Mountain Fresh Sun Berry Tea

A Combination of Herbal Teas - Local Berries and Fresh Mountain Water

The first step in making most normal tea recipes is to make sure the water is fresh and clean. This is done by boiling the water. Because my grandmother lived way up in the mountains of Colorado she had access to the coldest cleanest water imaginable. If you are not able to get that type of water you could use any clean source that you like. This recipe depends on water that is clean enough to drink without needing to boil the water.

Take a mix of herbal teas. You need equivalent to 6 bags of tea for this recipe. You can use all the same type of herbal tea or you can experiment and mix the herbal tea types. My grandmother's favorite was a mixture of cinnamon apple and any type of peach flavored tea. She used four bags of the cinnamon apple and two bags of the peach flavor. In the early morning she went to the creek and took out a 4 quart pail of clean cold water - no one lived up stream from my grandmother's ranch so the water was, in those days, always considered pure and safe. She let the water set in the shade for one house and then took 2 quarts into a heavy glass jar with a top that could be shut tight. She hung the tea bags as deep into the jar as possible and use string or rubber bands to make sure the bags stayed suspended in the water in the jar. She added a sprig or two of mountain water washing mint fresh from the garden just before she closed the top.

Then the jar was placed outside on a stump of wood (not necessary for the taste of the tea - but it was part of the ritual) in an area where it would always be in the sun. She would leave the tea in the sun for 4 hours before we were allowed to drink any. Actually she told us we could have had tea as soon as the color of the water was brown to our liking but she liked her tea stronger and so the longer time in the sun. There were times when we arrived later in the day and she managed to make tea in less than 1 hour.

As soon as she deemed the tea was ready we opened the bottle and poured out drinks for who ever wanted some. The rest was put into the cool room, or refrigerator. She had mountain honey for us to use to sweeten the tea but we were only allowed one spoonful and that from a special and very small spoon.