Easy Very Berry Iced Tea

On a hot summer day, there’s nothing better than a tall glass of iced tea. The very berry iced tea recipe is easy to make, and we have fun trying out different tea and fruit combinations.

We love ordering Starbuck’s Very Berry Hibiscus tea in the summertime, but don’t love the price tag. So, we thought we’d try recreating this very berry iced tea recipe at home. Turns out you can make a whole pitcher of iced tea for the price of one cup. You can also make a big batch and savor a cup every afternoon for a week from the comfort of home.

It’s easy to control the level of sweetness in your iced tea recipe. We typically match a batch of simple syrup (all you have to do is boil sugar until it dissolves). Converting sugar into a syrup first just makes it easier to dissolve in cold iced tea, so you’re not stirring until your arm falls off. Then we’ll sweeten our iced tea pitcher lightly, and put the remaining simple syrup in the fridge. Since the chef likes his tea sweeter than I do, he can just add some more syrup to his tea when he’s ready to enjoy.

For the “berry” part of this iced tea recipe, we enjoy using freeze-dried strawberries, blueberries, or raspberries. The convenience of freeze-dried berries is that you can keep them in your cupboard and not have to worry about them going bad. However, you can definitely use fresh summer berries as well if you have them on hand. 

We also have a shaker which makes it easy to mix together the berries and tea. However, you can just as easily use a spoon to swirl the berries and tea in a cup, if that’s what you have available. The shaker just makes me feel a little bit like James Bond as I’m making this refreshing iced tea recipe at home.