Iced Tea 4 Ways

First Post… Let’s jump right in and kick off the summer!

Iced Tea is a summer staple at my house!  It gets brewed by the 3-gallon, thanks to this handy kitchen gadget and consumed faster than is probably good for our health.  Oh well.  ;)  I tend to brew it strong with mostly iced-tea specific tea bags or puerh tea that my hubby brought back from China.  I usually add a bag or two of whatever berry tea I already have on hand as well.  I just brewed my first batch a few days ago and because we drink it so often I have been experimenting with some ways to mix it up a bit and found some simple and tasty additions!

1. Honey and Ginger Iced Tea.

Take a teaspoon of honey and melt it into half a glass of tea in the microwave.  Then add a good dose of fresh grated ginger, more tea, ice and garnish with a ginger slice!  Fresh with a hint of sweetness and a good bite of ginger!  Adjust the amount of ginger and honey to your liking!  Just keep in mind that honey doesn’t dissolve very well in cold iced tea!

 

2. Spiked Cherry and Mint Iced Tea

I think this will be my go-to-refreshing cocktail of the summer!  Add 5-6 fresh pitted cherries and a sprig of mint leaves to the bottom of the glass.  Pour in a good healthy shot of bourbon, I chose Red Stag which is my current fave… a black cherry bourbon!  Muddle the cherries and mint in the bottom of the glass.  Add some ice, and the iced tea of course and drink up!

 

3. Simply Sweetened Lemon Iced Tea

For a much sweeter tea, make some simple syrup!  I made mine with fresh lemon for some extra zing!  Boil the zest and juice of two lemons, 1 cup sugar, and 1.5 cups water.  Let cool, and then strain out the zest and pulp.  Pour the cooled syrup into your Iced Tea to desired sweetness level, add ice and sip!

 

4. Berry-Iced Tea

This tea is truly Berry-Iced.  Take fresh blueberries, plus a handful of frozen mixed berries from the freezer and heat in about a cup of water until some of the blueberries burst.  Pour the juice and berries into ice-cube trays and freeze. (I had the perfect cute silicone fruit shaped ice-cube trays!) Add the frozen cubes to your iced tea!  I loved this because as the ‘ice’ melts the flavor of the tea changes, plus I loved slurping up the berry remains from the bottom of the glass!  :)  Keep the frozen fruit ice cubes in mind when the fruit in your fridge starts to turn.  The blueberries I used still tasted great, but they had started to get a little wrinkly… this was a perfect way to use them up!

Want to see more photos… go here.

Which tea are you going to try first?

Sam