Spiced Iced Tea: Adding Zip to a Classic Front Porch Sip

By: Andy Hayes

Today's feature was brought to you by Bigelow Tea.
Generally, I am not a huge iced tea fan - usually because it's made from instant, or too sweet, though it's hard not to knowledge how refreshing a glass of sweet tea can be in the summer.
Recently on Pinterest I saw a recipe for spiced iced tea, but the link was broken, so no recipe for me. I asked around the Plum Deluxe community, and would you believe I got not one, but two, recipes? Both from reader's grandmothers! They were both pretty similar, so I have merged them and made my own tweaks using one of favorite house teas, Bigelow. Big thanks to Vicky Soderberg for all the tips & advice.

How to make Spiced Iced Tea

Here's the thing about spiced iced tea: it's easy to personalize. The basics are that you take a few of your favorite tea flavors, combine them with some spices, and bam: spiced iced tea. I think you can't go wrong with cinnamon and clove, which are featured below, as they pair the best with the tea flavor.
As for the fruit flavor in the tea, I've went with orange and pomegranate, but you could easy go with lemon and blueberry, or raspberry. I also have included a bit of caffeinated black tea, but you could easily go without. I'm using bagged tea instead of loose tea because it's much easier to work with in terms of steeping cold tea.
Why Bigelow? I specifically chose them because they have some interesting flavors that are already spiced, such as the Orange & Spice, or the Constant Comment, which is a spiced black tea. Bigelow has a wide variety of tea flavors - even variety packs in a box - which gives you that room to do that personalization.

Prep is quite easy - it's just like making normal tea, except you need to give it a bit more time to steep - I highly encourage letting it sit overnight as the flavors smooth out nicely. Ok, let's get into it.

Spiced Iced Tea

Ingredients:

2 bags Bigelow Pomegranate Pizzazz
2 bags Bigelow Orange & Spice
2 bags Bigelow Constant Comment Tea
6 cups water, boiled
2 tablespoon sugar
1/2 tablespoon lemon zest
2 cinnamon sticks
10 whole cloves

Preparation:

Boil your water or use an iced tea maker to boil the water. I suggest putting everything -- the tea, cinnamon, clove, sugar, lemon zest -- into the water as it boils. If you're using the iced tea maker, put the ingredients into the top basket, and then drop the ingredients into the pitcher when it is done boiling.
Leave the brewing tea in the fridge overnight. (Yes, including the teabags & spices.)
The next day, strain the tea to remove the spices and teabags. Serve over ice.

Variations

Make it Adult: Add 2 shots of Firefly Vodka to the pitcher before putting it in the fridge overnight.
Make it Brighter: Swap the pomegranate tea for Bigelow peach herb tea.
Amp up the Wow Factor: Serve with a fresh orange on the glass. Pretty and practical.

What's your ideal combination for spiced iced tea? Do you have a favorite Bigelow tea? Share with us over on Facebook.

For more creative ideas on how to prepare your tea, check out the Bigelow Tea Talk Blog.

For more creative ideas on how to prepare your tea, check out the Bigelow Tea Talk Blog.
This feature has been compensated as part of a social shopper insights study for Collective Bias and their client. See the photos here. #cbias #socialfabric #AmericasTea

Andy Hayes

Andy Hayes is the founder and creator of Plum Deluxe. He authors our award-winning weekly email newsletter, The Blend and curates our popular organic tea of the month club.

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