Iced Tea With Green Tea And Ginger: Delicious And Refreshing!

Iced tea is particularly tasty when it is homemade and contains fresh ingredients

Iced tea from a bottle, can or tetrapack is practical, but usually has little to do with tea and consists mainly of sugar and aromas.

Once you have made your own iced tea , you will definitely not reach for industrially produced iced tea in the future!

Iced tea is like lemonade

Iced tea appears to be healthier than lemonades, because tea itself is generally perceived as healthy.

Theoretically, tea is actually only understood to mean the infusion of tea leaves, without sugar or other additives. However, industrially produced iced tea has very little to do with it.

If you read through the list of ingredients, you will find things on it that you don’t have in your kitchen cupboard yourself, i.e. have little to do with tea in the traditional sense.

The list of ingredients for a well-known type of ice tea reads as follows: water, invert sugar, black tea extract (0.14%), acidifier citric acid, aroma, lemon juice from concentrate (0.1%), acidity regulator trisodium citrate, antioxidant ascorbic acid. You see, with 0.14% tea extract, the drink has less to do with tea than with lemonade.

What exactly is “tea”?

Strictly speaking, “tea” is just the drink that is brewed from the leaves of the tea bush. It is a science in itself which cultivation areas and leaves taste best and which are then processed into special types of tea.

Green tea is simply the dried leaves of the plant. Black tea is more labor intensive.

The leaves are first dried a little, then rolled and then oxidized at high humidity. This creates the taste that is characteristic of black tea.

Both types of tea contain caffeine, which used to be called “tein”. When the leaves are brewed with hot water, the caffeine is always released – regardless of the brewing time, tea is always stimulating.

Only the content of tannins changes with a longer brewing time. The longer the tannins have time to be released from the leaves, the more bitter the tea will taste.

Of course, when making tea, not only are the welcome active ingredients from the tea released into the teacup, but also less welcome substances such as pesticides, herbicides, fungicides and other pesticides.

It is therefore always advisable to use tea (including fruit teas!) From controlled organic cultivation.

There are already many ready-made tea blends on the market. Classics such as “Earl Gray” (black tea flavored with bergamot oil) do not have any artificial flavors. But many tea blends in particular smell (and taste) very strongly of artificial flavorings and often have little to do with the original tea drink.

You can also flavor your tea yourself with spices without any chemicals. Just as has been done in the tea-growing areas for centuries.

Recipe for iced tea with ginger

So you see, it is much healthier to make your own iced tea, because that way you can determine what goes into your cup. For a refreshing iced tea with ginger you need:

• 1 liter of water
• 4 bags of green tea, not flavored (or the corresponding amount of loose green tea)
• 2 limes
• 1 tbsp freshly grated ginger (more or less depending on your taste)
• Sweetener of your choice to taste
• Ice cubes

Pour the tea leaves or tea bags over with boiling water. Preferably the evening before, so that the tea has enough time to cool down afterwards.

When the tea has cooled to refrigerator temperature, grate the fresh ginger and squeeze out the limes.

If you like and the limes are organically grown, you can also rub the peel to add even more lime flavor to your iced tea.

Alternatively, you can tear the lime zest into small decorative pieces with a zest and use them to decorate the iced tea when serving.

Now mix all the ingredients with the ice-cold tea and, if you like, add a little more to taste. You can use whatever sweetener you find in your supplies of sweeteners and like: honey, agave syrup, xylitol or even sugar.

Remember that a commercial iced tea contains around 7% sugar. If you want your homemade iced tea not only to be without chemicals, but also to be healthier, then make sure not to use too much sugar or honey etc.

Serve with ice cubes and, if necessary, sprinkled with a little lime zest. Enjoy it!