Iced tea?

I drink it year-round. The high here was 86f yesterday. It won't be more than a few degrees lower in January. Thanks for pointing me at Upton. Their "TB49" looks interesting. I'll probably make my own blend, though.

Over the summer, I went through half a pound of Tentea's Lychee Black tea in it's iced form.

-Drew

Rich wrote:

Try one of the Uva-grown Ceylon teas. Very strong and robust, they hold up well to icing. If you must have something in bags, try PG Tips. Who cares if they get cloudy? You want tea that tastes good, not tea that looks good.

Also, the Malawi BOP from Upton's ices nicely.

--scott

Rather than a specific tea, I'll recommend a simple method for getting crystal clear iced tea - cold steeping. I do it a gallon at a time like this:

Save a gallon plastic milk jug when empty. Rinse thoroughly. Put loose tea leaves into jug. Fill with cold water (if your tap water is tepid, have it pre-refridgerated). Put in fridge to steep for 8-12 hours. At the end of that time, strain out leaves. Done. Tea is beautiful and tastes great.

Randy

That's fine, except I don't like scented/flavored teas. For that matter, I don't like flavored anything; tea, coffee, potato chips, crackers, etc. Take a tip from the produce department. You won't find any fruits trying to taste like tea, or potatoes trying to taste like cheese or sour cream or barbecue sauce or ranches. I do like lychee, though, It's grown here in Hawaii. One of my co-workers makes a dynamite lychee cheesecake.

No, I must have something that's not in bags. The Ceylon sounds right, though. Searching through the vendors for iced tea recommendations, it seems Ceylon teas are a common thread. As hot teas, the few I've tried seem rather one dimensional, but maybe the complexities of the Darjeelings, Keemuns, and Yunnans would not come through when iced.

Since iced tea is served in clear glasses, the appearance is a factor, but now I'm thinking maybe clarity is more dependent on method of preparation than on variety.

Thanks,

--Rich

I've done it with tea bags. I'll try it with better tea.

Thanks,

--Rich

Recommended websites:

I'm afraid you're going to have a hard time getting complexity out of a beverage that's iced. Maybe you should consider brewing a good tea at room temperature, possibly for 15 minutes as a rule of thumb? In hot weather, it won't make you feel any hotter, and you sometimes get a surprising, creamy mouth feel due to lower astringency than with hot water brewing.

/Lew

A lot of the overtones are totally lost when the tea is iced, and even the tannic flavour changes completely.

Try drinking some of the cheap yellow-box Jasmine tea... I know you aren't a fan of scented teas, but try it as an experiment. It's got some jasmine nose to it, and it's got a sort of tannic flavour underneath, but not much else. It's not a very complex tea.... but try icing it and see what happens. The tea that wasn't very complex has now become even less complex. The tannic flavour that balanced the floweriness is gone, the jasmine has lost most of the scent and turned into a single very simple flavour that is vaguely reminiscent of pancake makeup. It's totally different when iced.

Ice a good yunnan tea, and the tannic flavour that kept it rich is greatly reduced, while the cidery flavour is enhanced. The overall effect is pretty nasty.

Darjeelings don't taste _bad_ per se, when iced. They just don't taste much at all... they taste like water with a little grass in it, maybe. It's not offensive in any way, but it's a terrible waste of expensive tea.

If you want to ice a tea, it needs to start out very tannic and with a very thick and robust sort of taste, but without too much bitterness up front. Anything with light and flowery tastes is going to lose them completely when it's iced, unless they start out very heavy-handed indeed.

The clarity is due to dissolved protein. Fining it with isinglass or a little gelatin might help, although it seems like a lot of work for something you are going to drink anyway.

--scott

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[Lew]

While you are going to have a hard time getting complexity, you will certainly get flavor, and flavor and relaxation on a hot day is what you're after presumably. A strong Formosa Oolong never failed me ever, and Keemun will do just as well. Make 'em strong and add the ice. Yummers.

On the green tea front, I take my cold iced water in a thermos -- the kind that provides a screen to keep tea leaves out of your mouth -- and add some leaf. I use lesser Long Jing, but any will do. Then, let the tea brew slow as you travel about sipping, and refill as required. I'm not sure about room temperature, but my way works with refrigerator-cold water. Just adjust the amount of leaf, and don't use premium expensive teas since you lose the aroma and some of the nuance this way.

BTW, I've brewed Lew's way with teas that prefer a really low temperature and found the method just fine. Bi Lo Chun is a good example of a tea that responds well to this.

I've spoken, and that's it for me.

Michael

@ Rich. I can see this convo has gone a bit off-topic to your first question by nice people trying to help out. Let's stay on your first question. Most of the better to best quality varieties of camelia senensis globally share one unique feature - they "cloud" in the liquor. Senior tea professionals will acknowledge this fact in a heartbeat, if you can find any who meet the criteria of being a seasoned veteran with a minimum of 25 years in the trade of which at least 5 were spent at origin managing tea estate(s) or who have had interests a tea selling brokerage in the growing origins with weekly tea auctions (the Mombasa & Colombo auctions essentially "make" the weekly world tea export market).

That spoken, the invention of "clear-liquoring" iced tea made from raw tea leaves is 100% a marketing tactic that plays on people's psychology that "clear" means "good" - a wrong fundamental assumption in tea. If you are comfortable getting past this marketing tactic and happy to drink cloudy iced tea like most tea professionals do (but won't acknowledge publically), I recommend you buy your great teas directly from the tea estates that make the best. Directly means directly, not thru small American or European houses like Uptons etal who are getting their raw product fifth or sixth hand. Go to

and study their "t-series" and "watte" original garden lines. Take a selection that suits you best from the descriptions, pay in the normal online fashion on their secure servers & your tea will arrive at your home by DHL or FedEx within an equal or even shorter time period of time than if you buy it here online from an American online provider.

When brewing black tea, whether for drinking hot or for icing down to drink as iced tea, there are no shortcuts to getting the maximum brilliant liquor that any top quality tea has to offer naturally. Bring TAP water (not bottled) to a roiling boil, pour it on your tea leaves, leave steep for 5 minutes, decant the liquor from the leaves and enjoy. It's as simple as that. So far as tea paraphernalia, this too is frequently marketing nonsense. A teaspoon was thus named because it is an excellent approximation of a perfect weight of tea to make a single cup. For more leafy varieties, making it a heaping teaspoon. For smaller leaf denser tea grades (grade means size in tea and has nothing to do with quality), use no LESS than a proper teaspoon fill.

Hope this may assist.

-jd