Cloudy Iced Tea

doesn't lemon clear it right up? that always works for me...

Thought of using bottled water? That is, if the lemons don't work...

Alright! I wasn't discounting the lemons, so you might want to try that first!

:D

I see that you're in OK -- we have the same problem down here. Our water is basically naturally filtered through the acquifer (limestone) so lots of minerals - you sound like you have a similar problem. Used filtered or bottled water (which still comes from the area so problem remains unless you want to start brewing with Evian..), hot-brewed v sun-tea...it always seems cloudy. (And this is after years of making it all over the world!)

THe cold brew tea bags work well for us. They don't cloud and we don't get the "Texas oil slick!"

Good Luck!

I always use bottled water for tea, but I've found that some teas always cloud up on cooling. I have an Indian tea that does (add milk :-)), but it seems green teas never do. If the lemon thing doesn't work, try changing brands.

There are three main reasons for cloudy tea, hard water, poor quality tea and dirty equipment. Since I'm sure the equipment is not your problem, it's the water or the tea. We switched brands here to China Mist. They checked our water quality, added a filter and softner, and our tea is absolutely beautiful. And it tastes great, too. Check to see if you can filter and/or soften your water supply, and possibly upgrade your tea. Good Luck

Just a thought on the iced tea issue:
My grandmother told me that to avoid the cloudiness you should always add the hot tea to cool water. Oddly enough, even though we have hard water this works for me. I steep the tea until it is nice and dark, and then add the hot tea to cool water already in the pitcher. The hardest part for me was learning to put the right amount of the two different temps of water together to produce a strong enough tea. I add ice cubes to the pitcher if it is too strong, but adding cool water causes cloudiness. And I've even stored the left-over tea in the fridge and used it later with no cloud.
Who knows why it works--it just works--maybe my grandmother knew some stuff. She was pretty cool.

On making ice tea in general:
I used to swear by sun tea - brewed just right and didn't get the tannins, so no astringent taste. Wanted some ice tea one day when it was raining and didn't want to wait until boiling water-made tea had cooled down. Now I use water from the tap, as hot as it can come out. Fill my pitcher to within two inches of the top, add enough tea to make the whole pitcher. Brew for 20 minutes, just sitting on the counter. Remove tea. Add ice cubes to fill pitcher. Stir until ice has melted. Ice tea - ready to go - never cloudy!