Whether you use loose tea leaves or tea bags, making a refreshing glass of iced tea requires only the skill to boil water.
The timing is perfect
to beat summer heat
with a nice, refreshing,
glass of tea on ice
Iced tea is loosely considered to be 100 years old this summer. It's a bogus birthday, but still, this is as good a time as any to celebrate with an icy glass.
For one thing, it's hot out there.
For another, iced tea is a very American drink and the Fourth of July is just a few days away. And June, which ends today, is National Iced Tea Month.
Plus, iced tea is happening -- just ask a coffee guy.
Jim Wayman, president of Hawaii Coffee Co., this year added Hawaiian Islands Tea Co. to his company's beverage arsenal. Tea is now 12 percent of Hawaii Coffee's business, Wayman says, and growing, largely due to the market for the cold stuff, not the hot. "We think iced tea has the potential to be bigger than our coffee."
Now that's saying a lot. Hawaii Coffee manufactures both the Lion and Royal Kona coffee lines. But Wayman's talking tea. "I don't think it's unreasonable to say this could double the size of our company -- if we do it right -- in, say, five years."
Consider the logic: Coffee is a morning and after-dinner drink, leaving the rest of the day for something lighter, Wayman says. "The whole lunch segment is primarily soft drinks and iced tea."
Byron Goo of the Tea Chest expects a boom soon in gourmet iced teas, ready to drink in bottles. Companies such as Honest Tea and ITO EN will play on the health aspects of tea, Goo says, offering "less sugar, more health."
Tea's natural antioxidants, often lost during pasteurization, are being added back in afterward, he says. "I think the next wave is going to be these upper-end, designer teas."
Dave Plaskett, director of tea for the Hawaii Coffee Co., uses an angular blending machine to experiment with new flavors of teas.
The 1904 St. Louis World's Fair has been cited by many food historians as the birthplace of iced tea. Richard Blechynden, director of the East Indian Pavilion, supposedly introduced the cooling drink, although it also showed up on other menus at the fair.These days, the 1904 fair is more often credited as kicking off iced tea's commercial potential, in the same way that it is often cited as the origin of such all-American foods as hamburgers, French's mustard, ice-cream cones and cotton candy.
But the drinking of cold tea actually dates to the early 1800s. Recipes from that time show up in both English and American cookbooks, according to Linda Stradley, an Oregon-based author who has written such cultural cooking references as "What's Cooking America" (Falcon Press, 2000) and "I'll Have What They're Having" (Falcon Press, 2002).
Stradley says those cold drinks were called tea punches, normally made with green tea and heavily dosed with liquor. As refrigeration (and therefore, ice) became widely available in the mid-century, the popularity of homemade iced tea grew, especially in the American south, where heavily sweetened iced tea remains a regional favorite.
The Hawaii equivalent would be Plantation Iced Tea -- sweetened with fruit juice, usually pineapple.
Making iced tea is a simple matter of putting the right amount of tea into the right amount of water, heated to the right temperature, for the right amount of time. OK, maybe that doesn't sound so simple, but there's much wiggle room.
In fact, you can set a few tea bags into a gallon of water and leave it in the sun for a day, or just put tea bags in cold water and let them steep in the refrigerator -- no heat involved.
Goo says sun tea and cold-brewed tea provide a smooth, mild, iced drink. It's heat that extracts caffeine and tannins from the leaves, so cold processing gives you tea without bitter notes or bite (it's also a way to cut the caffeine).
Aficionados, though, appreciate that slight astringency, the way balanced acidity is valued in a fine wine. A tea can be so smooth, Goo says, that people will say, "This isn't tea, this is brown water."
At the Tea Chest, Goo has been using nilgiri, a black tea from Southern India, as the base for six flavors of iced teas. He says nilgiri is more vibrant, with a more floral aroma than the usual Lipton-type black teas.
Goo also encourages experimenting with Asian green or oolong teas, which are not fermented as much as black, so have a completely different flavor profile.
Dave Plaskett, director of tea for the Hawaii Coffee Co., developed six black teas for the Hawaiian Island Tea label, flavored with tropical fruits, hibiscus and macadamia/coconut.
His office is lined with amber-toned glass bottles of liquids -- flavoring compounds as ordinary as peppermint and as exotic as kumquat. An oddly shaped metal mixer serves to toss up his experiments.
"The process of blends is pretty simple. You decide what your compounds are going to be and put it in the blender," Plaskett says. "It's not rocket science."
His suggestion for making iced tea is to start with water that's just coming to a boil: Tiny bubbles should just be forming. A full, rolling boil will force all the oxygen out of the water and it is oxygen that gives tea a bit of pleasing effervescence. If your tea tastes "flat," that's probably why.
Plaskett's favorites for iced tea are good quality black teas flavored with passion fruit or mango, although he did once make a cola-flavored tea -- "It was quite buzzy."
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Ideal iced tea
Proper proportions: 4 standard tea bags or about 1/4 cup loose tea leaves makes 1/2 gallon (2 quarts) iced teaThe water: Hawaii tap water is fine for making tea. To make 2 quarts, start with half that much water (4 cups). Bring the water just barely to a boil.
Steeping time: 2 to 4 minutes, depending on the size of the leaf. If you like your tea stronger, use more leaves. Don't steep longer, that just draws more tannin and caffeine out of the leaves, causing bitterness.
Cool-down: The tea will be concentrated; dilute with cold water and/or ice.
Other tips: If your tea seems a little too astringent, or bitter, add a pinch of baking soda or a squeeze of lemon. If you like your tea sweet, traditional sweeteners such as sugar or honey will do, but you could also try stirring in canned juices.
If you like it sweet, try this regional favorite:
Southern Sweet Iced Tea
whatscooking america.net3 cups water
3 tea bags
1/2 to 3/4 cup sugar, or to tasteBring water just to a boil; remove from heat and add tea bags. Let steep 5 minutes. Remove tea bags.
Place sugar in a 1/2-gallon pitcher. Pour tea over sugar; stirring to dissolve. Add cold water to fill pitcher. Serve in over ice.
Nutritional information unavailable.
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