I find I’ve been doing an awful lot of experimenting lately. I think that’s a good thing, right?
When my Dad was over yesterday, we went grocery shopping and I picked up a case of soda water (12 cans or something like that?). I figured it’d be really neat if I could make my own pop – and probably really healthy too. So, today was pop experimentation day number one. I figured I’d try and play it safe today.
Fruit flavoured teas are natural pairings for soda, in my opinion. Just think of all the different kinds of Crush or things like Sprite or Mountain Dew which play off citrus flavours. So, I decided to make a Main Squeeze soda because it’s fruit, it’s a tea I enjoyed the first time I drank it, and I had some extra leaf from my first cup that I wanted to resteep.
So, I steeped up the leaf I had saved from my last cup with an extra 1/2 tsp. of unused dry leaf added in just to help out the flavour. I used boiling water and steeped it for around 4 to 5 minutes (I lost track of time). Before doing anything else I tried a bit of the tea as it was, and it tasted pretty flavourful and similar to how it did my first time drinking it.
In the future I’m probably going to cold brew teas I want to do this with (or at least stick them in the freezer temporarily to cool them down), but today I was impatient and made this as a hot carbonated drink. I wasn’t sure what proportions of club soda to tea to mix, so I just poured all the tea into a much larger mug and then added about a tbsp. of club soda at a time until it reached a level of carbonation I was happy with without totally diluting the taste.
I ended up using about a third of the can of club soda (just like a regular pop can sized can). The liquor is a really pale buttery yellow. Taste wise, it’s kind of odd but pleasantly so. I’ve never had a hot carbonated drink, so it’s a new experience. With the mix of tea and club soda, the level of carbonation is not as strong as you’d get from a regular soda – it’s more akin to the kind of fizzy feeling and sensation you’d get from Fizz candy. I think the tropical flavours of this tea work well with it, though – and I bet this would be awesome as a cold tea soda.
Since I still have another 2/3of a can of club soda left, I’m going to use that up today with some other teas. I have some Pink Flamingo leaf that I was going to try to re steep so I’ll mix the club soda and that one and I’ll find something else to try.
If there’s anyone else of Steepster that makes their own tea soda – how do you do it? What proportions do you use? I’m really curious to learn more about doing this. I wonder if you could cold steep tea straight into club soda or, by the time the flavour was leached out of the leaf, would the soda be flat by then? Maybe that’s a stupid idea… Just, share your soda experiences?
I do this every so often. I brew a stronger tea, either cold brewed or I ice it, then I mix it will the club soda. Either half/half or 2/3 tea and 1/3 soda to taste. Often the tea needs to be sweetened.