Iced Tea

Iced tea, like the tea bag, is another marvel of American ingenuity! It's the quintessential summer drink, right next to lemonade and Americans drink 110 million cups of it each day.

Iced tea was invented at the 1904 World's Fair in St. Louis when Richard Blechynden, a merchant of Indian tea, faced the dubious task of selling hot tea to crowds sweltering in the summer heat. In desperation, he poured his tea over ice and the cool, copper-colored beverage was an instant sensation. That was the same year the a fellow American, Thomas Sullivan, invented the tea bag.

Everyone the world over now has their own variation of the traditional iced tea. Most restaurants serve Lipton Iced Tea, places like the Cheesecake Factory serve Tropical brand Passion Fruit Iced Tea, and people in the south serve sweet tea. Go to a Hong Kong style Café or Japanese café and you get iced tea with a little pitcher of syrup, a variation of southern sweet tea. In Morocco, iced tea gets served with mint leaves on top.

At the gas station, you can find several iced tea labels. There's Snapple, made from the best stuff along with the most artificial-tasting chemicals on earth, there's Sobe, which comes with natural "additives," like Kava Kava and Guarana, and then there's my favorite: real brewed Lipton Iced Tea that comes in the bottle. Sweetened, No Lemon. It's the closest thing to sweet tea that's available at the gas station.

If you want to make it at home. Any kind of tea will work, although Lipton now has this new invention of the cold-brew iced tea. Just add cold water and you get instant iced tea! It's not very good, though, so brewing hot tea with sugar then icing it is still the best way to do it yourself.

Coffee is a tasty, warming beverage for brisk winter mornings. However, drinking a cup of 110 F liquid on a 95 F summer day may not be your cup of tea. On the other hand, iced tea can be a more pleasant means of caffeine delivery in the summer time. It wakes you up, cools you off, and is a treat for your taste buds. Also, it only takes a couple of minutes to make. Iced tea is clearly the best caffeinated beverage for hot summer days.

The caffeine content of tea is lower than coffee. Now, a cup of coffee usually has about 90 milligrams of caffeine per cup. Strong iced tea, on the other hand, is around 60 milligrams per cup. However, this reduced caffeine content of iced tea is no problem, simply due to the fact that iced tea is usually drunk in larger quantities than coffee. For example, I usually drink about a half a gallon of iced tea a day in the summer. However, I have never heard of anyone drinking that much coffee. Anyway, if you want to boost the caffeine content of your tea, you can always brew it with Water Joe.

A good cup of iced tea is always freshly brewed. Many people these days seem to always drink bottled iced tea such as Lipton Metal Brewed and Snapple ( Made From the Best Artificial Tea Flavoring on Earth). Why people drink that garbage is beyond me. First of all, bottled teas taste horrible. They are usually brewed and stored bulk in metal containers. This imparts a strong metallic flavor to the tea. Worse yet. some brands aren't even brewed with real tea leaves. Secondly, bottled tea is expensive. A 16 oz. bottle of tea usually costs around $1. Compare that to freshly home brewed tea, which costs next to nothing. The high cost and abysmal taste of commercial bottled tea makes it a horrible choice.

There are many types of iced tea you can make: green tea, oolong, Constant Comment, and of course, regular Lipton black tea, just to name a few. Exotic varieties of tea such oolong are often delicious iced. Green tea makes a wonderful mild iced tea that has many beneficial antioxidants. Raspberry tea has a refreshingly tart fruity flavor to it. There are innumerable interesting teas available that can suit all different kinds of tastes.

Most people always put their iced tea in the sun to steep. The purpose of this is to let the sun warm the water. Iced tea brewed in warm water steeps faster.

However, there is a better way to make iced tea than letting it steep in the sun. Simply brew it with warm water from the faucet. Your tea will brew a lot faster and taste just as delicious as the sun brewed tea. However, use caution in doing this. Do not use water above about 80 degrees, or your tea will taste a little offish. Lastly, once the tea is done brewing, immediately take out the tea bags and place it in the fridge. Always refrigerate your iced tea, otherwise it will ferment and taste vinegary.

I believe the perfect iced tea is a fairly strong, unsugared brew. Here is how I make it:

1. Place 5 Lipton tea bags in a jug.

2. Fill with slightly warm water (around 80 degrees).

3. Let steep for 10-30 minutes, to taste.

4. Add sugar if you are Canadian.

Makes one serving. At least for me. Serve with lots of ice. Put a slice of lemon on the side in your glass if you like.

One last note: Canadians have a peculiar habit in their drinking of iced tea. They always add loads of lemon and sugar. In a restaurant in Canadia, if you do not want lemon and sugar in your tea to the extreme, be sure to tell them. These Canadian restauranteurs sugar and lemon tea by default. I have learned the hard way that their idea of iced tea is something that tastes like liquid lemon heads.

Shak's Strange Recipe for Slightly Sweet Completely Instant Iced Tea

Components:

• 2 Tea Bags
• 1 Gallon Pitcher/Jug
• 2 Quart Pot
• 2 Quarts Water
• 1 Quarter Gallon of Ice
• 1 Cup of Sugar
• 1 Table Spoon
• 1 Long Spoon

Subroutines:

First I fill my 2 Quart Pot reasonably full with the 2 Quarts of Water, and set it to boil. While I wait for that, I take my 1 Gallon Pitcher And put the Quarter Gallon of Ice inside. Now, I go do something, probably Everything2 related, while I wait for the boiling to begin. After I hear bubbling, I go in and watch over it, let itself get good and going. Then I turn off the gas and plop in my 2 Tea Bags. Now, I don't just let them sit and steep, I go in there with the Table Spoon and stir them around for a minute or two, until the water is nice and brown and the spoon is hard to see. Push the bags up against the side of the pot once or twice to. After the minute or two, take the tea bags out. Now, holding the pot and pitcher over the sink as strongly suggested by my mother, I pour the pot into the pitcher. Being careful not to let the flow run down the sides of the pitcher, but straight down into the ice, running down the pitcher walls somehow detracts from tastiness. Now, as the ice crinks and crackles as it battles with the hot, fast moving invader of its icy lands, pour in the 1 Cup of Sugar and stir vigorously with the 1 Long Spoon. Success! Iced Tea is available!

Suggested Uses for Iced Tea:

• Drinking while Coding
• Drinking while Noding
• Putting out CPU
• Drinking while Gaming

My recipe for iced tea, which turns out surprisingly good, considering its ingredients:

• 3 bags of Lipton tea (yes, the "brisk" kind)
• 1 bag of Celestial Seasonings Raspberry Zinger (which is not technically tea)
• 1 quart of cold water

Put the tea bags in your container of choice (I like quart-sized glass bottles), pour in the water, and stick it in a cooling device for no less than 12 hours, and no longer than 2 months. These time limits have been determined by careful, painful testing; please stay within them if you value your health and sanity. Oh, don't forget to drink it. I do that sometimes. (Forget, that is, not drink. I mean, I do drink, and also I... oh, nevermind.)