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?
