Iced Tea
One of the things I have never been happy with is home made iced tea. Other people seem to know how to make tasty refreshing tea, but when I make it, the results are always bitter and cloudy. I cannot buy unsweetened/un-lemoned ice tea mix at my grocery store. The powdered stuff they sell makes a beverage that tastes remotely like metallic tea.
So, I decided to Google the words "How to make Iced Tea." I got quite a few hits.
Believe it or not, there are a number of ways to make good old fashioned unsweetened iced tea. One of the things that most aficionados agree on is to warn us against making that Girl Scout favorite "Sun Tea." They say that you cannot find a better medium to grow bacteria than warm water and tea sitting out doors in the hot sun.
So to save you literally minutes of reading, I will let you in on the secret to making iced tea that has eluded me until the other day:
1) Make in small batches to be used today, or tomorrow at latest.
2) Boil 16 0z of cold water; turn off heat add 5 bags or equivalent loose tea.
3) Let steep exactly 5 minutes, pull tea bags (or strain leaves) and save in a cup for 2nd batch.
4) Pour tea into a pitcher that will hold at least a quart, add 8 to 12 oz cold (tap) water.
Letting the tea steep exactly 5 minutes avoids the bitterness of the tea I always made - thinking that the longer the teabags were in the better. That was dumb.
Also letting the tea cool to room temperature before refrigerating seems to avoid the cloudiness. Martha Stewart advises adding a little hot boiling water to clear up cloudy tea.
The key seems to be brewing the tea in small batches of 8-16 oz and then adding water to dilute, rather than brewing a quart of water with 5 or 6 teabags. I re-use the same teabags for a second batch, which I steep for 8 minutes and do not dilute.
5) Pour into an ice filled glass and add lemon juice.
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Beer
1.Go down to the local store that sells beer.
2.Get you some St. Pauli Girl lager.
3. Pour it into one of them iced glasses that you keep in the freezer door.
4. Go out back, sit in the shade and enjoy the wonderment of fermented malt.
(If you like it a wee bit hoppier and darker, substitute Sierra Nevada Pale Ale for St Pauli Girl.)
Ok I am not turning this into a household tips blog. Back to the search for meaning in work and post working life tomorrow.
1 comment:
5. Put rest of six pack in a large ice bucket with lots of ice. Take it, along with an opener, with you to your hammock.
6. Attach a "busman's friend" to your Johnson so you don't have to get up to go peepee.
7. Turn off your cell phone.
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