Take The Bitterness Out Of Brewed Sweet Tea With An Instant Pot

When warmer weather finally begins, so begins the consumption of cold beverages. You may know the pleasure of having an ice-cold beverage sitting in front of you on a hot day — calling it refreshing is an understatement. Drinking something cold on a hot day can not only make you feel a bit cooler, but it can also help you stay hydrated, which is especially important when the temperatures begin to warm up, per CDC. 

While it can be super enjoyable on a sunny day to go out for iced coffee or sweet tea, somedays you really need to stay home, or be in the office. On these days it might be handy to have some quality sweet tea on hand at home. While there are numerous ways you can make sweet tea, from brewing it in the sun, to hot brewing it and letting it cool, cold-brewing it, or using a store-bought concentrate with cold water and ice. You might benefit from using this unexpected kitchen hack to brew tea with a better flavor. 

Sweet tea is commonly made by making a sweetened black tea or sweetened black tea concentrate and then adding lemon and ice to that to cool it down and flavor it. Before you can enjoy some sweet tea you need to either brew a batch of black tea, or brew black tea concentrate. The latter being useful if you're hoping to drink it for a few days. Cold brewing your tea takes a while and can sometimes lead to a weaker, milder flavor, says Serious Eats. However, traditional methods for brewing tea might lead to a bitter flavor, explains The Kitchn. So what do you do if you're hoping to have un-bitter, strongly brewed tea to use as the building block for your sweet tea? Try your instant pot.

The Kitchn notes that the instant pot will heat the water so fast that it brews the tea much quicker than other. methods. Because the tea will boil so fast, the flavor will be stronger and doesn't have time to become bitter. A strong tea with mellow flavor is a perfect technique for making a black tea concentrate, which Sustainable Cooks notes saves space in your fridge. Try this trick next time you want sweet tea, and you'll save time, save space and save flavor.