The summertime flavor explosion

Iced tea or ice tea is a form of cold tea, which can refer to any tea that has been chilled or cooled, even though it’s typically served in a glass with ice. The tea is typically sweetened with sugar or a flavored syrup like for example strawberry, peach, lemon or raspberry. While herbal teas are occasionally served cold and referred to as iced tea, most iced teas obtain their flavor from tea leaves (Camellia sinensis). Iced tea is made by soaking tea leaves at a lower temperature for a long time, for example one hour in the sun.

Today, choosing iced tea on a hot day can seem obvious. However, while hot tea has been a favorite beverage for ages, iced tea has a more recent history.

The first iced tea recipes that have been printed comes from the 1870s. “The Buckeye Cookbook” by Estelle Woods Wilcox, first published in 1876, and “Housekeeping in Old Virginia” by Marion Cabell Tyree, published in 1878, are two of the earliest cookbooks offering iced tea recipes.

Iced tea was made more well-known and commercialized at the St. Louis World’s Fair in 1904. Due to the very hot summer of 1904 were people avoiding hot beverages, and went looking for cold drinks, like iced tea for example. As a result, it changed the perception of tea among other Americans, making iced tea popular. Nowadays, in the United States, iced tea makes up about 85% of all tea consumed and is very popular as an alternative to carbonated soft drinks. Of course, there is also iced tea with carbonation.

People also use iced tea these days as a mix drink or for cocktails. People mix iced tea for example with rum, vodka or bourbon. The most famous cocktail with iced tea, that many people think is, is the long island iced tea. However, there is no iced tea in this drink at all, because it is made with vodka, tequila, light rum, triple sec, gin, and a splash of cola, which gives the drink the same amber color as iced tea.

Fun fact: the largest iced tea ever measured was 9554 liters and was achieved by the Town of Summerville, South Carolina (USA). They used more than 95kg of loose tea leaves and over 770kg of sugar to make it the biggest iced tea ever.