Southern Sweet Tea and Bourbon Cocktails

Summer in the south.  It’s a different kind of heat.  A different kind of hot.  On top of being hot, it’s humid which amplifies the heat oh, about 100 times making it incredibly unbearable.   On a truly hot day it may be 100, but feels like 110 and when you walk out the doors it feels like you’ve just walked into a sauna.

Despite the heat, we still enjoy pool parties, backyard cookouts, and outdoor get togethers.  But, in order to survive those hot summer days and nights beverages are must be in abundance and cocktails, of some sort, are definitely preferred!

So what better beverage to use as a base of a cocktail than tea.  Not just any tea though, southern style sweet tea.  But when it comes down to it, is there really anything other than southern style sweet tea?  I didn’t think so!

So, without further or-do I present to you a truly southern cocktail.  This, my friends, starts with a simple southern sweet tea.  To that, fresh mint and a few orange slices are added and then muddled to really incorporate the flavors and release all the oils and juices from the mint and orange.  Once those are combined, the mixture sits for just a few minutes so the flavors can really incorporate into one another.  After that it’s poured over ice in a raw sugar rimmed mason jar…because does it really get any more southern than drinking out of a mason jar?  I think not!

Anyway.  So you pour the orange mint sweet tea over the ice, add a glug of bourbon…two if you really like the stuff!  Then a splash of soda water…if you want a little fizz!  Then you sip away and quickly forget about natures steam sauna!

Happy summer y’all.  And be sure to enjoy at least one of these at your next get together…or perhaps tonight just for the heck of it!

Southern Sweet Tea and Bourbon Cocktails

Ingredients:


2 Cups southern sweet tea
2 Thick slices orange, peel on, plus more for garnish
1/4 Cup loosely packed fresh mint
2-4 Oz Bourbon, divided
2 Oz soda water, divided, optional
Sugar in the raw, for glasses, optional

Directions:


Place tea, orange slices and mint in a large cup and muddle.  Allow to sit for 10 minutes.

Rub a slice of orange around the rim of two glasses.  Roll in sugar.  Fill glasses with ice.  Pour 1 ounce of bourbon in each glass, 2 if you’d prefer it stronger.  Pour tea in each glass, leaving a little room at the top if you want to add a little fizz to the cocktail.  If you want a fizzy cocktail, add an ounce of soda water to each glass.  Garnish with orange slice and mint.  Serve.

Recipe source: A Lynsey Original