THE BEST ICED TEAS | How to Make Barista-Style Iced Teas at Home

Hey, I'm Sue, and welcome to The Art of Flavor. If you love those iced tea lemonades, you know, from those coffee shops that everyone loves every summer, this is the episode you wanna watch. You ready? Let's get started. First, we're making simple syrup. Okay, I've got equal parts of water. So it's half a cup of water, half a cup of sugar. It's one-to-one ratio. So you can double it and start with a cup of water and a cup of sugar. It's all gonna work the same. It's all gonna be easy to make your iced tea lemonades. I'm going to bring it up and bring it up on medium, medium-high to a boil. And I'm gonna let it simmer for about a minute and then basically turn off the heat. You just want your sugar to be dissolved and you don't want it to reduce. I just want it to mingle in there and dissolve. I don't like to flavor my syrup because I want a clean palette. I want a clean flavor so I can flavor it my way. And we've got a lot of flavors for you to choose. I've already made a batch and it's ready. It's cooled. It's gonna keep in the refrigerator two to three months in a sealed jar is fine because it's just sugar water. Turn the heat off. You walk away and then you've got your simple syrup. For our next recipe, we're gonna make a peach green tea lemonade. I've got two cups of water that's almost to a boil and I'm gonna add four of these lemongrass green tea, tea sachets, okay. So I just like to twist it around so they don't fall in. I can take them out easily. I don't have to fish for them. I'm gonna let it steep for 10 minutes. Let's make the peach green tea lemonade. I've got a glass. I'm gonna fill it with ice. Prepping the glass is easier in the beginning. To maneuver your garnish, it's gonna, it'll be more difficult, okay. Slide it in there and keep filling that way. Okay, I can add more ice after if I want. Fill my cocktail shaker with ice. You can make this without a cocktail shaker. I just like to shake my lemonade. So like ice cold and our tea is still cooling, but you can just stir all your ingredients into your glass and it's still just as delicious. I'm going to add about a half a cup. I'm gonna add a little bit more because this is a very tall glass. It's wide on the bottom and tall on the top. Half a cup of your slightly cooled green tea and then about three tablespoons full of the simple syrup we just made. And it's a lemonade, so I'm gonna add a little bit of lemon juice. It's about two tablespoonfuls directly in. And don't forget our Hedicent peach flavor. It's about half a teaspoon and you can sub in green mango. That's just as delicious. It's, if you love green mango salads or just green mangoes in general, the nose on it, it's amazing. The peach is like the best peach you've ever had. I'm gonna shake it until it's ice ice cold, basically. Ice cold, beauty. Going to grab a little peach action here. Just a little fun garnish. And basil or mint, both work. I love, we have basil, so let's just use basil. Poke that little guy in there. So you've got this beautiful nose of basil coming at you. You've got the best peachy flavor from Hedicent and you've got lemon. A little bit of simple syrup, the best of summer. Oh, that's so good. A little bit of foam, just like you get in those coffee shops. And it's like the best peach green tea lemonade you've ever had. Enjoy. And next, we're gonna make our second iced tea lemonade. This one is a passion fruit hibiscus iced tea. I've got my water boiling and I've got three bags of hibiscus tea and I'm gonna turn the water off. You want it steep for 10 minutes. Again, same drill as the green tea peach lemonade. So our tea has steeped and cooled and I've just removed the tea bags. Gonna grab a glass and grab my ice. Gonna start by prepping my glass. I'm gonna add some mint to this and I'm going to add a thin slice of lemon. I've got my mint there and I'm going to make sure it doesn't float up. Okay, so that's ready. Going to fill my cocktail shaker with ice. Got the hibiscus tea here. Our pre-made simple syrup. I'm gonna add another little squeeze of lemon for our passion fruit hibiscus lemonade. And then don't forget our beautiful, nope, that's not it. Nope. Passion fruit. It's about 25 drops. Passion fruit and hibiscus, it's like a floral marriage. You