Malunggay Iced Tea

farmeric July 2nd, 2009

You should never brew Malunggay Tea with hot water and then cool it to prepare cold or iced tea.  Instead, please double the amount of the Malunggay Tea leaves used to brew it in cold water in a sealed container.   This way you keep the aroma, the natural color and the medicinal health benefits of the Malunggay Tea.  The reason this way is better, is that you avoid oxidation that can occur if the tea is left open to the air in an attempt to cool it after hot brewing.

The brewing time is actually very short.  For example, 10-15 cups of tea can be brewed in a jar in the ice box in just 30-45 minutes.  Please note that you can refill the jar with water to brew more tea when the level reaches one third full.

You may repeat the same procedure up to 3 times using the same Malunggay Tea leaves.

Malunggay iced tea is better than drinking water for walkers, runners, cycling, mountain climbing or any athletic sport in general that demands replenishment of body fluids.

7 Guidelines for Good Tea Making

  1. Always start with spring water or distilled water (ideally spring), and make sure it is fresh and cool.
  2. Bring the water to a full, rolling boil in a stainless steel kettle, and then remove the kettle from heat immediately, as water that is allowed to boil too long loses the oxygen gas dissolved in it and can cause your tea to taste flat.
  3. When using loose tea in place of bagged tea, measure about one heaping teaspoon of loose tea for each teacup of water and place it into the teapot. A good rule of thumb is to use “one teaspoon of tea for each person and an extra one for the teapot,” but this is depending on your tastes. Strainers, “tea presses”, filtered teapots, and infusion bags are available commercially to avoid having to drink the floating loose leaves.
  4. When pouring the water over your loose or bagged tea in a teapot or a mug, make sure the pot/mug is preheated. Pouring hot water into a cold pot/mug drastically lowers the water’s temperature in the first few seconds and could affect the predictability of the steeping time for your tea as well as the quality of the flavors that get steeped out. The easiest way to preheat the pot/mug is to pour a bit of your heated water into the pot/mug and rinse it on all sides, discarding the water once. Then you can put in your tea, and finally, the water.
  5. It is an interesting to note that if the tea you’re making has whole tea leaves in it as opposed to tea leaves that have been cut, the steeping times will vary. Cut leaves release their essences more quickly and completely than do whole leaves, and therefore require much shorter steeping times than teas that use whole leaves (it is much easier to over steep cut leaves and get a bitter-tasting tea than it is to do the same with whole leaves). Water temperature should be higher when one pours the water over whole leaves than when one pours them over cut leaves, as the higher temperature will facilitate a quicker release of the essences from the whole leaves. In using a whole tea leaves, and pour the water over the loose tea a few seconds and afterwards take the kettle off the heat.
  6. When making iced tea, you should use more tea in proportion to the water to make it stronger. Make the tea at double strength if you’re going to pour it over ice cubes of plain water; alternatively, if you freeze some tea in ice cube trays in advance, you can use those cubes instead when you are having your iced tea and you wouldn’t have to increase the strength of the tea.
  7. When using sweeteners in tea, you may use the brown sugar of any other unrefined sugar. Right honey can compliment a tea well. Pandan flavor in Malunggay tea will taste great or with a freshly squeezed lemon or calamansi juice.
source: http://www.biotechforlife.com.ph

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