Sunday 8 August 2010

Sweet Tea



Sweet tea is a favourite of the American South, and this ice cold pint (above) did things I can't even describe. A truly great drink.

Sweet Tea


3 tea bags

1 litre of water
Simple syrup

Put 3 tea bags in 1 litre of water (or thereabouts) and leave it in the fridge overnight to brew cold. To serve, pour tea over ice and add simple syrup to taste.


Says M: "Lemons, limes, and fruit juices are all nice additions if you want to jazz it up, but I like sweet tea in its most basic form."


I like to keep a bottle of pre-made simple syrup in the fridge (one part sugar, one part water, add boiling water to sugar and stir until dissolved). Helpfully, once the jug's empty you can refill it with water, using the same teabags. Just make sure it has long enough to steep. Tastes better when the sun's shining.

2 comments:

  1. I normally wait until it's sunny and make sun tea - some teabags in a jug with some sugar and water left in the sun until you get thirsty. Stick some ice in it and it's rather good - different to cold brewed tea but still good.

    Also, with syrup I always used to make it with boiling water, but you can just stick the sugar and cold water in a bottle and leave it - it'll dissolve and mix together in about an hour with the occasional shake (it was advice from Jared of mixellany.com). If you want to cook it down a bit to get a more concentrated syrup then heating it will help, but for regular 1:1 syrup I'm lazy these days :)

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  2. Cheers for that. Will try the lazy simple syrup method for sure - it makes sense (being lazy, that is). Now all I need is a hammock.

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