Homemade Fresh Lemon Iced Tea

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My husband and I love Lemon Iced Tea so much, even under the temperature of – 30 degrees Celsius ( – 22 degrees F) right now. However, not until I came to the US, I could understand what the difference between lemon and lime is. To me, as my English teacher taught me, Lemon is always the bright green fruit. I had never known about the bright yellow fruit until I saw it in the supermarket and saw the label for it: Lemon. Ok, so now at least I’ve got my English lesson back: Lemon is the bright yellow fruit and Lime is the bright green yellow fruit. In Vietnam, we don’t have Lemon, and we use lime all the time and maybe that’s the reason why we call lime as lemon. 

Though lemon and lime are the same kind of citrus fruit, they have the different taste and nutritions, but they could be brother and sister. Lemon has more vitamin content while lime has more acid. Therefore, to me lime is more sour than lemon. When I tried to make iced tea with lemon and lime, I could not explain but with lemon, iced tea is much better. Why? The reason could be the taste or as I usually buy the mixture of lemon iced tea and fell with love with that already, just because I love it. However, Vietnamese people use lime to make a kind of lime iced tea (Che chanh), which is very famous in Hanoi and Che Chanh is also a very fresh and summery. I would introduce this later in another entry. But now, let’s get started to make homemade lemon Iced tea!

1. Ingredients:

• 1/3 cup lemon juice (80ml)
• 3 orange pekoe tea bags
• ½ cup granulated sugar (or to taste)
• 2 quarts water (8 cups)

2. Intructions:

• Pour water in a large saucepan, bring it to boil. Put the tea bags in and cover with the lid. Turn the heat off and set aside for about 30 mins.

• Pour granulated sugar, lemon juice in the saucepan after that. Take out the tea bags. Taste the tea again. Can serve warm right away if you’d like.

• Let it cool and pour in the jar. Refrigerate until chilled (usually after 4-6 hours) or you can put some more ice when served.

It saves us a lot ‘cause now we don’t have to buy a gallon of lemon iced tea. We can make it fresh and more important, we can adjust the amount of sugar that we put in ;) The store-bought lemon iced tea seems to be a little bit too sweet for me all the time. When I tried to dilute the sugar with some water, of course, I also diluted the tea and the lemon, which made it worse. Moreover, I love the smell of fresh lemon so much! Ah, now I got the word for lemon iced tea – it’s tangy, not sour as we use lime lol.

Isn’t that so cool? Let’s try to make it everybody ^^