A Tube of Tea, please?

I don’t get it.

You’re going to have to explain it to me. Sure, sure, when it comes to a hot day on the beach nothing’s better than a cooler of drinks. You’ll find me head down, bottom up, clawing through layers of chipped ice, looking for a soda.  I used to drink beer, but it just gives me a headache and flabby gut now.

Sometimes I run into bottles of home-brewed root beer  or sparkling peachy ciders. Heavenly Hoopla. Pop the top on that! ! It doesn’t take a huge effort to make home-sodas. You can start a batch of ginger ale tonight and be drinking it by tomorrow evening.

But what in the name of summer holiness is canned tea?  Why would anyone want to can the stuff?

Every time I run across a 99 cent, 23=ounce tube of canned  tea, I scratch my head. For 99 pennies,  I can brew up enough tea juice to satisfy a work gang. It’s not rocket science.

See the great explanation of this stuff at: bubbleteaology.com

I understand you may have to pay more for novelty gunk thrown into tea like: those chewy boba tapioca balls in bubble  tea (which have NO flavor or nutritional value whatsoever).  But that’s still only tea, sugar, cream, and tapioca bobas.  No mystery there—just chewy lumps in your sugared drink.

Dallas Cowboy Fan and I recently went into an artisan tea shop located in a caboose which was curiously parked no where near a train. The lower walls of the train car were stuffed with clear quart jars of “tea debris.” We dutifully smelled and sniffed sticks, leaves, and berries. Then we climbed ladders to sit 6 feet up in tiny booths to enjoy our cups which were 8 oz, $5 each, (which was a bit unnerving, but I think the the zen music was supposed to even out my tea confusion.)

And yet, I’m still befuddled about canned tea. For example, the Arizona tea company reported a billion bucks in sales last year for their fructose/water/tea mixture.

A couple of years ago, the uber-secret recipe was for Coca Cola was published by This American Life who’d found it  inadvertently displayed in a graphic accompanying an old ad. Coke denies it. They still maintain the “current” recipe is in the vault and only 2 executives know the formula and those two people can never travel together.

You can look at the recipe here. It’s rather tedious. I’d just buy a can instead of going through all the work to denature cocoa leaves.

So just for you, dear readers, and for the sake of cookery journalism, I’m going to reveal the ULTRA-X secret recipe of MeeMaw’s Summer Tea

• Throw  5-8 bags of tea in a gallon jug of water.
• Screw the lid on so the bugs, wasps,  and muddobbers don’t take a dip.
• Set in sunshine 3-5 hours (depends on how hot it is. Go by the color).
• Sweeten to taste.

Sorry canned tea companies if I put you out of business. It’s just that some changes (like canned tea) will have to be explained to me.

‘Fess up!! How many of you are tubed-tea-drinkers?