I put one gallon of water and 6 tea bags into a glass jar and placed them on the deck in the sun. How long would you leave it out there?
Yeah, Jo, I guess you could say it's a hot sun today! It might be 2 or 3 degrees cooler in Springfield than St. Louis!
Hot sun?, three hours tops.
I put mine out at 9:00, pulled it at 11:30.
When it gets to the right color --- it's done.
Yeah, it doesn't take long in this heat! We've been making sun tea multiple times a week for the last few weeks and it's been soooo good! ;) If you like it strong, leave it out a long time, if you don't then bring in it in in a few hours. We even put ours out overnight one night b/c it was so hot and even without the sun, it still tasted good and was plenty warm when we brought it in the next day!
ohh I love sun tea, I agree with Jo, on about 3 hours. sometimes I like 4 for the stronger one.
I hope your tea turned out ok! Just be careful when making sun tea... http://www.snopes.com/food/prepare/suntea.asp
My family doesn't do sun tea. Mom always told me it was dangerous. I can't wait a few hours for tea anyways :)
I actually make mine in the microwave. I use my glass 4 cup measuring cup. Put tea bags & water in it. Then microwave it for 4 or 5 minutes. I then let it sit in the microwave for 10 minutes. In the meantime, I mix my sugar with more water in my pitcher (leaving room for the water w/ tea). Then I just add the water w/ tea to the pitcher. Must easier & faster! haha
A hour or so. It is really cool to watch as the tea flavor and color move through the water.
NO worries. You will totally be able to tell when it's done. It will get darker and darker. You can stop the brewing process whenever you want. If you like strong tea let it go all day. If you do not care for your ice tea to be do strong, just watch the color so it doesn't get too dark. You can even taste it along the way.:)
I kinda cheat... I put a big pot of water on to boil.. when it's a rolling boil, I turn off the water; I put 4 normal sized tea bags in the pan and let them steep for a while. Then, I poor the tea into the glass tea dispenser and add the tea bags and place the dispenser into the sun and allow them to steep more. It cuts down on the time by 1/2 and even my sun tea "snobs" don't know the difference!
