Just wanted to point out that it’s correctly called iced tea, not ice tea. You can’t make tea from ice. Try it – take some ice and steep it in boiling water and see what happens.
I know, I know, we all say ice tea even though on the menu it’s correctly listed as “Iced Tea.” It bothers me. We should all be saying this correctly. Yeah, we never will, but can we at least acknowledge that it’s wrong?
Just a side note, “Ice-T” is the stage name of a rapper, actor, songwriter, and producer who is two years older than me and has nothing to do with this post. Not to be confused with “Ice Cube” or “Vanilla Ice” who are also rappers. At this time their iced tea drinking habits are not clearly documented on Wikipedia.
Thinking about it more, bottled iced tea is a bit wrong too. It’s good and a quick way to get a cold iced drink at home, but it if it’s sold at room temperature, I promise you, there is no ice in it – you have to add that. It’s just tea, room temperature tea. Unless you keep it in the door of your fridge, then it’s colder. More correctly it should be called, “a temperature neutral tea beverage.” I say tea beverage, because I am not 100 percent sure that there is actual tea in those bottles. It does taste like tea, but is that because they used real tea or because the manufacturer is just good at chemistry?
You know, like the folks who make energy drinks – nobody really knows what goes in those.
You know what else is wrong? Sugar in iced tea. There I said it, and now all those souther sweet tea drinkers are going to come after me. Iced tea doesn’t need sugar. Its main function is to be cold and supply a very small amount of caffeine. Maybe microscopic amount, but it’s there.
Unless you bought decaf tea. But, why would you do that? It’s like buying a cup of decaf coffee. Isn’t the whole point of coffee to get a decent amount of caffeine in your bloodstream quickly so you can be alert enough to realize you should have stayed in bed? On its own coffee is a bitter drink that likely is destroying two layers of your stomach lining before it wakes you up. Why take out the one chemical that makes the whole messy process of making a cup of coffee worth it?
Now we do add milk and sugar to coffee to take away that bitter, “why the heck am I drinking this” taste. Sugar in coffee also adds to the wake me up effect by rising your heart rate. With enough sugar and caffeine you can raise your heart rate to around 120 beats a minute for a good half hour. Add a sugar glazed donut or two and you have a full one hour aerobic exercise for your heart without having to break a sweat or even leave your living room recliner.
About milk, you can have milk in tea, but only hot black teas. Milk in herb tea, green tea or Earl Gray is just wrong as is adding milk to tea that has been iced. Believe me, I tried it, not good. True tea drinkers will know that you can add lemon to Earl Gray and sometimes adding a bit of lemon-aid in iced tea is nice.
On the coffee side, milk can be added as a flavor or to convert your coffee into a posh drink like a latte or cappuccino. And coffee being what it is, you can add ice to any version of coffee to make an iced coffee or iced latte. I haven’t tried an iced cappuccino, but that sounds wrong too. There is such a thing as cold brewed coffee which I don’t understand at any level.
That’s an iced coffee, not ice coffee. You can’t make coffee from ice …
Andrew's View of the Week 