You’ll search far and wide for a quality instant iced tea – as a matter of fact, you might as well not even bother wasting your time. As a personal tip, the use of loose tea is recommended for brewing hot tea, and I would have to recommend it for brewing iced tea as well.

Instant iced teas will almost always taste like some strange chemical-sugar mixture. While there are lots of methods to brewing your own iced tea at home from using loose leaf tea, after much trial and error, I’ll stand by cold brewing.

Steep times and brewing temperatures make it easy to ruin a pitcher – or stove pot – of iced tea. I’ve timed it, tested water temperatures, and still come out with undesirable results of a bitter, cloudy, weird-tasting liquid.

I’ll admit, cold brewing isn’t really the ideal method to making iced tea, especially when you’re dying for a cold drink, and you’d like to avoid mixing a pack of sugar-laden kool-aid, but it does produce a superior result. Brewing iced tea this way helps to not burn bitterness into the finished brew. Plus, you get the added bonus of not really having to worry about timing or water temperature.

My own personal favorite combination is one tablespoon (not a measuring tablespoon, a tablespoon for eating) per cup of cold water. Leaving the brew in the fridge for longer than you’ve heard recommended also helps the tea to stand up to ice a lot better. I like to give it at least 12 hours. Then, give it a good strain, and you’re good to go – perfect, clear, excellent iced tea, with hardly any effort at all!

–Tara Hutchings