Summer in a Glass

With all due respect to my favorite beverage (coffee for those of you who didn't already guess) nothing beats a tall cold glass of iced tea on a warm summer afternoon. Having invited a few friends and some family over to celebrate July 4th in our backyard, iced tea seemed like the perfect beverage to accompany barbecued chicken and steak alongside various salads.

The mess and labor of boiling water and steeping tea for a prescribed amount of time seemed like too  much work, though. With inspiration from one of the hot trends according to my Twitter feed and other sources (cold brew coffee), boxes of black and white tea in my pantry, and a recent visit to Chicago where we sipped on amazing Argo tea drinks, I decided to try cold-brewed iced tea. Not much information exists in the form of recipes, but An Edible Mosaic had some ideas that sounded fun.

The general rule seems to be two tea bags per quart of water. I made one gallon of two types of tea, eight tea bags in each. 

White Tea with Blueberries: Put eight tea bags in a large jug and pour in one gallon of water. Add one cup blueberries. Refrigerate for 12-24 hours. Since I made the tea directly in the large serving jug I planned to use (the kind with a spigot for dispensing) I did not bother straining the tea, and it looked pretty with the blueberries swimming at the bottom.

Black Tea with Rosemary and Lemon Peel: Put eight tea bags in a large jug and pour in one gallon of water. Add 2-4 sprigs of rosemary and the peel of 1-2 lemons (depending on how much flavor you want from the herbs and lemon). Refrigerate for 12-24 hours.

When it came time to serve, I took the jugs straight from the refrigerator to the back porch and set out a bowl of sugar with iced tea spoons for stirring. Next time I will probably make some simple syrup since the sugar doesn't dissolve so well, of course, but most of my guests were happy to drink the unsweetened tea. The white tea was almost sweet already from the blueberries, though I think honey would be fabulous in it. An Edible Mosaic blog suggested maple syrup in the black tea. I'm also thinking some fresh ginger would be a wonderful complement to the white tea and blueberries.

Unfortunately you will have to create a mind picture as I neglected to photograph the beverages - halved blueberries swimming in a light ginger-hued jug of whitea tea alongside a dark amber-colored jug of black tea with sprigs of rosemary and bright yellow lemon peel.

Three cheers for summer and iced tea! Leave a comment if you try any other variations and come up with a new favorite.