Homemade Sweet Herbal Tea

I know that for most of my readers, making sweet or iced tea at home is nothing new.  But up until a few years ago, I never really got the recipe down right.  I know, I know.  How hard can it be to make sweet tea?  Water, tea bags and sugar, done!

Well, it wasn't as easy as that, at least for me.  I normally just make sun tea, but it wasn't that old southern "traditional" sweet tea.  But I think I finally figured out how to make a good sweet tea!

In my feeble attempt to be more "healthy" (as I type this there are blueberry muffins in the oven, BTW), I've been making an almost-herbal tea, i.e. three parts herbal tea to one part black tea.

Start a kettle of hot water on the stove.  Three herbal tea bags and one black tea bag go into a 1/2 gallon mason jar and I pour about 3 cups of almost-boiling water over it.  While the tea is steeping, you need to start a sugar syrup.  Put about a 1/2  cup each of sugar and the hot water from the kettle in a heat-proof bowl or mug and stir until the sugar is completely dissolved.  

After the tea has steeped for about ten to fifteen minutes, take the tea bags out of the jar and fill the jar with ice cubes and then almost top it off with cold water.  Then slowly add some of the sugar syrup and stir and keep tasting until it's as sweet as you'd like.

If the tea is going to be just for Rhiannon and I, I will add several drops of liquid stevia extract to sweeten it instead of using the sugar syrup.  I've also used honey when it seems to blend well with the kind of herbal tea used.

Nothing beats a tall glass of ice cold sweet tea after pulling weeds all day in the sun!