I’ve tried all of the store brands, plus milo’s, plus all the ones you can get at the gas station, plus chicken Xpress, Chick-fil-A, sonic, and taco Casa. Red diamond is the goat. The only thing that comes close is taco Casa Arnold Palmer.
While growing up my mother always boiled a tea bag in a small pan of hot water, and then would mix the tea, minus tea bag, in a pitcher and fill with water. When I got older I heard a tea connoisseur tell me tea is better if you cook it versus boil it. He said tea that is steeped/brewed in hot water is preferable to tea that is boiled. Said that is why the commercial tea brewing pots, like Mr. Coffee, (and commercial restaurant style brewers) use hot water to brew the tea instead of boiling water. Said that sun tea is the same concept with the sun heating the water and brewing the tea throughout the day. I am not sure how much truth there is to those claims, but I personally think tea that has been boiled is slightly darker and a tad more bitter. Sun tea or tea brewed with hot water seems to be a lighter amber color and not as bitter. Just the observations of someone who really enjoys a good glass of cold iced tea.
I'm trying to cut back on drinking soda so my wife has been keeping a jug of tea in the fridge for me. She breaks out a big pot and boils her water, throws in the tea bags, pulls off to cool, and then into a jug in the fridge. I remember as a kid my Aunt had a way of making tea by placing a glass jug of water/tea bags in the sun for a day or something like that? Nowadays I know there are electric kettles etc.
What methods of brewing tea are the easiest for you?
Gallon of Red Diamond tea from the super market. Also, 4 cup Pyrex in the microwave, boil, and brew a concentrated strong tea, then mellow it out with ice and water in your cup to your liking.
Sun tea is the only way and only time my husband will have tea. He puts way more than the recommended 7 regular tea bags in it (3 jumbo sized) and only Lipton Black Tea will do.
Sun tea is very simple. Buy the large tea bags from Lipton and then buy a $3 dollar one gallon glass tea container.
Fill it with water, put in 4 tea bags and set it out on the back deck in the sun for a few hours. Get two glass containers if you drink it that fast and continually rotate through them.
The secret to
Good tasting tea is to let it “steep” overnight on the stove.
Boil it, leave in the pan and put a plate or lid on it overnight then pour it up and refrigerate.
I use a French press and loose leaf tea. The water boils in the beaker, the tea steeps in the water, you press and the tea is automatically strained. The whole system is neat, tidy, and contained.
I make my tea fairly strong—almost concentrated—as I drink a lot of it and the “concentrate” allows what I’ve steeped to go farther. When I want a glass of tea, I simply place ice in my glass (no more, no less), add tea from the press to my desired strength (sometimes weaker, sometimes stronger depending on my mood), then add water to fill the glass.
It’s far simpler than I’ve described. Though I wouldn’t necessarily say it’s the easiest way to make tea, I love the way it tastes. It’s a quality of life thing, this nectar of the gods.
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