While I was writing my thesis I worked mostly in the library. However, some days I spend sitting in little cafes, typing away on my laptop. Especially in the last weeks of writing going outside for these little cafe outing kept me sane. It was nice to have some variation in my days of waking up, writing, and sleeping. I started by drinking some tea or coffee at the cafes, but as the temperatures started to rise, I changed to iced drinks. One of the cafes I went to had this spicy South-African lemonade. It was loaded with ginger and to me it tasted so good that I had to remake it myself.
The process of making cold brew tea is very simple, I use loose leaf tea and just add it to cold water and wait for it to work its magic. It takes a bit longer to steep in than regular tea, many recipes suggest 6 to 12 hours, but I would recommend just tasting it when you feel like the colour is the usual ‘tea colour’, because some tea leafs work a lot quicker than 6 hours. We started to experiment with different tea to recreate the South-African lemonade, and rooibos seemed like an obvious choice for it. Not only does rooibos taste good with spices and fruit, the plant originates from South-Africa.
We made a pretty strong blend and ended up adding some more water to the spiced iced tea, because we prefered it a little bit more mild. However, if you like it stronger you can definitely drink it like that. And if you are
wondering: The orange colour in the pictures comes from the rooibos tea we have used. It is a special blend that a friend of ours took all the way from Canada. It is a maple and rooibos tea, and we love it because it has tiny little maple leafs in it!
Ps. You can also make this tea warm, if you, like us, live in parts of the world where the weather is getting colder already (bye summer!).
Rooibos Spiced Iced Tea
½ lemon (sliced)
2 springs mint
2 cm ginger (sliced)
1 orange (sliced)
1 tsp maple syrup
2 tbsp rooibos tea
500 ml water for cold brewing
* extra water to taste
Add all the ingredients in a large jar. We used tea filler bags, but tea infusers work as well. Wait for approximately 4-6 hours for the tea to fully steep. Add extra water to taste, we added about 500 ml more) and enjoy cold. You can reuse the tea and fruit a few times.
*You can also use the peels of lemon and orange instead of the whole fruit.
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