I love the warmer weather! Lots more time outdoors, playing hard, relaxing in the evenings, breathing in that thunderstorm air, and the return of my favorite warm weather foods. Though no party feels complete without sun tea! I can remember as a child watching the sun tea jars on my Granny's front porch while the grown ups cooked up a feast in the kitchen and back patio, feeling the warm glass, sun kissed as it brews so gently, never bitter, always perfect. Sun tea is so easy and the nostalgia for me carries it firmly into my routine in the warm weather when I have enough sun to brew with!
In the cooler weather, I brew tea weekly on the stove top, but I really don't like to, boiling, brewing, funneling into glass bottles, scrubbing the tea stains out of my pot, etc. It's not as easy, fun, or heartwarming as sun tea, so when the sun comes back for another warm season, I make the most of it! And to top it off, it saves on gas or electricity for the stove, water for the clean up, energy and time for you! THAT's "reducing" at it's finest, using solar power and making life easier at the same time!
The best part is you don't necessarily need to buy anything new to do this with, any jar will work! I drink iced tea every day, so a big jar is best for me (A big pickle jar, to be exact, that I cried emotionally over, begging my husband for in a safeway at eleven o'clock at night while 16 weeks pregnant with my son. I remember in my tearful sales pitch of why we NEEDED this enormous barrel of pickles saying "AND it would make such a good tea jar!" and it does, has for three years!)
Just remember that if you use a smaller jar, you'll use less teabags, a bigger jar, more teabags. I know, sounds like an obvious one, but you never know! So you'll need 4 things in total: A jar with a lid, a nice sunny day, or at least a nice sunny 2 to 4 hours, water enough to fill the jar, and a fair trade and chemical free tea, any flavor will do, but if you're going for authenticity, try black tea! I also love a good green tea brewed this way, it cuts out the bitterness that can creep into green tea, and since I like my tea unsweetened, that's ideal!
Ok, so you've got your necessary items and you're ready to get brewing! Fill up your clean jar with water, not hot water, room temperature or cool is better, to let the sun heat the water slowly. Decide how many tea bags you'll be using, I use 8 or 10 single serving tea bags in a jar this size, you can adjust that. A good rule of thumb: use one tea bag for every one to two serving sizes of water. place all your tea bags in the filled jar, with the strings hanging out and over the lip. Hold on to them! Then screw the lid in place over the strings, it will secure them in place. The bags should have enough slack on the strings to float around a bit, but not escape!
You've officially done all the hard parts! Now set your tea jar outside in the sunlight, wherever you think it'll get the most full sunlight. You don't want it ending up in shade 20 minutes after you put it out. (though that's happened to mine before and it still turned out fine. ) Leave it for at least 2 hours, it's not going to get much stronger after 4 hours, but it won't be hurt by leaving it there either, so don't sit and wait on it! It's not uncommon for me to forget about it in the midst of a busy day and not get it until dinner time. I just bring it in, take out the tea bags, and stick the whole thing in the fridge in the jar. If you can't wait and want some right away, just pour it over a glass filled with ice. That's it! Fairly simple! Enjoy your sun tea, and feel good about it because it's free of harmful chemicals, fairly traded, freshly brewed, and with ecofriendly practices. Reduce the resources needed, Reuse the jar (and in my case, that glass above is a repurposed wine bottle), and Recycle that box! You'll be making tea so often now that you'll burn through that one in no time flat! And always offer some to your guests, in true southern style. Y'all are always welcome at my place!
