Best method of making iced tea

[stellabella]

i use a half-gallon mason jar.

i boiling water over four regular tea bags til half full. steep five minutes then fill jar the rest of the way with cold water.

i don't sweeten my tea. i use red rose tea bags--i don't like lipton, find it tends to have a bitter aftertaste. i think it's perfectly fine to try other types of black teas, if you want a more exotic flavor. also key is to use filtered water.

malawry's method for making "southern" sweet tea is pretty much exactly what i've heard from other southerners. i heard it first from deacon burton, the famous soul food cook in atlanta. it's really the best sweet tea method--the tea has an almost "caramel" flavor, since the sugar is boiled into the tea. great with barbecue and other "soul" foods. a treat for me, only--i try to avoid the sugar, and i actually prefer unsweet tea, as i really like the taste of iced tea.

[Fat Guy]

I had a conceptual breakthrough on the iced tea front yesterday. I've been making iced tea almost every day since this thread started and there was something wrong with every batch no matter what I did and no matter what tea I used. And then I realized: I needed a blend, not a single tea. The problem was that with any one kind of tea, be it real tea or herbal tea, there were certain powerful flavor notes pushing through the iced tea that I found undesirable in that format. So what I did was I took six different kinds of tea and made a blend. Pretty much at random I used some English breakfast, some Earl Grey, some green tea, and three herbal teas. Well, there it was: The iced tea I had been looking for. It was, I suppose, tantamount to a blended Scotch as opposed to a single malt. While I acknowledge single malts as superior, there are certain places where blended Scotch works better. It's just more mellow and balanced.

Now that I've got the underlying tea situation under control I'm going to start focusing on sweetening techniques.

[Dave the Cook]

Fat Guy: your oddysey is inspiring. Please keep it up--I'm really looking forward to a recipe for an iced tea worth making.

[Varmint]

Fat Guy, whatever happened with your experimentation?

On a different note, does anyone know how iced tea became such a standard in the South? I'll do the research if necessary, as I don't know of anything definitive.

[Ladybug]

I haven't seen this in this thread - I add 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract per gallon of iced tea.

For the actual tea, I steep about 4/5 teabags or about 1/3 to half a cup (I eyeball it) of loose tea leaves in boiling water (in a French press) for 5 minutes (sometimes longer - I don't always time this), and drain/press. I add 1 and 1/2 cups of sugar to the hot tea, stir until dissolved and then add enough water to make a gallon (plus the vanilla.) Using simple syrup doesn't seem to to improve the end product and it's an extra step to make that. So I don't do it.

[Jaymes]

I haven't seen this in this thread - I add 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract per gallon of iced tea. 

Interesting! As previously noted here, some people add Karo light syrup to sweeten their tea. It has vanilla in it, so perhaps that is a plus for that method.

My crowd is about 50/50 in preferences for sweet vs unsweetened iced tea. I think next time I have the "girls" over for a bridge luncheon, I'll offer a little pitcher of Karo (rather than sugar) for those that prefer their tea sweet.

[Varmint]

In the South (at least in NC), the default is sweet tea. Actually, if you order "tea", you'll get sweetened iced tea. If you order "unsweet tea", you get unsweetened iced tea. You have to order "hot tea" to get a tea bag with hot water. The nicer places will have loose tea, but you still have to order "hot tea" to get it.

[hollywood]

On a different note, does anyone know how iced tea became such a standard in the South?

If it wasn't the heat, it was the humidity and the need to stay hydrated. When I was a young lad in Texas many years ago, the altar boys at church always coveted the glass containers the santuary candles were burned in as they were very large and thus made accomodating iced tea glasses--must have held more than a quart.