can't go wrong. Passion fruit, although it's available all year round, it's hard to find the ripe passion fruit that's going to work in your lemonade. If you buy a bottle, you've got the flavor all year round. You've seen this tea all over town and now you can make it at home. I'm gonna shake it until it's very cold. There we go. Whoa. I got a little, little excited. I'm gonna add another beautiful sprig of mint. Oh my gosh, look at that. I've got a little bit of foam, which I wanted. It is the most beautiful, fragrant, it's like walking in a tropical paradise, honestly. It's refreshing. It's beautiful. It looks like a work of art, doesn't it? It's just too beautiful to drink. And next we're gonna make some fun fizzy water flavors. The first one is a cantaloupe and green mango fizzy water. Fizzy meaning sparkly. Fizzy sounds fun. I'm gonna show you how to prepare ginger or ginger juice. If you're hesitant about using fresh ginger, don't be. It's very easy. They're kind of knobby and funny shape, but you don't wanna waste it. You just use a spoon and you scrape. That's how you peel a ginger, okay? Peel fresh ginger, not peel a ginger. So we just go around and if you've got some funny knobby bits, you just keep scraping around it. Don't cut off huge pieces and then throw it away. You're just throwing away all the good stuff. I'm going to press it through a little sieve set over a bowl for my juice. You can use a little, a fine grater or a microplane. If you have a microplane, it's a bit finer. And now you can mince ginger, garlic. I only need about a teaspoon of the juice. You just tap it. That's how it get the excess. And then I'm going to very gingerly gather my finely grated ginger and I'm going to press it using the back of a spoon. That's pretty much it. That's all the good stuff. That's all you need, really. So I've got my ginger juice and I'm gonna grab my glass. Fill it with ice. Prep your glass first. I washed and dried my ginger slice. I want to use it as a garnish. Going to thinly slice it. Okay, a little thin slice. Looks like a rabbit. Going to add about a cup. That's fizzy. A cup of sparkling water. This is a larger glass. I'm going to add a little bit more. Top it off with a little bit more ice. I'm going to add my ginger juice and a bit of agave syrup for a bit of sweetness. I'm going to grab a head of green mango. I've got about, it's about a half a teaspoon. I love the combination of the ginger and the green mango. It's another match made in flavor heaven. It's so aromatic. It smells like a perfect green mango salad to me. And I'm going to grab my Hedison fresh cantaloupe flavor. 13 to 15 drops. Got about 10 drops. I'm going to give it a little stir. Gonna add a little bit of fresh mint. And this is your cantaloupe green mango ginger fizzy water. It's so refreshing. The fizz gets me every time. For our last fizzy water, we're making a pink grapefruit pineapple fizzy water. A lot of fizzy. Grabbing a glass. Gotta fill it with ice. Prep our glass. And then just fit it into your glass. Nothing makes me more excited when it's pretty. I'm going to need about a tablespoon full of grapefruit juice. So it's going to squeeze what we cut off from the top. Don't waste it. Squeeze that juice. Okay, let's add our sparkling water, about a cup. If you have a smaller glass, you just fill it to where you want it. Okay, there we go. And agave syrup again, just for a bit of sweetness. And our beautiful Kenyan pineapple. Gonna add about 20 drops. And the pineapple and grapefruit, it is in the same tropical family. The combo is illuminating. It's bright. It's refreshing. They're both very sparkly. Gonna make sure the agave syrup is mixed in. It's already too pretty to drink, right? I'm a sucker for mint. You'll have to smell it before you take a sip. Look how pretty that is. Got a bit of the pink grapefruit juice coloring it. And you've got the nose of the pineapple and the mint. That's so pretty. It's pretty and pink. It's delicious. It's refreshing. There you have our fizzy drinks and our iced lemonades. You've got your summer ready and prepped. Let us know your thoughts. Drop your comments below and don't forget to like and subscribe and tap the bell icon so you don't miss an episode. Thanks for watching. Keep it flavorful. We'll see you again. Cheers.