Have You Ever Heard Of Sun Tea?

June 10 is Iced Tea Day in the United States, and I decided to take the opportunity to tell you about this particular American recipe.

What is so special about it? The fact that it is a slow brew that must be made in the sunlight is a romantic idea, don’t you think?
I will tell you as I go along about my recipe and, more importantly, the contraindications but now let’s look at a little history.

Who invented iced tea?

From American cookbooks from the first half of the nineteenth century we discover that already at that time someone recommended serving iced (green) teas, but laced with a dash of alcohol. They were called “punches.” One of the oldest recipes appears in the volume The Kentucky Housewife. Author Lettice Bryanon suggests making strong tea in the “classic way” that is, pouring hot water over the leaves (teabags were not yet born as Francesca had told us here). Sugar, sweet cream (a kind of sweetened cream mixed with milk), champagne or claret (Bourdeaux wines) were added and the drink was served hot or cold.
In the book Housekeeping in Old Virginia by Marion Cabell Tyree (1979), the recipe always called for hot green tea. If you wanted to bring it to the table for dinner you had to start the preparation in the morning and let the leaves steep all day. You then had to strain the tea, let it sit for an hour and serve it with sugar, ice and lemon juice.
For many, the inventor of iced tea (or at least who made this preparation famous) is Richard Blechynden, an English entrepreneur who served this refreshing drink during the St. Louis World’s Fair in 1904. It was a hot day and no one was drinking his tea. So Blechynden had the lucky idea of cooling the liquid with ice and serving it cold. It was a hit!

Does it hurt?

I was always advised to prepare the infusions cold by keeping them in the refrigerator to avoid the growth of bacteria and stomach ache. Is Sun Tea therefore a risky beverage? I have read so many articles and the discussion is not simple. In 1996, a memo from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CoC) came out warning about bacterial contamination associated with iced tea with gastrointestinal consequences.

In particular, it is the bacterium Alcaligenes viscolactis, which can be prensent in water (tap or even mineral? According to the Phoenix New Times tap water) that is of most concern. As you may know, room temperature is a breeding ground for bacteria. The only remedies: cold or heat/cooking.
Some say that caffeine manages to limit the reproduction of bacteria for a few hours (e.g., snopes). One thing must also be emphasized: at the moment there do not seem to be any cases of people being hospitalized because of a sip of Sun Tea. Tom Skinner, a spokesman for the CoC had also told the Washington Post in 1996, “Over the last 10 years we have studied literally tens of thousands of outbreaks of infectious disease caused by contaminated food or drink, and in none of them have we seen any connection to iced tea.”
My advice: out of curiosity, let’s discover this American tradition (I like “sun tea” as a name so much), but then make the iced tea by cold brewing. You can find out the recipe here.

Sun Tea Recipe

Have I intrigued you? Here is the recipe for Sun Tea. Traditionally it is made with Lipton or Luzianne tea bags, but you can try it with any kind of tea, bagged or leaf, as the famous American author Martha Stewart also says. In so many proposals that I have read they talk about one tea bag per about liter of water but in my opinion it is very little…it is true that maybe the tea, in this case, is only to give an amber color to our drink but I decided to increase the doses.

• 2 black tea bag per 1 liter of natural mineral water
• 1 tablespoon of sugar
• 2 lemon slices
• Ice

To prepare the Sun Tea, place the tea bags in a pitcher. Pour in room temperature water, cover and leave the carafe in the sun for 2-3 hours.
At this point remove the tea bags. Add sugar, lemon and ice and serve. Everyone recommends drinking the Sun Tea immediately. Otherwise, it is best to store this iced tea in the refrigerator and consume it within 24 hours of preparation.