I have been enjoying a lot of iced tea lately. I still love my hot tea, of course, but, when it gets warmer in the afternoon, the iced tea sure is refreshing! I've been playing a lot with the flavors of my iced teas... in other words, I've been more bold in what I'm willing to try iced! Before, I wouldn't have dared to use my chai teas or my breakfast blends in my iced teas, but, I'm getting more daring!
It kind of happened by 'chance' -- I had made a pot of breakfast blend for my morning hot tea. And I only drank one cup from my 2 cup pot (well, actually, it's a 4 cup pot, but I use larger MUGS for my hot tea most of the time, and my large mug can accomodate the same amount of tea as my smaller tea cups), and rather than wasting my now cold, brewed tea, since I was making a new batch of iced tea, I decided to just add that tea in to my tea pitcher.
And... since I had only brewed those tea leaves once, I decided to go ahead and brew them a second time, and add that freshly brewed tea to the tea pitcher too. Then, I brewed up some fresh strawberry tea (which is now sold out ... sorry!), and filled the same tea pitcher with the strawberry tea. The resulting iced tea was just amazing! The strawberry flavors mingled with the light vanilla flavors from the breakfast blend... lending it a sort of strawberry and cream flavor! So delightful and refreshing!
Since that particular batch was so successful, the next batch I tried was my Masterpiece Chai (I'm blending a new batch and I needed to sample it to make sure I was on the right track!) ... and wow! I love the spicy flavor to the iced tea. I was unsure of this at first, because I LOVE chai, but, my love had been just for the hot tea, blended with milk. But ohhh... the spice in the chai when it's chilled without the milk is very nice too!
So many yummy flavors -- only 2 iced tea pitchers! haha!
~Anne
