I noticed the other day at the grocery store that there are an amazing amount of bottled teas nowadays. From tiny bottles to jugs, lots of tea is being sold, and I imagine someone’s making a pretty good profit off of it because it’s not cheap.
Of course, part of the high price is the shipping of all this liquid; given gas prices, that could be a good percentage of the price. And it seems kind of silly when you consider the bulk of those commercial tea products is water.
I used to drink Snapple on occasion, but it got so expensive that I decided I needed to find an alternative.
This summer we’ve been drinking homemade fruit teas. I put two bags of Celestial Seasonings tea into a pitcher of hot water and let it sit in the sunny window for a few hours. Then we mix some in a glass with sweetener (dh likes honey, I’ve been using Sun Crystals), and it’s just as good as Snapple, though maybe not as sweet.
Given that a box of Fruit Tea Sampler is $1.88, and I usually have a 50 cent or $1 coupon for it, I’m paying between 10 and 15 cents per pitcher of tea plus sweetener. Even without a coupon, it would only be 21 cents a pitcher. Quite a savings! And there are a variety of flavors, including peach, berry, cherry and blueberry.
When I get tired of fruit tea, I make peppermint tea. I bought some Frontier peppermint tea from Amazon last winter and drank it hot (so good!). Now I’m drinking it cold, and yet I still have tons of tea left because the bag of tea is so big (and there were two of them, but I’m still on the first one.)
Are you an iced tea drinker? If so, do you make your own or do you have a favorite brand you can’t live without?
Hey Barb, We drink a lot of tea. I have found that buying it loose, in bulk, is the most economical way to go. Also, we only use evaporated cane juice (not white sugar) and the price of that has skyrocketed–$1/lb. or more. So recently I bought some stevia leaves loose, too. I experimented a little bit to get the flavor just right and now I make a gallon of tea for a lot less than I used to.
Water is what we drink the most of. Second to that is tea (hot or iced, depending on the weather). The only time I by already-brewed tea is if we’re caught away from home, traveling, can’t find water fountains, and supermarket tea’s the cheapest thing.
The other thing I don’t understand is tea machines. You can buy a tea-maker (like a coffeepot, except for making tea). Why? How hard is it to boil water on the stove in a saucepan? It takes a few minutes, you toss in a couple of tea bags or loose tea, wait a few more minutes, and there you go! What’s the benefit of having an electric tea-maker?
Thanks, Carol, for the tips of the sweeteners! We do buy bulk peppermint tea but haven’t tried looking for the fruit teas in bulk yet. I’m going to look into your sweetener idea as I buy Stevia in packets but it’s kinda pricey.
Susan, I don’t understand tea machines either. It seems to me they just take up precious and limited counter space. I just put the pitcher of tea in a sunny window and wait a while. Then I can throw the pitcher in the fridge if we don’t use it up right away.
Thanks for sharing your wisdom, ladies 🙂
Lipton also sells cold brew iced tea bags, so you don’t even have to heat up a pan. I drink a lot of iced tea, but unsweetened, odd for a Southerner, but there it is. I put the tea bag in a Pyrex measuring cup and heat it in the microwave for 3 minutes or so and pour it into a pitcher with a lot of ice and fill it with cold water. Perhaps this method isn’t following the directions, but I can have iced tea in less than 5 minutes, add a sprig of mint from the garden and yum!
Sounds good, Kat. And it’s probably just as well you don’t like it sweet. We used to have a garden with mint in it…sure miss that lovely scent!