One of the most enjoyable parts of our job is discovering amazing local suppliers who share our love of authentic, locally sourced food and drink. People who have a passion to ensure their product is the best it can be, to have real taste and give the consumer a new and exciting experience. Meeting the guys behind the Batch Tea Company recently was certainly one of those occasions.

Batch Tea are on a mission to show the British tea drinking public that there are many great leaf teas with incredible flavour profiles and distinctive features, and that you don’t have to pay an arm and a leg for them. They also have fun using their top quality blends in collaboration with other local producers. Cue Tea and Gin cocktails a project they have recently shared with Sheffield’s True North who produce Sheffield Dry Gin. The blog below was originally posted by Batch Tea Co at batchtea.co.uk

Gin Iced Tea

Gin & Tea. Tea & Gin. A love of these things is as British as, well, a love of tea and gin.

And when you put them together, pretty bang on things happen.

It takes a bit of experimenting, but that’s generally the fun part! In this game there’s no such thing as failure; just opportunities to drink more booze.

We’ve experimented with a couple of different methods, including using tea as a mixer for the gin, infusing the tea into the gin and then coming up with combinations & cocktails of the 2.

And we’ve come up with some top notch stuff. And #1 we’d like to share is this lil beaut below.

Watch out for more interesting and exciting additions as well (currently experimenting with matcha foams, syrups and caramels, for instance! Yum.)

Gin Iced Tea - the Recipe

Let’s start simple. Gin + Iced Tea = Gin Iced Tea. OK, well, it’s not that simple…

Waddya need?

25ml London Dry style Gin – we use True North’s Sheffield Dry Gin (which isn’t technically a London Dry, but it’s broadly similar, and better. It’s not only lovely, but local too. (For us of course, maybe not you. You use your own local one if you choose. We’re not proprietary about these things)

25ml apple juice. The regular type, not cloudy.

50ml “classic iced tea” (strong steeped Absolute Assam with plenty of lemon juice and sugar, left to cool for a couple of hours. Standard Ceylon teas also work a treat for iced teas). Don’t try short cut it and use a bought, bottled iced tea. Well, you can, but then, frankly, you deserve everything you get...

2 big blackberries, on the turn so they’re just a little bit soft, & a slice of lemon to garnish.

Basically, pop your ice into a rocks or hi-ball glass, add your gin, add your blackberries and give them a quick muddle, pour on apple juice and iced tea. Stir it all together. Sit back, chill & enjoy like you’re watching the chaps and lassies in stripy trousers hitting a ball with big mallets through strange hoops on a rich man’s lawn in mid-Summer.

Nom.

And if, like us, you live in Britain and don’t have a Summer, you might fancy the warm version of the Gin Iced Tea. That’s right, it’s called Gin Tea! Genius.

To make this simply make your lemon-y sugary strong tea, pour into a cup or mug with the apple juice, gin and blackberries. Give the blackberries a little stir to get some of their lovely dark fruit juices into the tea and enjoy. Rosie nose & rosie cheeks on a cold wintry evening.

Let us know how you get on! 😊