With summer finally here (yes, even in Scotland) and the excitement of Wimbledon upon us we thought it was about time to explore the simple pleasures of iced tea.

Although it’s one of the most refreshing drinks around, iced tea is still very much frowned upon in the UK, which is strange given its prominence around the rest of the world (particularly in the US). Have a go yourself with our simple guide and let us know how you get on.

There are two main ways to make iced tea:

HOT BREW METHOD

This is the quickest way to make iced tea.

• Brew some tea. Use roughly 2 teaspoons of tea leaves per cup of boiling or hot water depending on tea type. That’s 8oz or 227ml give or take of hot water, so about double the amount of leaves as for normal hot tea. Remember never use boiling water for green or white teas – instead leave the kettle off the boil for about 2 mins. Brew the tea for the recommended time before removing the leaves (generally 3-4 mins for most black teas).

• Pour over ice. Pour the concentrated hot tea over ice cubes in a temperature resistant jug. If your iced tea goes cloudy, add a touch of boiling water. Add more ice if necessary but be aware that this will dilute the tea. A clever option is to pre-prepare some ‘tea ice’. Just make a little extra iced tea, fill your ice cube tray with it and put it in the freezer. Why not be a little adventurous and try your tea ice with some different drinks or cocktails?

• Do you want it plain? If you want a straightforward plain iced tea, use the best quality leaf tea you can find. It’s generally best to go for teas that have bright top notes rather than more malty teas like Assam. Teas with natural floral or fruity notes chill particularly well.

• Do you prefer it sweetened? Sugar and honey make good sweeteners. If using honey, it’s a good idea to add it to the hot tea first and stir until dissolved. If using sugar, it’s best to boil one cup of water with one cup of sugar and stir until the sugar is completely dissolved. You can then add the sugar syrup to the iced tea to taste.

• Try adding other things. Another option is to add fresh or frozen fruit or fruit juice to your iced tea. Or experiment by adding various spices while the tea is still hot (we particularly like cinnamon, nutmeg or ginger). Fresh herbs like mint, basil or lemongrass also work well when added to your iced tea.

COLD BREW METHOD

This method is only recommended for green and white teas. For best results, use a good quality leaf tea and filtered water, which helps extract the tea better when brewing cold.

Use roughly two teaspoons of tea leaves per cup (roughly 8oz or 227ml) of cold water (again roughly double the amount of leaves as you would for normal hot tea). Add cold water to the leaves and refrigerate overnight (or longer for a stronger taste). Sweeten or garnish as desired.

Here is a list of our most popular teas to make iced

Unflavoured Tea: Ceylon Lover’s Leap, Second Flush Darjeeling, Ceylon Vert & White Peony.

Flavoured Tea: Life’s a Peach, Jasmine Chun Hao, Blooming Marvellous, White Peach.

Herb & Fruit Infusions. Although they don’t contain any tea so not strictly iced teas, these herb & fruit infusions work really well iced: Strawberries & Cream, Zen Zephyr and Cranberry Apple Riot.

Please let us know how you get on with your iced tea or if you have any interesting recipes or ideas (hello@eteaket.co.uk).

Happy experimenting.

© eteaket ltd June 2010

We ran a free tea tasting session with Chocolate & Love this afternoon and came up with some winning combinations. My favourite was eteaket’s Bollywood Dreams Chai tea with Filthy Rich dark chocolate – the tea really brought out the spices in the chocolate.

Our Blooming Marvellous green tea worked amazingly well with the Dark Strawberry & Pepper chocolate and our old favourite Chilli Rooibos was a big hit with the Dark Chilli chocolate – quite a kick.

We’ll be running more ad hoc tasting sessions so watch this space, sign up to our newsletter by emailing hello@eteaket.co.uk or follow us on www.twitter.com/eteaket or www.facebook.com (search for eteaket).

Chocolate & Love will be at the Taste Festival in London from 17-20 June where you’ll be able to try some eteaket teas and fabulous chocolate.

For the May meeting of eteaket’s book group, we delved into Science Fiction – here’s Mark MacLeod’s review of Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451:

The option was Science Fiction and a list of authors and titles were suggested, I went for Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, a ‘classic’ example written in 1953, by an author who is living in the USA under the beginning of the Cold War. This was the year Queen Elizabeth II came to the throne and when colour television became available for the (well off) family home.

As a first read of science fiction in a long time I enjoyed this book and would recommend it as one that is relatively short, it does not introduce new names, planets and concepts beyond the book burning paradigm, and because of its age it is available through library and probably most second hand book shops. Oh! the 451 Fahrenheit refers to the temperature at which paper combusts, actually it is 450 Celsius but the firefighter which Bradbury asked got the scale wrong! Did I mention it was written the same year that Fleming wrote his first Bond novel, Sir winston Churchill won the Nobel prize for literature and the year that Watson and Crick discover the structure of DNA!!

As lots of things we’ve read recently seem to have an ‘end of the world’ feel to them we’ve decided to lighten things up a little for June by going for Chic Lit vs Boy Lit. The choice is either How to be Good by Nick Hornby or My Sister’s Keeper by Jodi Picoult. The idea is that the ladies read Nick Hornby and the gents read Jodi Picoult so we can get some different perspectives. Watch this space – and remember if you want to join us just email erica at hello@eteaket.co.uk