Brewing Sun Tea.

Sun Tea is a southern thing. I grew up with Sun tea in North Carolina, and I’ve been drinking it for about 50 years. Now I’ve been living in Maine for about 23 years now, and I have never seen anyone up here doing this. Some people here have heard of it, but never actually participated in the making of it.

The “scientists” like to claim that doing this is dangerous. That the water in a Sun tea jug never gets above 130*F and that this will allow bacteria to grow in the water and potentially poison you. Well — that might be very well true. But as with anything else in life, you should always try using the gray stuff crammed into the six inch spot between your ears. It’s pretty important to keep everything clean and sanitized when doing anything of this nature.

The process for me starts off in my kitchen with gunpowder tea that’s loosely packaged. I know it’s already clean. Then I use three glass jugs of half a gallon each. In two of them I add 5 tablespoons of loose tea pellets, then top them off from my filtered water. The third jug stays empty so I can filter out the tea leaves.

I sit the tea jugs out on the hood of the lawn tractor in full direct Sunlight for about 3 hours or so.

I check on them occasionally and once they turn this appropriate color, I bring them inside.

Notice the gunpowder tea has fully hydrated and opened up ? The third empty jug is so I can run the fresh brewed tea through a sieve and filter out the tea leaves. I immediately put the jugs in the fridge to cool them down.

Sun brewed green tea is naturally semi sweet on it’s own. Having never gotten to the boiling point, the tea leaves do not release their naturally occurring tannic acid. Teas brewed on the stove top have a bitter aftertaste often, making it necessary to add sugar to cut down on the tannins.

Any added sugars are detrimental to diabetics like me. But the slow brewed Sun teas don’t get hot enough to release tannins, and all the nutrients, polyphenols and other antioxidants are left intact. The mild flavor alone is enough reason for me to continue this summer tradition.