It’s kind of sunny here in my part of southern Arizona right now, so much so that grown men are weeping and the trees are bursting into flames. Perhaps I’m exaggerating just a bit, but what better time to revisit the topic of sun tea, something that was touched on several years ago, in these very pages. Look here and here for all the details.

I thought it might be interesting to see what sun tea-related stuff had turned up in the four years or so since those articles came out, so here we go. One of the first things I ran across was a recent article from the Yuma newspaper about…sun tea, no less. For those not in the know, Yuma, Arizona is said by some to be one of the sunniest cities in the entire United States and is certainly among the hottest. It’s a place where you could probably whip up a batch of sun tea in about fifteen minutes. The article is mostly a primer on how to prepare the stuff, without any mention made of the possible downsides discussed in the previous articles.

Of course if you want to know anything about anything, you go to the ultimate authority – and that would be Martha Stewart. The great one does not actually weigh in on sun tea at her site, but rather there is a simple recipe for a four-hour version of the aforementioned. Over at the popular food site Serious Eats, they give a recipe for sun tea and recount their experiences testing two different types of tea – “the first, standard Lipton orange pekoe and cut black in individual bags, and second, hand-filled sachets of Organic Golden Monkey black tea.” Not surprisingly, the latter gave the best results.

As the gadget columnist for this fine site, I suppose I’d be remiss if I didn’t make mention of a few sun tea-related gadgets of note. Starting with this Solar Powered Sun Tea Jar that actually claims to use the power of the sun to stir the tea while it’s steeping. On the hoity-toity front, you can get a Sun Tea Kit from the good people at Williams-Sonoma for a mere pittance – that’s just $69.95, sports fans.

See more of William I. Lengeman’s articles here.

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