Mission: Accomplished

If I die tonight it will be because my heart exploded from happiness. And there will Iced Tea everywhere. From my previous post you will know that I was not satisfied with my first attempt at duplicating the Bizzle Black Iced Tea, Unsweetened. My second attempt was even worse. I decided to not dilute the concentrate ahead of time, but just put it in the fridge and dilute by the cup each morning. Here's the thing. If you don't dilute the tea before refrigeration, it clouds. But not only does it cloud to a sort of rusty nails soaking in milk for days kind of color, it tastes close to something like that too. But given that I'm somewhat dim when it comes to all things kitchen related, I thought, wow, this is, like, SUPER concentrated. So I added a bit more water and off to work I went. a row. That morning, my heart started racing on account of the concentratedness of the tea. And I decided that the horrible taste didn't go away enough even as the ice melted and threw the batch out. Well, the taste and the insane mold that had started to grow on the top of the pitcher after only a day in the fridge. But tonight, T Diddy came over. And after hours of boiling and steeping and blind taste tests instituted by my husband, BG, we did it. We conquered the tea. After hours of them looking at me as if I was stark raving mad, and conducting wine-like tastings complete with swishing and swirling, we did it. With the help of reading the 77 reviews of the product on cooking.com, we found what sounded like a reasonable recipe and followed it to the tea (ha get it!). I almost started crying when I tasted the finished product. Pure heaven. I will not be able to sleep tonight because of the caffeine intake and am so full of liquid that I feel refreshed all over again every time I burp - ohhh snap, I should have warned the squeamish before that part. But it has all been worth it to know that I can save about 7 cents per ounce...well, factor in the 3 tea bags wasted during testing and that figures out to a savings of about 1/2 cent...but we won't dwell. I will be up first thing in the morning to ready my glass of tea. And if you see me on Sunday and I have a helmet on with those tubes leading to my mouth, it won't be filled with beer. It is not letting me post any photos for some reason, but T Diddy, there will be a special message up on here for you soon. Stay tuned!