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My house is oriented and built to have minimum sun exposure each day. There are two bedroom and one bathroom windows on the east, one bathroom window on the west. Right now, I have a bottle of sun tea at the west frosted bathroom window, closed, to take in the setting sun.
But is there a better way to do things?
If I put it out on the driveway footprint, I am sure it would get lots of sunlight......and the scorpions would probably love it. There's a scary movie nightmare like Dr. Phibes, to come out and find one's sun tea bottle covered with the little beasties.
So how do people, especially country people, make sun tea these days?
Is the appeal that it's supposed to taste better? Or just that it's using "natural" power?
Good Grief!
Makes me wonder that I haven't fallen over yet. On the other hand, they do say kids eating dirt builds a good immune system.....so they say.
As far as how I have been making it, we-ll....... get the tap water hot, fill up the plastic (I know, I should go to glass or at least a plastic pitcher) bottle, put the tea bags in, put the bottle on the window counter if I am not chasing the sun.
I will note that for the last year and a half, I have been using my well water and not that from the city. I guess I keep about 4 gallons, 8 bottles, of tea and water in the refrigerator so I have a CHILLED supply on hand.
Before I knew that one was suppose to use hot water to make cold tea, I just filled up the bottle with tap water, put the bags in, and put it in the refrigerator.
When Mom was around, she would make sun tea with mint by putting the glass bottles on the shelf out in the kitchen courtyard. At least, that is as much as I saw of the process.
As it is when I am drinking tea, I quaff a lot of it. If I am dining out, that is what I drink. I guess the appeal to me covers a few fronts. It is an alcohol thirst killer, buying tea is CHEAP! at places like Big Lots, and I am forever searching for things that I can identify with for stability (it's a graveyard shift worker, living alone out in the country thing).
At home, when it is CHILLED, I can easily consume a half gallon bottle of water or tea in a few passes but I have learned a lesson or two.
Once I was doing that, the CHILLED was so wonderful that I just kept going and going....and froze my windpipe. I had to do the Heimlich on myself to open up again.
When I make it, I set it outside in a closed jar. I've never made sun tea from inside the house. I actually seldom drink it, because, as with any slow steeped tea, the extended soaking allows it gets too tannic for me, and triggers acid reflux. But as a kid, this wasn't an issue.
No, it isn’t a southern thing, unless you mean Southern California, where I’m from. It was very popular when I was in college. I just used water from the tap and Lipton’s in a glass jar. I drank it year-round.
Now I live in a cloudy place, so I can enjoy it only in summer when we get long, sunny days. Like Tamara, I use my well water, and now I use green tea bags from Dollar Tree in a one-gallon Rubbermaid pitcher, 50 teabags to the gallon. I’m lucky to have a south-facing deck, so I put the pitcher out in the a.m., then refrigerate it in the early afternoon. It’s so refreshing! Hard to believe that it could be bad for me.
Tamara reminded me of the mint. I used to do that, I grew my own and added a couple of sprigs to the brew. I’m going to try that again.
I don’t have scorpians where I live...maybe you could put the container inside a closed, clear plastic bag while brewing it outside.
I think making Sun Tea is more of a nostalgic thing. It probably was started to keep from having to use electricity or gas, or to heat up the house even more on a hot summer day by using hot water for the tea.
I've done it a few times, using one of those nostalgic gallon jugs with the dispenser on it. It was fun, but I didn't really taste a major difference in the other way I brew ice tea.
Here is an interesting article comparing the the types of brewing vs the sun, the author thinks cold brew is the best tasting way to go:
For my next round of tests, I wanted to address the real big question: what exactly does the sun do for our tea? There are a number of possible answers. The most obvious is that it heats the water, and warmer water should make for more efficient extraction of flavor. It's also possible that the warmer water actually changes the shape of some of the flavorful molecules in the tea, creating flavors that simply don't exist from colder extractions. Finally, it could be that the light from the sun itself could be changing some of molecules in the tea—giving it a sunburn, if you will—affecting its flavor.
I make it the way it says on the package, it's really easy - steep in hot water, add my sugar to melt, then add the same amount of cold water.
This summer I've been buying premade iced tea, and I'm actually ashamed of myself for it since making it is so easy.
I gather many of you have enjoyed a lot of sun tea without getting sick, but I can't unread that article about ropy bacteria! Plus optimal tea flavor extraction happens at a much higher water temperature than you will get with sun tea.
Like many of you, I love to add fresh mint to iced tea.
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