
2 Tbsp loose black tea (in a large tea ball, Tsac or cheesecloth)
2 cups cold water

Directions
1. Heat 2 cups of the water to just below boiling. (175°F-185°F)
2. Placed the tea leaves in 1 cup of hot water and cover and steep for about 3-4 minutes (or as otherwise recommended by SensibiliTeas)
3. Remove the tea leaves.
4. Add the hot tea to the cold water.
5. Chill until ready to serve. Serve over ice. Garnish as desired.

Enjoy!

Large TSacs for making larger quantities of tea are available at SensibiliTeas.
These TSacs are also great for making mulled wine or cider later in the year.

It's National Iced Tea Month

Yes ... that's right! National Iced Tea Month!
Did you know that iced tea is made from ... TEA!
You wouldn't know it by reading the labels of the bottled stuff many people drink:
water, sugar, citric acid, tea extract, trisodium citrate, Vitamin C.

Gee ... know what's in my iced tea?
water, tea and sometimes sugar.

or diet iced tea ...
water, citric acid, tea, sodium hexametaphosphate, natural flavors, phosphoric acid, potassium sorbate, potassium benzoate, citrus pectin, sucralose, caramel color, acesulfame potassium, calcium disodium EDTA and Red 40.

Know what's in my diet iced tea
water, tea

I don't need to add preservatives because I make my tea fresh and I'm likely to drink it within a day or two. Bottled tea has to be preserved for many weeks, if not months, before it ever makes it to your grocery basket.
I don't need to add colors. It's already the right color.
And if I want a flavor ... I'll use a flavored tea, preferably one with an organic flavor.
And diet tea? Really? It was already calorie-free ... why is the ingredient list longer for the diet product? Shouldn't it be less?

Does bottled tea have antioxidants?
Yes ... it has more antioxidants that a bottle of water, a sports drink or a soda. However, The Univiersity of Oregon did a study that showed that bottled tea had only 10% of the antioxidants of freshly brewed tea.
This could be for two reasons. First, commercial teas my be cold brewed. That means tea leaves are soaked in a cooled environment for a long time. The result is smooth, non-bitter tea. However, the antioxidants in tea need heat in order to be released. Additionally, the antioxidants in tea may be coming from the citric acid and ascorbic acid (Vitamin C) that is often added to a bottled product.
Antioxidants may also be lower because antioxidants in tea are reduced over time. So all that time the tea is being packaged, shipped, stored and sold ... it's losing whatever antioxidants it had.

Making your own iced tea is incredibly fast and simple. And if it will give you control over the sugar you add, and your variety is infinitely greater then every before.

Getting good iced tea, if you're not making it yourself, is really a matter of knowing what a label says. If you can't pronounce it, you probably don't need it.
If it says sucralose, understand that means Splenda.
If it says Nutra Sweet, Equal, or Canderel, it's aspartame.
Sugars, like High Fructose Corn Syrup are hidden under a bunch of aliases too -- fructose, crystalline fructose, glucose, glucose-fructose syrup, dextrose, corn syrup, cane juice, high maltose syrup, invert syrup, corn syrup solids, sugar, sucrose... it's not unusual for a ready-to-drink product to contain two or more of these sugars.

There's really nothing wrong with sugar, providing it's used in moderation. But I prefere real sugar. Honestly, if your iced tea is good enough to start with, it likely doesn't need sweetening.
At SensibiliTeas, when we desire a sweeter cup of tea, we steep stevia leaves with the tea leaves for a sweeter result. If using honey, we stir the honey into the hot water before applying to ice. Honey just kinda of seizes up on top of the ice cubes. We keep a simple syrup on hand too, for those wishing to sweeten with sugar after it's been made cold.

Future posts this month will provide recipes for iced teas and iced tea punches.
I hope you have the chance to enjoy some freshly brewed iced tea soon!

June is National Iced Tea Month

June is National Iced Tea Month!

There are numerous stories about various food and drink products being introduced at the 1904 World's Fair in St. Louis. Such lists typically include iced tea as being "invented" at the 1904 Fair. Iced tea is often attributed to tea merchant Richard Blechynden, a tea plantation owner. The story goes that he had planned to give away free samples of his hot tea to fair visitors. However, the St. Louis summer was so hot that few fair visitors seemed interested. It is said that Blechynden dumped some ice into his tea creating a drink that was a "hit" at the fair.
Great story ... however ... fourteen years earlier ...

On September 20 and 21, 1890, the Missouri State Reunion of Ex-Confederate Veterans was held in Nevada, Missouri. Fifteen thousand veterans converged on the city of Nevada including several hundred from St. Louis. This event was held at the Artesian Park where an encampment was set up with rows upon rows of tents. The encampment was called Camp Jackson.

On the first day, a huge meal was served. The magnitude of this large barbecue is absolutely amazing even by today's standards -- over 11,000 pounds of beef was cooked. The biggest surprise however, is that the meal included iced tea - 880 gallons of it. Below is a clipping about that meal that appeared as a part of the write-up about the Confederate reunion that appeared in the September 28, 1890 issue of the Nevada Noticer newspaper.

This article was published fourteen years before the World's Fair. It also seems notable that the article is written in a style that infers that the newspaper assumed its readers knew what iced tea was. There can be no doubt that this clipping proves that iced tea was not "invented" at the St. Louis World's Fair and it inference is that iced tea had been around prior to 1890. This causes one to wonder if one of the St. Louis delegates remembered this drink and "re-invented" it at the fair. Or maybe the 1904 iced tea invention was just one of the many myths surrounding the World's Fair.

Pat Villmer of the St. Louis World's Fair Society wrote that tea, " wasn't 'invented' at the World's Fair. The good people of the South were serving iced tea in their homes long before the 1904 World's Fair. It was just popularized at the World's Fair. It was called sweet tea served cool not hot in the summer in the South. Ice, when available, was used. Remember, ice was the premium in the early days before refrigeration, not tea."

Even though it appears that not everyone believes that Iced Tea was "invented" at the fair, there are still numerous web sites and World's Fair references which declare that that is exactly what happened. It may have been popularized there, but this clipping definitely proves that Iced Tea was not a new drink in 1904.

Reference: Nevada Noticer, September 28, 1890. Nevada, MO.