One of my absolute favorite places in San Francisco is Samovar Tea Lounge with their incredible mindfullness and gorgeous teas (and, of course, this beautiful Royal Ease Kuan Yin!)
I found some recipes for frozen tea treats on an old blog of theirs and for those of you feeling excess FIRE chi that need to COOL down, here are some wonderful ideas!
From Samovar: “My suggestions: tea ice pops (better known by their branded name, Popsicles)… pick a tea with a full, summery, sweet flavor...
Brew your chosen tea at double strength (using twice the leaves you’d normally use). Strain your tealeaves. Then, add your preferred sweetener and plenty of it! (As the tea freezes, it will lose a lot of the sweetness in the flavor. Besides, who ever heard of a lightly sweetened Popsicle?) If you’d like, you can also add flavor by blending in ingredients like lemon juice, mango nectar, finely chopped mint leaves, puréed strawberries or almond paste. No matter what you add, stir it in very well.
If you’re making ice pops, pour them into Popsicle molds (or into tall, narrow, heat-safe, freezer-safe plastic cups, with one spoon sticking out of each cup) and place them in the freezer. After the first hour, stir the mixture. (This helps keep the sweetener and other ingredients from concentrating in the tips of the ice pops.) Then, keep them in the freezer until frozen (about four hours, depending on the size and your particular freezer).
There is one more frozen tea treat I'd like to mention: tea ice cubes. Instead of letting ice water down your chilled tea as you sip it, you can freeze the same tea type (to keep your flavor consistent) or a different tea type or different approach to the same tea, such as added honey or lemon juice (to let the flavor become more complex as the ice melts).
For added visual appeal, wait until your ice cubes are half-way frozen, drop a beautiful brewed tealeaf (oolongs are great for this), a rose petal, a ripe raspberry or another colorful, food-safe item into the center of each cube, and then continue freezing the ice cubes”.
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