My Ultimate ICED TEA: Tastes like a cocktail!

Today is a big day everyone. Other than the essential cocktails course that I released a few months ago, I'm pretty sure this is the first video that hasn't featured any coffee on the channel and it doesn't even necessarily need to contain alcohol. So this drink I'm going to share with you today, which I'm really excited about, is my go at creating the ultimate iced tea. And the inspiration behind this is when people order an Earl Grey tea, they'll be asked would you like milk or lemon with your tea? Usually it's one or the other. This drink slightly rethinks that and actually contains elements of both. So we use an oatly to clarify the drink, which gives it that really nice texture and mouthfeel, but we're also going to include lemon juice which has the really nice freshness and vibrancy, creating what I think is my best version of the iced tea. You can easily finish the drink off using gin or a non-alcoholic spirit, you can top out with tonic water to make it go a little bit further, but even on its own it's a really delicious drink which almost feels like a cocktail in itself. So today I'm going to show you how to make it. So the really nice thing about this recipe is that all of the ingredients are inexpensive, particularly if you're making the non-alcoholic version. So to make our iced tea we're going to need 15 grams of Earl Grey tea, and this can either be a loose leaf tea or you can even empty out tea bags if you prefer. I'm going with Earl Grey today, but you can just choose your favourite tea and it should also work really well. The sweetener in the drink is going to be caster sugar, but you can obviously experiment with different sugars. A golden caster sugar would add a little bit more richness, but I just want to keep this really clean, really refreshing, and a caster sugar works really well because it's also quite fine, so it really easily dissolves into the drink. We're also going to need the barista edition oat milk from Oatly, who are kindly sponsoring the video today, so big shout out to Oatly, and this is the perfect way to clarify the drink. So not only is it vegan-friendly, making this drink suitable for lots more people, it also brings a really nice texture to the drink, making it really silky and luxurious without overpowering the flavour. So I always have a carton of this in the fridge because it's my go-to alternative milk for coffee and it just works so perfectly in the drink. The acidity comes from freshly squeezed lemon juice which is going to really add vibrancy and zing to the drink. I'm actually using some lemons that I've already peeled for oleosaccharin which I'm going to use in a future drink, and then to finish off you can go with any spirit you choose. I'm going with gin, most kind of light spirits would work really nicely, or even you could use a non-alcoholic spirit alternative. We're going to need a set of scales to weigh out our ingredients, a couple of big bowls to mix the drink in, and now we can get started with making the drink. So there are a couple of steps to making this drink as you'd expect, but they're all really really easy to do and they have a nice flow to them. So the first thing you need to do is take one big bowl and add 15 grams of your earl grey tea. To the 15 grams of tea you want to add 66 grams of caster sugar, followed by 500 grams of boiling water, and not only will this start brewing the tea, it'll also dissolve the sugar, create a really nice sweetened tea base for your iced tea. You want to leave this to one side for around about five minutes and in the meantime, in the second bowl, add 150 grams of your Oatly Barista Edition. The next step seems a little bit strange but it's really critical to the process and you want to add 150 grams of lemon juice to your Oatly and you might think well this is going to curdle and that's exactly what we're looking for. So that curdling is actually a really important step in the process and it's going to end up giving us a really clear delicious drink. Give the Oatly and lemon juice a really good mix together with a spoon just to really encourage the curdling and then once your tea's been brewing for around about five minutes and the sugar's fully dissolved, you want to pour this into our curdled mix and you'll get the base of our drink. Give these another good stir together and then we're ready to start the clarification process. So for the clarification I'm going to be using a clever dripper but you can use any paper filter for this or even muslin would work really well and you want to start by just passing some of the mix through a paper filter and the first bit won't be clear, it'll be quite cloudy, but after a couple of minutes it will start running clear. Once this is running clear you just want to transfer your clever dripper or your paper filter to a new receptacle, I'm using another mixing glass, and you'll get a really nice clarified mix underneath. Just pour the cloudy liquid back through the paper filter and just keep feeding this until all the liquids pass through. If you find it's not completely clear just move it back to a fresh receptacle and keep repeating until it's really nice and clear. Once you've got your clarified iced tea ready to go you can serve it over ice or even clear ice if you have it. You can finish it off with gin, you can finish it off with a non-alcoholic spirit, you can top it off with tonic but it's really delicious on its own as well. I'm going to garnish this with a wedge of lemon so people can adjust the acidity if they want to and there we have my take on the ultimate iced tea including earl grey, oatly and lemon. Hope you enjoy it. The first thing you notice is that this is a very striking looking drink and I think the combination of the clear ice plus the clarified liquid make it look very kind of visually appealing, something quite different for a drink with oat milk in there which you wouldn't obviously know by looking at it and it really makes you want to have a taste which is what we're going to do, so cheers everyone. The first thing you notice is definitely the texture, it's really unique, it's very kind of silky and luxurious without being kind of heavy and overpoweringly creamy but the oat milk's done a really good job in there to kind of clean it up but it's still got that really nice weight to it which I really enjoy. It definitely looks like a cocktail, it definitely tastes like a cocktail and there's actually quite a lot of complexity in there but the earl grey is definitely the kind of shining star of the drink, so you've got that really nice bergamot flavour coming through, some kind of citrus from the earl grey and also the lemon in there. It's got just enough sweetness without being a sweet drink, just enough acidity without being too overpowering and the tea really comes through which is the dominant flavour which is exactly as it should be. I'm really happy with this, I think it's a really interesting take on the iced tea and it's something completely different which I really do think you should try. So I really hope you've enjoyed this, if you've found value in this make sure you subscribe to the channel which you can do by clicking just here and I'll put some more videos for you to watch just here and just here and I really hope you enjoy them. Finally a big thank you once again to Oatly for sponsoring the video and I look forward to seeing you soon. Cheers everyone!