Sweet and perfectly peachy, you’ll want to keep this refreshing cold-brewed peach iced tea stocked and steeped in your fridge all summer long!
The cold brew method makes for a crisp and clean iced tea, combined with a sweet peach sugar syrup for the perfect hint of sweetness and fruity flavor. Also: for some grown up fun, add a splash of bourbon.
A peach-infused sugar syrup is what gives this tea its subtle peach flavor, basically water and sugar (I used organic unrefined sugar which has a more pronounced flavor than regular granulated sugar) simmered with fresh peaches. It’s very simple to make ahead of time; the syrup keeps remarkably well in the refrigerator for up to 2 weeks.
The hint of peach is just enough fruity flavor to grab your attention without overwhelming the true nature, both bitter and sweet, of the tea itself.
I tested both hot brew and cold brew methods to make iced tea, and the cold brew was clearly the winner (literally clearly – the hot-brewed-and-chilled tea was dark, bitter and unappealingly cloudy). The cold brew method is clear and crisp, the robust black tea flavor free of any excessive and undesirable bitterness.
The only downside to the cold brew method is it requires advanced planning: ideally you should let your iced tea steep for about 12 hours (if you plan to serve it beyond that, I recommend removing the tea bags after 12 hours to prevent the tea from getting bitter.)
I played with varying proportions of tea to sugar syrup and ultimately found that about 8:1 (8 parts tea to 1 part syrup) was just about right for my tastes. If you are used to Southern-style sweet tea, you might be prefer something more along the lines of 6:1 or 4:1, with 1 1/2 or 2x as much syrup per equivalent amount of tea (if this is the case, double the sugar syrup recipe below). Feel free to play with the proportions yourself, adding a little bit of syrup at a time, until it’s perfectly suited to your tastebuds.
You can serve the tea and syrup separately, letting each person customize their tea to their preferred sweetness. Or, for practicality reasons with larger groups, pre-mix the syrup into the pitcher of tea and serve it already sweetened.
I used my favorite basic black tea, Taylor’s Yorkshire Gold, but you can use whatever black tea you like best (although I don’t recommend using your fancy expensive loose leaf tea though; the subtlety of flavors will be muddled when served over ice).
If you use a different variety of tea you may want to adjust the number of tea bags you use to your personal tastes, but start with approximately 1 bag per 8oz of water, and then add extra bag or two for good measure.
This may seem like more tea bags than should be necessary, but iced tea should always be brewed stronger than hot tea as our tastebuds are less sensitive to colder substances, meaning the flavors need to be stronger for us to taste them at the same intensity. If you warmed up a glass of this peach iced tea, for example, it’d likely taste much stronger all around—sweeter and more astringent—than when enjoyed cold over ice. For this reason we need to brew iced tea differently than we’d brew a cup of hot tea.
You can reuse the tea bags a second time, steeping in half the amount of water as before (so 8-10 bags in 4 cups of water). Just know that, despite the extra bags, this “second pressing” won’t be nearly as strong or flavorful as the first batch.
Let us know what you think!
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