Can You Make Iced Tea Without Clothespins?

This is actually a rhetorical question as far as I'm concerned.  Thing is, I make iced tea in this great heavy glass pitcher that was drop forged in Italy and acquired by way of the Williams and Sonoma catalog, where it was offered as a sangria pitcher and came complete with lid and a slender plastic container you could put ice in and attach to the bottom of the lid  to cool the sangria without diluting it.  I rarely make sangria, so I rarely use the top and ice container attachment.  What I got it for was the pitcher.  It's thick, heavy glass, and holds 3/4 quart.  It's perfect for brewing  iced tea.

When it comes to preparation, I'm a purist.  None of your powdered instant tea mix for me.   I suppose I should be environmentally responsible and use a tea infuser ball (I do have one) and buy nothing but  loose tea.  At least I buy the unbleached teabags whenever possible.  I have a drawer set aside as my "beverage drawer" where I keep tea bags, a cork screw, and packets of that instant fruit/tea mix intended for adding to those plastic bottles of water -- which I steadfastly refuse to buy!

I also keep a combination bottle cap remover/can lid piercer utensil  -- that's it between the clothespins -- which is actually pretty much obsolete in these days of twist-off bottle caps and pull-tab aluminum cans.  In the eras between the innovation of putting beer in "unbreakable" cans (in 1935, as an alternative to breakable glass bottles), and the wide spread adoption of the pull tab (1963), you couldn't get into a can of beer without one of these handy little items.  Most of the ones I've seen have a pointed end for making a triangular hole in a beer can lid, and a flat end for removing beer bottle tops (whence their nickname: "church key").   When I was growing up, we always had at least one stashed away in the "utensil drawer" -- that's how mom opened cans of evaporated (condensed) milk to garnish oatmeal or to make party desserts and cans of Hersey's chocolate syrup (to drizzle on vanilla ice cream!).  That's how we opened soft drinks, too.  Until the invention of the aluminum pull-tab can, soft drinks only came in thick glass bottles.  Part of the purchase price included a deposit on the empty bottles, so you saved the empties in the cardboard carrier (kept in the garage) and took them back to the store to get credit for the deposit which could  then be applied to the purchase of your next six-pack.  Since I can't ever seem to open a "twist off" crimped bottle cap without its biting my fingers, I keep one for removing bottle caps and for "holing" the bottoms of cans of jellied cranberry sauce and refried beans, to break the suction so the contents will slide out whole. 

But back to iced tea making. I use tea bags -- that's where the clothespins come in.  The strings on the teabags are not long enough to reach to the bottom of the pitcher and, even if they were, if you don't fasten the little paper tabs at the end of the strings to the side of the pitcher, they get pulled down into the pitcher when you add the water, and then you have to fish them out when it's time to remove the teabags.  Enter the handy clothespin.  I keep two in my drawer.  Since I'm making this pitcher of tea for myself, I've added a packet of "raspberry/green tea" drink mix.  I've also added some sugar, which technically makes this what is known in the South as "sweet tea." (Having been a member of the "Confederate States of America," Texas qualifies as "The South." )  In many eating establishments in the southern United States (unless they are "urban/big city" or part of a national chain), if you order "tea" or "iced tea," you are asked if you want "sweet tea." -- since there will be both sweetened and unsweetened tea on offer.

I have a copper kettle with a blue and white porcelain handle -- I have 3 actually since I collect them.  But, this is the one with the largest capacity.   A full kettle takes a while to boil, and it takes two kettles' full to fill the pitcher, so I'm usually doing something else during the tea brewing process -- making a meal, fetching in and sorting the mail, taking the clean dishes out of the dishwasher and putting them away, taking out the trash.  Once it's made, it has to cool to room temperature before I can put it in the fridge to "ice," which takes hours. . . . .

So what kind of tea do I use? Sorry, I don't care how healthy green tea is supposed to be for you.  I prefer the black.  I like tea in my tea.  Twinings -- I like their Earl Grey, Lady Grey, and Darjeeling.  Bigelow's -- I like their Constant Comment, and their Earl Grey also.  I love Celestial Seasoning's Golden Honey Darjeeling but, of course, they quit making it.  I recently discovered Zhena's Gypsy tea.  (You'll find a link to her website in my Links section.)  So far, I adore the Raspberry Earl and the Berry Bellini teas, which I have been drinking hot.  Haven't tried them cold, though.  Lipton (yes, I know what you're thinking, but I'm no tea snob) makes a Bavarian Wild Berry I quite like, (Their White with Blueberry and  Pomegranate is better hot than cold.)

As I say, I'm not a tea snob.  I don't care for the herbal teas or the green tea or the exotic stuff.  I want a good, honest black tea, caffeine included.  The teas I drink are the kind I can buy at my local supermarket.

I let it cool down to room temperature before I put it in the fridge to "ice"  -- which takes hours! (I rent, and the fridge that comes with is old enough to have grandchildren.  Consequently it isn't all that energy efficient, so it needs all the help it can get.)  Before I bung it in the fridge, though, I put a "shower cap" on the pitcher.  (Did you know that if you have a frost free refrigerator, it will evaporate beverages stored in open containers?  It will also "defrost" ice cubes if they're left in the freezer in open ice cube trays for any length of time. )

Those of you from "foreign parts" -- particularly the British Isles -- are probably thinking that putting ice in tea sounds pretty weird.   However, I remind you that my north Texas home is at about the same latitude ( 33°38'N)  as Casablanca, Morocco (33°36'N).   We typically start hitting highs of 90 F (32 C) about May.  During the height of the summer, we can have weeks at a time with highs that hover around 100 F (37.7 C)  and lows in the mid 70's F (21 C) with a relative humidity that averages around 55% but that easily and frequently gets down to around 24%.  In that kind of weather, iced tea hits the spot quite nicely on its way down the hatch.