When I was a child, my mother used to make apple mint tea. Not with dried, tea in a tea kettle, but with fresh mint boiled in water which she would lightly sugar, and then put in a glass pitcher in the refrigerator. A refreshing caffeine free beverage on a hot summer day!

I’ve been really busy canning (mixed stone fruit jam, pickles, relish, and soon to be tomato butter) in a hot kitchen and it’s been pretty hot outside. It got me thinking about when I was small and my mother used to make apple mint tea. My mint is going insane this year. I have spearmint, and peppermint growing like crazy. I thought that would be pretty refreshing, so I decided to make some spear/peppermint tea like my mother did, though I didn’t add any sweetener.

It doesn’t take much. I cut three branches about 18 inches long. I’d guess it was about 2 cups of leaves, but the stems have a lot of flavor, too. I stripped the leaves off the stems (to run through the food processor later to put in a chocolate dump cake) and put both the leaves and stems in a pot with 1 gallon of water.

Boil the mint leaves for about 5 minutes. It won’t be a very dark color at first, but the longer it steeps, the darker it gets. However, I’m not sure that this can be over steeped, so don’t feel like you must watch it closely. I suppose you could drink it warm, but it is really very good cold. Hot mint tea is for winter and dried leaves. This is fresh mint tea, best served iced in summer!

I let it cool, then strained it off. Instead of a pitcher, (though I’ve done that too) I put it in recyled glass jars from our local juicer and put them in the refrigerator. One could easily put it in Mason jars to chill as well.

Easy single serving cold tea. You would think it would be really minty,  but it isn’t. Super refreshing. Even my daughter that hates mint loves it. No sugar, no sweeteners,  just mint, water. A jar and a refrigerator.

I made a batch last week that had a nectarine cut up in it, and that was really tasty! Variations my mother used to make were lemon-lime apple mint tea, peach mint tea. Endless possibilities!