How to Make Iced Tea at Home
Interested in making iced tea at home? It's not as difficult as you might think.
Once you get get started, you'll find it's pretty easy to brew up a big pitcher—and definitely worth the effort. Here we go over a couple different methods of making iced tea, as well as a few common questions such as how to make loose leaf tea and if you should make sun tea.
How to Make Homemade Iced Tea
The trick to making homemade iced tea is simple: use the same ratio of tea to water as hot tea. That is: if you want to make 1 cup of iced tea, you'll need 1 cup of water and 1 cup of tea.
Here's an example using our Farmhouse Lavender tea, which makes a lovely, refreshing icing tea.
The Quickest Way to Make Iced Tea
This way is not only quick, it's easy too :)
First off, make sure to check your pitcher size, and figure out how much you want to make. If your pitcher is 64 oz, that's 8 cups. If your pitcher is only 32-oz, or 4 cups, you can cut this recipe here in half.
To start, place 4 servings of tea in a heat safe pot. For an 8-cup pitcher, that's 8 tea bags.
Add half the amount of water, or 4 cups, as boiling water. Steep for 5-7 minutes. If you want to make sweet iced tea, now is the time to add your sweetener! We suggest stirring in 1/4 to 1/3 cup of honey, sugar or maple syrup now, when the water is hot.
Remove tea bags and pour into pitcher. If you used loose leaf tea, pour over strainer to remove tea leaves.
Add the other half of the water as ice water. Stir in 4 cups ice water into the pitcher.
That's it, your homemade iced tea is ready to enjoy!
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Recipe: Lavender-Hibiscus Iced Tea Directions (makes one 64-oz pitcher): |
Note: This method recommends brewing the hot tea in one (heat-safe!) container and then transfer the tea into a second container with the ice water. Even if your pitcher is heat-safe, you don't want to brew directly into it because of heat transfer science-y stuff: basically brewing in a pitcher is going to retain heat and prevent your iced tea from staying cold.
Another Option: Cold Brew Iced Tea
If you have the patience for it, try cold-steeping (aka cold-brewing) your tea to experience the difference.
Some may argue this is the best way to make iced tea. It's also easy, because you just pop the tea in a pot with room temp water and then stick it in the fridge.
A cold-steeped tea will yield a slightly different flavor profile and mouthfeel, because there's no hot water to draw out tannins and astringency. Instead, the flavors develop slowly and fully over many hours.
This method works especially well for greens and oolongs, which impart an array of subtle flavors. It’s easy enough to prep cold brew iced tea in the evening, let it steep overnight– then drink it all the next day.
Because this tea doesn’t start out hot, if you want to make a sweet iced tea, you’ll need to use a liquid sweetener for it to dissolve.
You can still use the regular ratio of 1 serving of tea to 1 cup of water. However we recommend using 1.5x - 2x the amount of tea for a cold brew iced tea.
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Recipe: Jasmine Serenity Iced Green Tea Directions (makes one 64-oz pitcher): |
How Do I Make Iced Tea from Loose Leaf Tea?
Remember to follow the same measurements for hot tea as for iced tea. If the directions on your loose leaf tea say to use 1.5 tsp per cup of hot tea, that holds true for iced tea: use 1.5 tsp per cup of iced tea.
A nifty little bit of math: 3 teaspoons equal 1 tablespoon. So if you need 12 teaspoons of tea, you can measure out 4 tablespoons.
Additionally, a benefit of using loose leaf tea is you can adjust your steeping ratios to just the way you like it. Want it a little lighter? Use a touch less tea. Want it a little stronger? Just add a bit more.
