To Make Ice Tea Using HERBAL Tea (Using a 6 Cup Teapot)

To make ice tea using HERBAL tea (using a 6 cup teapot):

1. Measure the size of your teapot. How many cups of water does it hold? Use 1 teaspoon of tea for each cup of water.

2. Look at the brew time on the bag of herbal tea. For instance, candied papaya is between 8-10 minutes. We want a "strong" or "concentrated" brew of tea for ice tea since we are going to water and ice it down. Since we are brewing with an Herbal tea, we can let it brew longer than the 10 minutes without the tea becoming bitter. It will just get stronger, so allow it to brew for an additional 5 minutes or approx. 50% longer to get a concentrated, strong brew of tea.

3. Put 6 teaspoons of tea into your infuser.

4. Once you have the 6 tsp of tea in the infuser, boil water and for herbal tea it needs to be a rolling boil. Put infuser in teapot, pour boiling water over leaves, and allow to steep for 15 minutes.

5. After 15 minutes, take infuser out of teapot. Take out your ice tea pitcher. If you want your ice tea sweetened a little, pour honey into ice tea pitcher first. Pour hot tea into ice tea pitcher. Stir to dissolve honey. Add ice cubes and a little cold water to cool tea down and dilute it. You are now ready to get a glass out, fill with ice cubes, pour some ice tea and enjoy your drink!

To make ice tea using WHITE, GREEN, or BLACK tea (using a 6 cup teapot):

Making ice tea with "real" tea leaves is a little trickier and here is why. If you brew real tea longer than it says on the package it becomes BITTER, not stronger like herbal tea does. So with "real" tea leaves to get a "stronger" brew of tea, you would normally add more leaves, BUT here is a little trick that I have learned...

When working with "real" tea leaves, you can re-infuse the leaves up to 3 times. You can not do this with herbal teas. SO, I want to maximize my re-infusions so I am not wasting my tea leaves, right? If I have a 6 cup teapot and I want stronger tea, you would normally think, oh, I will just use 9 tsp of tea so I get a really strong infusion of tea.....well that is right if you want to waste your tea leaves. Instead of using more tea, use less water, and do more infusions. Here is what I mean.

1. You have a 6 cup teapot. Put 6 teaspoons of "real" tea leaves in an infuser that will sit in the bottom of your teapot. It must be able to lay in the bottom of your teapot, because we are not going to fill the teapot up with 6 cups of water, we are only going to use 3 cups of water. Use the coffee filter method if you don't have a ball infuser with a chain on it that will hold 6 teaspoons and can lie in the bottom of your teapot.

2. Boil your water to the right temperature for the tea you are using. White and green tea water should only be 180 degrees and black should be boiling.

3. Put the tea in the bottom of your teapot. Pour water into teapot, BUT, only fill halfway up. Only put in 3 cups of water. This will give you a really strong brew of tea because you are using 6 tsp in only 3 cups of water.

4. Set timer and time tea for specified length of time on the package and NO LONGER or you will get bitter tea.

5. Take tea out of water.

6. Get out ice tea pitcher and add sweetener before pouring in hot tea.

7. Pour 3 cups of brewed hot tea into pitcher.

8. Repeat steps 2 through 7 using the same tea leaves. Do this two more times.

You now have concentrated tea; you only used 6 tsp of tea leaves, and maximized your re-infusions. It is a little more work than with Herbal tea, but well worth the effort!

Here is another tip - If you don't want to have to go through all this and you are drinking at least a pitcher or more of ice tea each day, then go ahead and use 9 tsp of tea leaves, fill the teapot to the top with hot water, infuse the leaves for the right length of time. You will have a strong brew of tea. Make your ice tea. Put the leaves in the refrigerator. When you are ready for another pitcher of the same kind of ice tea, pull out the leaves, re-infuse them for the 2nd time to make your 2nd pitcher of ice tea, then put the leaves back into the frig. When you are ready for a third pitcher of ice tea, pull the leaves out and re-infuse them for the 3rd time to make ice tea. After the third time, throw the leaves away.