Every morning I drink iced tea to help me get going. I’ve never been a coffee drinker, and I don’t enjoy hot tea as much. I used to drink a lot of carbonated soft drinks, but this way I get to still have the caffeine without the sugar or artificial sweetener and all the other chemicals. If you’ve been buying bottled iced tea you will be amazed at how much money you save! Here’s how you can make and enjoy this healthy and tasty beverage at home and save money.
I’ve got a pretty good system going, I think. I have a Zojirushi 3L hot water boiler dispenser (Link is to a newer version available on Amazon; I bought mine years ago at a Chinese supermarket) which provides me with always-on hot water. I only fill it with water filtered in my Brita water filter to reduce the amount of calcification accumulating inside it. And then I prepare the tea in the Forlife pitcher which makes quite a few glasses of iced tea.
Here’s the basic recipe I follow:
- Put 2 tablespoons of loose leaf black tea into the Forlife pitcher. I use English Breakfast tea from DavidsTea but you can use any tea you like.
- Pour hot water into the pitcher until it is about 2/3 full.
- Let stand for 7 minutes.
- Lift the strainer out of the pitcher. So that it can drip into the tea, I lift it mostly out and then set it back in at about a 20-degree angle for a minute or so.
- Remove the strainer and set aside. Add ice cubes if you plan to drink immediately, or just add more water to fill it to the top and put it in the fridge overnight.
- Enjoy!
Note that this process involves no sweetener or added flavors. If you want to add sugar, do it while the water is still hot, as it will dissolve better. You can also use Splenda or some other artificial sweetener, but I would encourage you to just drink it unsweetened.
If you don’t care for the taste of unsweetened tea, try weaning yourself off sugar over the course of a couple weeks – use less and less each time until you don’t need it at all. That’s what I did.
Advanced Options: You can mix in other beverages with your tea when you drink it. For example, fill your glass halfway with tea, and the other half with juice, lemonade, etc. Experiment and see what combinations and proportions you enjoy, and post about them in the comments below.