What better way to beat the summer heat than an ice-cold glass of homemade iced tea? No, not that powdered stuff you get at the grocery store, but real steeped tea. Through much trial and error, I have developed a really easy way to make your own iced tea at home without having to buy any special products for the job.
All you need is:
– A pitcher of water
– A kettle
– Tea of your choice
– One coffee filter
– A metal mixing bowl
– Ice cubes
– Sugar and lemon to taste
– A refrigerator
Directions:
1. Start by filling an empty pitcher with water. Be sure to leave enough space at the top to allow for a bit of overfill due to adding ice. It’s easier than measuring exact quantities or risking making way more tea than you wanted. You can measure if you want to, but if you’re lazy like me, don’t worry about it. Pour the water directly from the pitcher into the kettle and put the water to boil.
2. Take your choice of tea and put your desired amount into the coffee filter. Most teas can be made into good iced tea, but my favourites are simple black teas, flavoured green teas and pretty much any herbal tea. The general rule of thumb is to use is a little over 1 tsp. of tea per 250mL of water. If you’re making about a litre of tea, use a bit more than 4 tsp. of tea. You can obviously adjust this to taste. Ne
xt, close the coffee filter. You can tie it tightly with thread or close it with an elastic or staples (not recommended, but works if you have no other option).
3. When your water boils, pour it into the mixing bowl and drop the coffee filter of tea into the water. A metal bowl has a lower specific heat capacity and will dissipate heat faster, allowing the tea to cool a bit faster. Careful, the bowl will get very hot! Allow the tea to steep 5-7 minutes, or to taste, and remove the coffee filter.
4. Add sugar to taste. If you wish to add lemon, you may add lemon juice now, but if you are using fresh lemon, add when serving. 
5. In order to cool the tea enough to put into the pitcher, add about 3 handfuls of ice cubes to the bowl of tea. The tea may now be cool enough to put into the pitcher, but take extra care if the pitcher is made of glass. If the tea is too hot, it may crack the pitcher. Transfer the tea into the pitcher and allow it to chill in the fridge for several hours.
6. Alternately, you may wish to drink it right away. Fill a glass 3/4 with ice and pour the tea over top. I don’t recommend this because it dilutes the tea, but if you don’t need your iced tea to be as strong as you originally made it, this works just fine.
7. Serve and enjoy! Add fresh lemon if you’d like.
