How to Make Good Iced Tea:
- Boil one cup of water.
- Pour it over 6-8 teaspoons of loose tea and brew 5 minutes.
- If you add sugar, do it now and stir well.
- Fill a one quart jar half way with ice. Add cold water to fill it 3/4 of the way.
- Pour the brewed tea into the jar through a strainer to catch the leaves.
- It's ready to drink! Enjoy!
Want a simple gadget to help you make iced tea? This is what I use to make a half-gallon of iced tea: The Tea Maker - Magic (formerly called the "Brew and Touch"). There is a fine plastic mesh filter at the bottom with a convenient trigger mechanism so that this teapot basically acts as a giant brewing basket. Just put your loose tea in the pot, fill with hot water, let it brew (put in extra tea leaves to make a concentrate). Then place the pot on top of a half-gallon iced tea pitcher filled halfway with ice and water. This triggers the release mechanism and the tea is filtered down through the strainer. Lift up on the pot at any time to stop the flow. Your iced tea is immediately ready to drink with no mess!
Tea Quotations
- When you see the natural and almost universal craving in English sick for their tea, you cannot but feel that nature knows what she is about. There is nothing yet discovered which is a substitute to the English patient for his or her cup of tea. --Florence Nightingale
- Its proper use is to amuse the idle, and relax the studious, and dilute the full meals of those who cannot use exercise, and will not use abstinence. -- Samuel Johnson
- "Five o'clock tea" is a phrase our "rude forefathers," even of the last generation, would scarcely have understood, so completely is it a thing of to-day; and yet, so rapid is the March of the Mind, it has already risen into a national institution, and rivals, in its universal application to all ranks and ages, and as a specific for "all the ills that flesh is heir to," the glorious Magna Charta. -- Lewis Carroll
Tea and Health
I get a lot of questions regarding how long you should steep your tea to maximize the amount of polyphenols present that are beneficial to health. There is a new article out that addresses this question, and here is what the researchers found:
- Results for all kinds of tea showed that for tea brewed at 158° F, the second tea infusion contained the highest quantities of caffeine and polyphenols. (This temperature is often used for delicate green, white, or oolong teas.)
- In contrast, for tea brewed at 185° F or 212° F, the first infusion contained the highest quantities of caffeine and polyphenols. (212° F is typically the temperature used for black tea.)
- Higher amounts of caffeine and polyphenols were released with increasing water temperature.
- As steeping time increased, more caffeine and polyphenols were released.
- Polyphenol content decreased appreciably after brewed tea had been stored at 77° F for 36 hours.
- However, there was no evident change in polyphenol content after storage at 39° F. (So store your tea in the refrigerator.)
- Polyphenols infused more slowly when tea was steeped in cold water rather than hot water.
Tea and Health News provided by: TheTeaTable.com
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