Daily Tip: Make Solar Powered Tea
In the heat of summer a tall glass of fresh, brewed iced tea can be refreshing. Keep a pitcher handy by making your own using solar power. All you need is a glass jar, water, tea and a hot sunny day.
J A Bowman from Dallas, TX says:
Make Sun Tea in any clean closed glass container. Fill container with water, add tea bags, close container and place in the sun until the tea is the desired darkness.
Yes it really is that simple.
Or instead of tea bags you can try steeping fresh, organic herbs. Here’s a few suggested combinations from Mother Earth Living:
- Chamomile with hibiscus flowers
- Elderflowers with peppermint or yarrow
- Hibiscus flowers with rose hips
- Marigold petals with mint
- Mullein with sage, chamomile or marjoram
- Pennyroyal with any of the other mints
- Rosemary with hibiscus flowers
- Sage with lemon verbena
- Strawberry leaves with woodruff
- Yarrow with peppermint
And a cautionary note about sun tea from LifeHacker (this is also noted elsewhere):
According to the Centers for Disease Control, using the sun’s rays to make tea can facilitate the growth of bacteria. Tea steeped in a jar on your porch won’t get any hotter than 130 Fahrenheit, about the temperature of a really hot bath and not nearly hot enough to kill nasties lurking either in the water or on the tea itself. For that, water needs to be heated to 195 for three to five minutes.
As an alternative you can steep the tea or herbs in the fridge over night; or boil the water, steep and refrigerate. (I know, that takes the ’sun’ out of ’sun tea’ but it is still a refreshing summer treat all the same).
Amy says: To change it up a little when brewing my own, I throw in a few bags of orange spice tea or other fruity, herbal flavored teas.
Colorado State University - Is Sun Tea Safe?
Green Options - Eco-Effective Decisions: Ten Ways to Celebrate Electrical Energy Independence.
For suggesting today’s tip, J A Bowman will receive two months of wind power from Renewable Choice energy.
Do you ave a tip you’d like to share? Submit it to us.
Tags: brew, Daily Tips, drink, Food, Home and Garden, iced tea, solar, sun+tea
- Uncategorized
July 28th, 2007 at 3:17 pm
Any sweet iced tea I had growing up was made by pouring boiling water over tea bags.
When I saw my (now ex-) mother-in-law make sun tea for the first time, I thought, “Well, it won’t taste any different.”
How I was wrong! Pouring boiling water over the tea bags scalds the tea leaves and changes the flavor of the resulting tea. Sun tea tastes better since the tea leave don’t get scalded.
dygituljunky
July 28th, 2007 at 10:01 pm
The article states - “For that, water needs to be heated to 195 (Fahrenheit) for three to five minutes.” 195 Fahrenheit is 90 Celsius, I was just wondering how many kettle’s actually do this? All the kettle’s I know off turn off as soon as the water gets to 100 Celsius, which from cold only takes around 3 minutes so how can you heat water in a kettle to above 90 Celsius for 3 to 5 minutes without having to hold the kettles cut off switch on for that amount of time?
You can also get the solar heated tea hotter by placing something behind it to reflex the sun back into the jar. Solar hot water panels can get up to 140 Celsius (284 Fahrenheit) even on a semi cloudy day.
Hope you all enjoy your Sun Tea
SteveintheUK
March 1st, 2009 at 6:52 pm
[...] Sun Tea: The pitcher of water and teabags is set out in the hot sun to steep by solar power. This is the most “natural” and energy-efficient method, but it does have to steep much longer and there are potentials issues with bacterial growth since the temperature does not get high enough to kill any bugs that may be present. [...]
June 8th, 2009 at 2:02 am
[...] Daily Tip Make Solar Powered Tea amystodghill Green Options Posted by root 3 hours ago (http://amystodghill.greenoptions.com) 3 responses to daily tip make solar powered tea dygituljunky says the tea bags scalds the tea leaves and changes the flavor of the resulting tea post new comment name required blogroll wordpress com middot wordpress org Discuss | Bury | News | Daily Tip Make Solar Powered Tea amystodghill Green Options [...]