Classic, old, far too sweet for mere mortals, sweet iced tea. In the south of couse Iced tea and sweet tea are the same, your chilled tea, doent come with a choice unless you specify. Making crystal clear (save the deep amber tint), refreshing sweet tea is somthing the requies just a bit of chemistery, and precision as such.
Oh you thought this was going to be a simple recipie, didn't you. Well lets get down nto the chemistry.
Based on this https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1629514 tea contains 24-37mg/g of tannins. This is the complete ammount of tannis extracted from these leaves. The ammount of tannins in your tea depends of the the way it has been dried, or aged, the breed of leaves, and the brewing time influences how many of the compounds get extracted.
Ideally we would run a titration with the tea and a PH meter to perfectly set the PH to neutral. So lets run some experments!
We can start with a dilute solution of baking soda and water
The baking soda not only nutralises the tannins, but alos provides the sodium, as adding salt to sweets makes them taste better.
- 10g Loose black Tea
- 150g Sugar
- 0.3g Baking soda
- 1000g Water
As much as I love Imperial units (that is not sarcasm, I know as a physicst I should love metric, but my epertise is far broader than just physics), and would be glad to give the masses in oz, the mesurements must stay in mass. Fairly precice scales are really inexpensive on amazon (5kg limit with 1g graduations or 100g limit with 0.01g graduations for 10USD) and mass is the only way to make sure that packing isnt a issue. I just used grams because it yields more interger values.
Take 600g of water and bring to a boil, and turn off the heat. Add in the tea leaves, black tea steeps at 210F just below the boiling point, so adding the leaves right after klling the heat is perfect. Also add the baking soda, this nutralises some of the tannis which are acidic compunds in tea, the same compunds the make wine taste "dry" as it is an astriginent, not what we want in a refreshing drink. Steep for five minutes, stirring occasionally. Add all the sugar, and stir until fully diolved, should happen quickly as the water is still hot. Drain through a piece of muslin (or chesecloth or sive) to catch all the tea leaves and undisolved sugar into a pitcher with 1400g of cool water. Do not chillit imedeatly, allow it to come to room temprature before moving to a refrigerator. The tannins we neutralised are also the cause of tea becoming cloudy, there are two ways to counteract this. Adding the tea to the 1400g of ice instead of water, and stirring. By cooling it to refrigerator temprature before placing it in the fridge. Or Just waiting a few hours for the tea to come to room temprature before placing it in the fridge.
Serve over ice,
I spent a long time wokring a recipe, and it was getting quite complex. My procedure was down firm, and I just needed to find out the perfect ratios. THe plan was to take a loose leaf tea and brew a high concentration in filtered, just under boiling, water. Add the strong tea to granulated sugar to dissolve and add salt for tate and baking soda (mesured to perfection though titration of the brewed tea) to counteract the tannins released in brewing for a smoother, less astringent, ph balanced tea. Add the rest of the water, and either let come to room temperature or chill quickly to room temperature with ice before placing in the refrigeratior to cool completely to pervent clouding by impurities in the tea and latent minreals in the water.
I had some
It also took a lot of tries to get the correct sugar level. Having consulted many recipies to see what the average was to start with was no help, the varience was so large, and with the sugar and water mesured by volume teqnie and order of making would make a significat diffrence. It came to mind to look at all the drinks I have had before and like the sweetness of to try and get matching numbers.
Solubility and other temperature effects don't pay a role at the concentration we are looking at so it is ignored.
The ammount of sugar dissolved in a solution can be denoted in degrees Brix. It is equivilent to percentage of sugar by mass. For example a 100g solution of sugar water with 1 gram of sugar is 1°Bx, a simple syrup done by mass is 50°Bx. Since suagr and water have diffrent densities . An existing solution's specific gravity can be mesured with a hydrometer (specifically a saccharometer calibrated for sugar solutions), and if it is known to be primarily a suagr water solution the value can be calculated.
| Beverage | Sugar (°Bx) |
|---|---|
| Coca-Cola | 10.9 |
| Sprite | 9.0 |
| Simple Limeade | 13.0 |
| Club-Mate | 5.0 |
| Coconut Water | 2.6 |
| Aloe Drink | 3.8 |
| McDonalds Sweet Tea | 7.8 |
| Chick-Fil-A Sweet Tea | 5.1 |
| Popeyes Sweet Tea | 6.9 |
| Zaxbys Sweet Tea | 11.0 |
Jug is 1180g
- 150g Sugar
- 2g salt?
- 0.3g baking soda
- 10g magno tea
- 1847ml Water
2L total volume of tea.
- 10g Marzipan tea
- 125g sugar
- Pinch salt (0.5g)
- Water to bring mass up to 2kg (2000-135.5)
Infuse in fridge for 8 hours.
- 5g Countess Grey
- 50g Sugar
- 0.25g salt
- Water to 1kg
Refrigerate 8-12hr, ~5°Bx, 1L tea.
- 5g Countess Grey
- 50g Sugar
- 0.05g salt (5mg/250ml)
- Water to 1kg
Refrigerate 12hr, ~5°Bx, 1L tea.
- 5g Countess Grey
- 50g Sugar
- 0.5g salt (Gatorade level salt, electrolyte replenish)
- Water to 1kg
Refrigerate 12hr, ~5°Bx, 1L tea.