Brew up some of your favorite black tea, you’ll want to make this cherry lime black tea before summer’s end.
Home brewed black tea is one of the most affordable drinks you can have besides water. It’s a summer staple for me and I love infusing natural flavors of summer into it. Sweet cherries and tart limes are a perfect combination and I had some I needed to use up while we were tent living. Grab a pan of water and let’s get brewing.
The tea
Brew 8 cups of tea your preferred way. My method is to bring 8 cups of water to a boil, steep 16 black tea bags in it for 7-10 minutes. Er, maybe accidentally 20 when I forget I set it there, then pull the tea bags out and add any sweeteners or flavors I want to infuse the tea with.
If I’m serving the tea right away I just serve in glasses filled to the brim with ice. If I’m saving it for later I add 4 cups of ice to bring the temperature down after my sweetener has been added and pour over ice when serving. The flavors infuse better if you let it chill a day before using.
Love cherry limeade? Give this easy recipe a sample.
The sweetener
I like my tea lightly sweetened so the sugar in my muddled cherries is just enough for me, but this is the point where you can sweeten to taste with sugar, honey, agave, or whatever sweetener you like to add. You can leave it as-is if you have people who like their tea varying levels of sweetness, but sugar blends better when it can dissolve in the warmly brewed tea.
The cherries
First we need to muddle the cherries. Muddle – it’s such a fabulous word that simply means to use a muddler to gently mash fruit against the side of the glass so the flavors bind with alcohol better. The last thing one has at a campsite is a muddler…I think…so I totally did my own thing. I diced cherries to make 1 cup and put them in a plastic cup then added a wee bit of sugar, aka a teaspoon, and mashed it all up against the side of a cup with a plastic spoon. Boom! Muddled cherries, which I dumped into the brewed tea.
The lime
I simply sliced 1 lime thin, reserved the most beautiful slices for a glass garnish, and popped the rest into the brewed tea. If you’re an unfortunate lime hater you can skip it but I love the flavor balance lime brings to this tea. It takes a nice and mellow fruity tea and brightens it up.
Share your favorite fruit flavored tea recommendations and I’ll give them a try.
