DIY iced tea at your fingertips – with Kettle 2.0

Traditional iced tea is made with black tea, with lemon and sugar to taste. How boring!
Why not use green tea, semi-fermented Oolong or a herbal / fruit tea instead? With a little fruit juice or agave syrup instead of fattening sugar?

Fancy some iced tea? Here are the best recipes!

Whatever kind of iced tea you’re making, it’s important to set the right temperature and time on your electric glass water kettle. That way your tea won’t be too weak or too bitter. The CARRERA kettle has several different temp settings, so each kind of tea gets just the right amount of heat.

Our rule of thumb for temperatures:

• Black tea, fruit tea, herbal tea: infuse at around 95°C, right after the water boils.
  
• Oolong tea, yellow tea, white tea: infuse at around 80°C by waiting 1 or 2 minutes after the water boils.
• Green tea, yellow tea, white tea: infuse at around 70°C by waiting 3 to 4 minutes after the water boils.

If you bought the right kettle, that’s much easier to get right. A glass kettle won’t impair the taste. This one is BPA free. Just press a button to set the right temperature and you’re ready to go. For details of how long to steep different types of tea, see our article. And for a kettle with all the important features you need for delicious iced tea, click here.

Here are a few tips for preparing iced tea:

• Use more tea / teabags than usual because ice cubes dilute your tea. We recommend 4 to 5 teabags for one litre of water.
• If you like your tea stronger, use more tea! Don’t let it steep for longer: that just makes it go bitter.
• Your freshly made iced tea needs to cool down as quickly as possible so it won’t go bitter. Ice cubes are ideal.
• Let your iced tea cool off before putting it in the refrigerator, otherwise it will go cloudy. If it does, just add a little hot water.
• To avoid lumps, always add sugar while your tea is still hot. Syrup is best for sweetening cold tea.
• Iced tea tastes best when freshly made. Never store it for longer than 2 to 3 days.
• We recommend sweetening your iced tea when it’s cold and the full flavour has developed. Some iced teas taste great without being sweetened at all.
  

Fazit: DIY iced tea not only has less sugar (readymade products contain around 15 sugar cubes per litre), they also contain no preserving agents or artificial aromas. Don’t have an accurate kettle yet? Our kitchen page has just what you need.