The sun tea has been on the counter an hour, sweating a faint ring into the tile. It is almost midnight and the only light in the kitchen is the one over the stove. The ice tray is half thawed in the sink.
I poured the first glass quietly, the way you do when nobody else is awake. This is not a drink for company. It is a drink for me, late, when the day has gone too long and I want something cold and a little sweet without making a meal of it.
The jar has been with me since I was small. So has the way of doing it.
Watching the Sun Tea Jar on My Grandmother’s Porch
I learned this from my grandmother in Memphis. I was little enough to need a kitchen stool to see over the top of her gallon jar, and she would let me drop the Luzianne bags in one at a time while she held the lid open.
The back porch was concrete and warm and smelled like the magnolia in her yard. She would carry the jar out to the step at noon, set it square in the sun, and tell me not to bother it. I bothered it. I went to check every thirty minutes to see if the water had turned brown yet, and twice I tried to pick up the jar to bring it inside and announce that it was done. She would catch me and steer me away with a tea towel.
It always took longer than I wanted. Black tea bags. Cold water. Three or four hours of light. A long-handled spoon she kept in the same drawer her whole life, the white plastic handle yellowed where her thumb went. The first sip was always poured for me, in a thick old jelly jar with red flowers on the side.
The Jar Out at Noon
Now it is my jar. I have a one-gallon Ball jar with a dented lid that I keep on the top shelf above the fridge, and on any decent sun day in May or June I will pull it down around lunchtime and start the thing.
The water has to be cold and clean. Filtered if your tap tastes of pool water. Eight bags is the right number for a gallon. I have tried six and it tastes thin. I have tried ten and it tastes like a tannin headache.
I drape the strings over the rim and pinch them under the lid so they hang neat, then I set the jar on the west-facing window sill in the kitchen. It catches sun from about one in the afternoon until five. I left it longer than that exactly once. Bitter. The kind of bitter that does not come out.
Sun tea is not the same animal as cold brew, by the way. Cold brew sits in the fridge for half a day and tastes muted and clean. Sun tea sits in the warmth and tastes rounder, almost soft. The water only gets to around 130 degrees, which is one reason you have to drink it fast and keep the jar squeaky clean.
What I Used
- One gallon of cold filtered water
- Eight Luzianne black tea bags, which is what my grandmother used and what I still buy
- Three quarters of a cup of granulated sugar, though I cut it to half some nights
- One lemon, the thinnest slices I can manage with my one good chef’s knife
- A small handful of fresh mint from the pot on the fire escape, which has gotten unruly this spring
- Four cups of ice cubes, the cloudy kind from my old freezer trays
- The gallon Ball jar with the dented lid
- A long-handled iced tea spoon I bought at a yard sale in Pasadena for fifty cents
Sweetening Sun Tea While It Is Still Warm
This is the part most people get wrong. You have to add the sugar while the tea is still warm from the sun, because cold tea will not melt sugar properly and you will spend an hour stirring grit at the bottom of the pitcher.
So I bring the jar in around five, fish out the bags, and squeeze them against the rim. The sugar goes straight in. Three quarters of a cup is the southern measure. Half a cup is mine, most nights. Stir for a minute. Stir for two if the kitchen is cool.
Then I pour the whole thing into a glass pitcher and slide it into the fridge before the hour is up. That part matters. Sun tea brewed at 130 degrees is in the bacterial danger range, and the longer it sits at room temperature, the more nervous you should get. I am not trying to scare anyone. Only saying, do not forget it on the counter overnight. Mine has stayed clean for years because I am stubborn about that one hour.
Late Kitchen Hours
By the time I come back for it, it is dark. Tonight it is dark and quiet and there is a Joni Mitchell record going low in the next room. The dishwasher hums. The window is cracked open a few inches because the breeze finally turned cool around ten.
I pull a tall glass from the cupboard, fill it almost to the top with ice, and pour the tea over slowly so I get to watch the cracks run through the cubes. Two lemon slices. A few leaves of mint, slapped between my palms first so they smell. The first sip is colder than the sun would have suggested at noon, and softer than any black tea has any business being.
I almost added a slice of cucumber. Actually no. Cucumber belongs in someone else’s drink.
A Few Honest Substitutions
If you do not have direct sun, you can do this on a bright kitchen counter and just give it five hours instead of three. It will be paler but still good.
Lipton works in a pinch but Luzianne tastes more like my grandmother’s. I have used Earl Grey one time as an experiment and it was lovely, all bergamot and dusk, but it is not really sun tea anymore at that point. For unsweetened, skip the sugar entirely. A squeeze of lemon at the glass and it holds up fine.
A sprig of basil instead of mint sounds wrong and tastes right. Try it once in August.
Most of my favorite things are like this. Slow, made for one, requiring patience that the rest of the day refuses to give me. I will pour a second glass before bed, and the jar will be empty by morning.
Southern Sun Tea
Ingredients
Equipment
Method
- Wash a 1 gallon clear glass jar and its lid in hot, soapy water and rinse well to start with a clean vessel.
- Fill the jar with 1 gallon of cold fresh water, leaving about 1 inch of headspace at the top.
- Drape 8 black tea bags into the water, letting their strings hang over the rim, then screw the lid on snugly so the strings are pinched in place.
- Set the jar in direct sunlight outdoors, on a sunny porch, patio, or windowsill, where it will get uninterrupted sun for several hours.
- Let the tea steep undisturbed for 3 to 5 hours, until the liquid turns a deep, even amber color. Do not exceed 5 hours.
- Bring the jar inside, remove and discard the tea bags, gently squeezing them against the rim to release the last of the tea.
- While the tea is still warm from the sun, add 3/4 cup granulated white sugar and stir with a long-handled spoon for 1 to 2 minutes until completely dissolved.
- Transfer the sweetened tea to a clean pitcher and refrigerate within 1 hour of finishing the steep, chilling until cold, about 2 hours.
- To serve, fill tall glasses with ice cubes, pour the cold sun tea over the top, and finish each glass with 1 to 2 lemon slices and a few fresh mint leaves.
- Store leftover tea covered in the refrigerator for up to 24 hours and discard if it ever looks thickened or ropy.