Clear Iced Tea?

[Martind4]

I've learned so much useful information from this site I thought I'd ask for some help here. When I make iced tea (Lipton large teabags), I follow the recipe on the box. Bring water to almost a boil, then steep the two teabags for 5 minutes. My tea tastes great but is always cloudy. The water is double filtered through charcoal filters. Any ideas about what I'm doing wrong?

[NLOVNIT]

There could be several reasons:
*Hard water
*Not using blends made for being iced tea (there are more tannins in hot brew tea than blends made especially for iced tea, more tannins can cause cloudiness). I switched to Luzianne & it made a difference for me. If you like Lipton, switch to their iced tea brew bags.
*Stronger brewed tea tends to cloud more easily than lightly brewed tea
*Not allowing the tea to cool to room temperature before refrigeration

Give some of these a try & see if your brewed tea is clearer.

Lori-

[Lorna]

The water is hard (minerals in it make the tea cloudy). Our tea in FL would look more like mud. Until we moved to NC we didn't know it could look different When we were in NC with that nice mountain water, our teas looked beautiful (and actually tasted better). My mom made both tea and coffee in both states the same way and the only difference was the water. The stuff made in NC looked like something from an advertisement. If you want pretty tea, then use Spring or Reverse Osmosis water. We like Luizianne for iced tea.

[Ed-Sommers]

The trick to clear iced tea is a simple one that I have shared for a long time.

Forget the hot water, it is not needed! Just put the bags in room temp water and put the water in the fridge for the night. In the morning you will have beautifully clear amber shade, good tasting tea.

Ed