Happy Tuesday, tea people! We hope you are all staying dry & warm this week with the rainy weather! You know what they say, "April showers, bring May flowers!". We are ready for those May flowers! Speaking of flowers & all that comes with it, warmer weather is just around the corner for us! For us, this means iced tea! Who doesn't so enjoy a sip of your favorite iced tea on a hot summer day? It always seems to be the perfect thirst quencher & reminds you of simpler summer days.
While iced tea is quite the bulls-eye of a beverage for a summer day, we often find that many of our customers are not enjoying it to it's fullest potential due to an easily fixed mistake! Iced tea contains just that, ice! Ice, being traditionally made with water, will cool your tea, but also, unfortunately, dilute it. We don't want that! Yuck!
A lot of times, you'll get your favorite cup, fill it with ice cubes, then pour your favorite tea over it to cool & sip. After a few minutes, as the ice begins to melt, you'll notice a layer of water has settled above your tea. This isn't the most pleasant to drink & certainly isn't the thirst quencher you are so seeking.
We've come up with a solution for this that's incredibly simple, fun, a chance for some creativity, & delicious!
When you are getting ready to sip on your summertime tea of choice make an extra cup. This extra cup will be poured into a spare ice tray & frozen to be added to your tea & therefore not dilute it as it melts! What's even more fun about this easy solution is you can add different flavors that you fancy or mix your teas!
For instance, if you enjoy a squeeze of lemon in your tea, why not squeeze a few lemons or buy lemon juice to make lemon ice cubes? Or if you enjoy two different teas with complementing flavors, you may try combining the two with one as the ice cubes & one as the tea! One combination we recommend is your favorite black tea as a base, perhaps Ceylon, made with some of our Bright Orange for the ice cubes! This hint of citrus from the blood orange is undoubtedly refreshing & sure to tickle your taste buds.
Another trick you may try is adding fresh herbs to your ice cubes. For example, when making your tea ice cubes, you may choose to add a full mint leaf to each cube or rather some of our Chamomile or Lavender tea. You can simply add the full mint leaf to your ice cube & let that just dissolve into your cup of tea when you use it or, when using the Chamomile or Lavender, brew a separate cup & freeze these. All three of these flavors are especially refreshing & cleansing. Mint is known to invigorate, while Chamomile & Lavender are more so known for their relaxing properties.
You could also try adding fresh berries to your ice cubes! Many of our tisane teas are made with berries & adding fresh berries to your ice cubes not only heightens the flavors, but is also visually beautiful in your glass or pitcher as they dissolve. One tea in particular to try this with is our Berry Berry. This tea is a blend of elderberry, hibiscus, raisin, & blueberry. Pour this tea over ice cubes made of it with fresh blueberries frozen within! This will really boost the flavors of blueberry for summer & add a little visual appeal to your drink!
If you are a green tea drinker (which is great iced!), we do need to mention to you that when making your green tea ice cubes make sure you don't let the tea steep to its full normal time. This is due to the oxidation & if you let it steep the full duration, this may result in a bitter taste for your ice cubes. To avoid this, simply don't let it steep the full time before pouring into your ice tray. Green tea is another fun type of tea to experiment with the flavors. We have our Ginger n Green tea or, & should you want a bit more of that ginger flavor you may think to add ice cubes made from our Ginger tea! Additionally, one of our most popular teas that we hear is good iced is our Kyoto Cherry Rose!
If this appeals to you & you choose to try this, let us know! We want to hear which teas you use & how they turn out! Be adventurous & try out different new flavors! We can't wait to hear about this from all of you & we hope that this rain clears up to all flowers & sunshine! Stay dry! - Kaytea :)