Help with Blueberry Tea, please

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erehweslefox

Sous Chef
Joined
May 20, 2016
Messages
578
Location
Hatfield, PA
So down in Chincoteague we had, at the blueberry festival, some great blueberry iced tea that the lady that made it canned in pint mason jars. She said she made it just from fruit, a bit of tea, and a little sweetener. Having some leftover blueberries from my weekend muffining (to be honest some had gotten a bit squishy) I tried to make some up, but I'm unhappy with it overall, not enough flavor. Any ideas how I can punch this up? Here is what I did:

1 lb blueberries
4 tbsp loose black tea
water
maple syrup

So I mashed the blueberries up with a potato masher quite good in my big pot, added the loose tea and topped with water. Ended up filling a little under five pint jars (four full one about 7/8 full) to give you an idea of how much water used. Brought to boil, then reduced to simmer and simmered, covered for about 20 minutes. Strained into mason jars through cheesecloth, pressing out the juice from the must as well I could. Added about a half a tbsp of maple syrup to each jar. Capped, and put into water bath, boiled for about five minutes, then left to cool to room temperature. After checking seals, chilled in fridge.

The taste was good, but not as intense as I hoped for. Simmer longer? More blueberries? Anything I can add to punch up the taste, maybe a bit of lemon juice to acid it up a bit? I wish I had blueberry leaves to put in with the fruit, actually.

Any ideas are welcome.

One of the motivators here is that Beloved Wife adores the Snapple diet peach tea, and I'm kind of thinking when peaches are in season, if I can get a good recipe for fruit teas hammered out, I can make something as good for less money. Blueberries on this pass as, well, we just came back from the blueberry festival and had blueberries to spare.

I'm also kind of wondering if I put some yeasties in there if I might not get some natural carbonation, but I'll experiment with that once I get the basic recipe down.... First things first.

Thoughts very welcome.

TBS
 
OK. My thoughts, cook the heck out of the blueberries after mushing them up, and add less water. Make sort of a blueberry syrup. Strain, add tea and more water to taste.

I make rhubarb tea, just chopped up rhubarb and water to cover, cook the heck out of it, then strain and put in a pitcher in the fridge.

If you have access to rhubarb, that might give a nice sour punch to your blueberry tea.
 
Last edited:
OK. My thoughts, cook the heck out of the blueberries after mushing them up, and add less water. Make sort of a blueberry syrup. Strain, add tea and more water to taste.

Yeah, that was one of the things I was thinking, I should simmer a heckuva lot longer, and uncovered too to maybe let it reduce, and add the tea to dilute the fruit syrup to taste.
 
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