random summer refreshment

I like iced tea. In my youth growing up in Georgia, sweetened iced tea was great.

Here in Colorado, as with most of the rest of the US, iced tea is not served sweetened, and to me the final product is lacking because of it.

Last summer, my friends Michael and Teri took me to an Asian area of Chicago (Near Broadway and Argyle -- it wasn't China Town, but there were all sorts of Asian markets and we ate Dim Sum at Furama, which I highly recommend). I tried Jasmine Tea for the first time and really enjoyed it. It was green tea with Jasmine flower petals in it and it had a very definite floral taste -- it was served hot.

I bought a tin of Jasmine Tea at one of the many cool markets there and it has sat undisturbed in our cupboard since then.

The other day I had a real hankerin' for sweet iced tea, but we don't have any black tea (the kind normally used to make iced tea) in the house. I called up Teri and asked her if Jasmine Tea was good iced and how I would go about making a batch (all the directions on the tin for brewing are in units of grams, which means little to me). She said that iced Jasmine Tea was good and that I could just make it in the coffee pot then ice it. She said to experiment with the amount of tea I used.

Well the first batch came out great, and the second was equally good. I thought I'd pass on my "recipe" for making sweet, iced Jasmine Tea.

• Use a 10-cup coffee maker.
• Use a rounded 1/3 cup of Jasmine Tea in the basket.
• While the tea is brewing, put 1 cup of sugar in a gallon pitcher.
• Once the tea is done brewing, pour the hot tea into the gallon pitcher and stir to dissolve the sugar (use a pitcher that would not break from the sudden addition of hot water)
  
• Fill the pitcher the remainder of the way with cold water.
• Serve tea over ice.

Some things to note:

Jasmine Tea can be either black or green tea. I have only tried green tea. I imaging black tea would taste great as well.

I like this tea sweetened. For those who like unsweetened tea, just leave out the sugar. You could also sweeten with honey or "sugar in the raw" (it seems to be raw cane sugar or something like that).

An alternate way to brew this would be to just put leaves right in the pitcher with a gallon of cold water and let it sit in the fridge. Teri recommended this method, saying that once the tea was too strong you could just remove the leaves from the pitcher.

I am going to try brewing a second batch of tea from the same tea leaves and see how it tastes. In theory you could brew several batches before it got weak or bitter.

If you try this and have any suggestions, leave a comment.