Camp Sweet Tea, Two Leaves
Black and green tea steeped below boiling, sugared hard, drunk hot or cooled in a stream.
- calories
- 110
- weight
- 1.1 oz
- cal / oz
- 100
- protein
- 0 g
- serves
- 1, scales
- prep
- 1 min
- cook
- 5 min
- total time
- 6 min
- water
- 500 ml boiled
- cost
- $
Calorie and protein figures are my own estimates, good enough for planning a food bag and not meant as precise nutrition data.
- Drink
- Canister stove
- Alcohol / Esbit
- Campfire coals
- Backpacking
- Car camping
- Basecamp
- Canoe / raft
- Vegetarian
- Vegan
- Gluten free
- Dairy free
- Nut free
- One pot
- Pre-mix at home
- Shelf stable
- Dump and stir
Ingredients
| Black tea bags | 1 bag | or 1 1/2 tsp loose leaf |
|---|---|---|
| Green tea bags | 2 bags | or 1 tbsp loose leaf |
| Granulated sugar | 2 tbsp | packed into the same bag as the tea |
| Powdered lemon or dried ginger | 1/2 tsp | optional |
| Salt | a pinch | only if you have been sweating |
Method
- Bring 250 ml of water to a boil, then pull the pot off the heat and count to sixty. You want it hot, not rolling.
- Drop in the tea and steep two minutes. Longer turns the green tea bitter and there is no milk out here to hide it.
- Pull the bags or strain the leaf. Squeeze the bags against the pot wall.
- Stir in the sugar until you cannot feel grit on the spoon.
- Add 250 ml of cold water to bring it down to drinking temperature. In hot weather, sink the pot in a creek for five minutes instead.
The source for this was a kombucha recipe, which needs a week of room-temperature fermentation, a live culture, a pH strip, and refrigeration afterward. None of that belongs in a pack. What survives the trip is the tea base underneath it: a black-and-green blend, steeped short and below boiling, carrying a heavy dose of sugar.
The temperature matters more than the timing. Green tea leaf dumped into water at a full boil goes astringent in under a minute, and the black tea makes that worse rather than covering it. Sixty seconds off the heat is enough of a drop. The sugar is not a garnish either — two tablespoons is a hundred-odd calories of fast fuel, which is the actual reason to carry sugar instead of drinking plain tea.
Packing
Tea, sugar, and any powder go into one small bag per serving. Loose leaf is lighter than bags but you will be picking leaves out of your teeth unless you carry a strainer.
Variations
- Cold-soak version: same tea and sugar in a bottle of cold water, four hours, no stove. Milder and never bitter.
- Half the sugar and double the black tea if you want it as a morning drink rather than an afternoon one.
https://nchfp.uga.edu/how/dry/recipes