Cooking Experiment Success

I have wanted for awhile now to make my own iced tea. It's just too much hassle and not quite right to make it using a powder or syrup. There's always... too much sweet or not enough, or too much bite, or some other something wrong. 

So I decided to try to make my own. Found a recipe, followed it... sort of. And boom! Iced tea.

The main recipe. My set up:

• 6 tea bags: 2 English Breakfast, 1 Irish Breakfast, 2 Peppermint, 1 Orange (herbal, not pekoe)
• 2 cups boiling water. Put the bags in the water. Add the SECRET INGREDIENT.
• Wait 15 minutes. Remove tea bags.
• Add sweetening. Recipe called for 3/4 c sugar. I did slightly less than 1/2 c sugar and slightly less than 1/4 c honey. Next time I'll minus some of each... it was a little too sweet, but not too too sweet. Stir until all is dissolved.
• Add this fabulously concentrated mix to 6 cups cool water. I did the concentrated stuff in a 2 cup measuring cup and put the cool water in the pitcher, then the pitcher in the fridge while the stuff steeped. Pour the concentration in the cool while stirring gently (a few good spins will keep the water moving and will do most of the work for you) in a slow but steady stream.
• Put pitcher in fridge, clean up mess, pour iced tea over ice, enjoy.

And now I bet you're wondering about the SECRET INGREDIENT. A pinch (little pinch) of baking soda. You ask, "why?" Well, I'll tell you. It does battle with the acidic biting stuff in the tea, so that the end result is a strong, but smooth tea.

•