Summer
Every summer brings with it the sunshine, warmth, gardening, and nowadays a mild to moderate sense of dread regarding the destabilization of Earth's ability to maintain its climate cycle. It also means I must exist out of doors without air conditioning and face the fact that I will melt in an extremely ungraceful fashion.
I've tried my hand at creating tools to better inform me in this fight, such as an Alexa skill to alert me when I expect to melt. Sadly this is ineffective in that even in the northern American midwest we're still pulling temperatures well over my threshold, which I estimate to be approximately 72 degrees in Freedom units (22c for you metric afficionados), in combination with any appreciable humidity. Living near a lake means the latter is virtually always a given and as the core summer months consistently go well above that temperature value by 10am, this is a losing battle as I'm merely informed that yes I will in fact melt today.
Iced Beverages as Relief
One of the more effective summertime hobbies I've taken to involves the creation of cold beverages in attempt to be able to fool myself into thinking that maybe I can survive the melting heat. Traditionally this means a never ending quest of making and consuming cold brew coffee.
The cold brew coffee recipe I've taken to using deals somewhat with the less desirable aspects of cold brew coffee as compared to the simple grounds plus water in a jar method. No shade or anything, everyone can enjoy what they like, but as a coffee drinker who appreciates some of the finer flavor notes of coffee, this is bound to be a bit of a losing battle for me. As a result I have taken this year to merely icing my coffee and, while fine for my morning routine, leaves me with a bit of a gap when wishing for something in the afternoon or when I travel. I've also chosen to reduce the overall amount of caffeine intake overall and while I could make more decaf, that just sounds like sad brown bean water.
In spite of my dilemma it came to me, after traveling to yet another soccer tournament for my kid and needing to pick up beverages from a gas station, I realized that one of the beverages I enjoy in summer that I'd somehow forgotten about in a post pandemic era haze, is the Arnold Palmer. Readily available at most American gas stations and grocery stores, usually from an iced tea company that shares a name of a southwestern state, a sizable can of 23 fl oz usually costs about 99 cents.
note: For the uninitiated wondering how an old pro golfer became involved, the drink is named after him as it was a regular of his, and consists of (unsweetened) iced tea and lemonade in approximately equal proportions, served over ice.
Why Make When You Can Buy?
For the last few years of my life I've been attempting to embrace hobbies that don't involve me continuing to be in front of a computer. Frequently I find myself spending time in a way that would be less costly to merely purchase a thing, but as I value the process, learning, and sometimes just the ability to build a thing with my hands more, sometimes I take on a variety of projects to exercise things in a non-digital sense. When it comes down to anything now it seems choosing how to spend my time, or how much of it. That's probably the largest driving factor behind my desire for recording the following levels of effort for reward, when it comes to making your own. Additionally, the store purchased Arnie Palmer includes high fructose corn syrup. I've been attempting to reduce some things in life, so if I can avoid having that in what I drink an increasing amount of, that sounds like a good thing.
Making It Myself
Assembling the two components is pretty non-trivial and the beverage is somewhat forgiving, thankfully. So if you merely combine and "eyeball it" for the amounts, you'll be fine without any extra effort there. I'm treating the task of combining the iced tea with the lemonade as an arbitrary operation to perform with the focus on the effort of making its component parts. Speaking of, what's the short version story on those anyway? Well, I'm glad you asked.
Iced Tea
As with anything, this will be as complex as you make it. There's trouble with iced tea that is hot brewed first, so the trick is to cold brew the tea. Your technique can vary and go with what's best for you, but I've found that ~10g of loose black tea in a quart jar of water is best. This doesn't need to be left out or anything, you can pop that into your fridge for a half day or so as a minimum. When you're ready, strain out the leaves and pour into a jar; I reuse the jar after clearing the leaves well.
Lemonade
You can make yours from a mix, make it from scratch a couple different ways, or just buy the premium quality stuff from the store. The mixes are certainly easy, pour into water and stir until it's dissolved. Making lemonade from scratch can happen a couple of ways, I'll cover one here shortly.
A Quick and Dirty Decision Tree
At least, this is approximately how I see it.
0. No Effort, It's Fine
Just buy it. When it's on sale by me, a gallon from the grocery store costs $3. I'm curious to see my ratio of purchase versus make is after another year.
1. Low Effort, Moderate Reward
Make the iced tea because it's easy and you can control the quality and flavor of the tea. Currently I have a batch that I'm trying of earl gray which I'm hoping carries through to play well with the lemon flavor. This relies on mixing with a mix for the lemonade, or rather whatever you have on hand as we usually have a mix on hand. It's not greatest quality or flavor, but it is worth drinking if you don't have another readily available, so that's something. Honestly for how easy this combination is, it's probably going to be a good fallback for me.
2. Low Effort, Better Quality Lemonade, High Reward
The same as the previous option, but buying and using some high quality lemonade. Store bought stuff, possibly from those Simply folks, makes for some good lemonade with a really low ingredient list. So this option is a redux, but a little bit better.
3. High Effort, Highest Reward
Okay, making the lemonade from scratch, but let's go all in. Herein is a basic description of the method I used this last time and honestly, it blew my mind.
The short version of things:
- let the lemons come to room temp, then roll them to make them easier to deal with (starts to separate the rind)
- halve and juice, save that juice in the fridge
- quarter the halves, seed, and toss in a bowl with some sugar
- cover, leave at room temp, toss every 45 minutes for 3 hours
- then remove the rinds (I gave them a good squeeze) and your concentrate can be added with 1 cup of that juice from earlier
This is in the vicinity of a lemon concentrate that also have enough sweetness to merely need a little extra water for a high quality lemonade. It's also relatively easy, so while I describe this technique as "high effort", that's relative to doing no work.
If you want more on this technique, I got it from the Serious Eats recipe; they call for 3 pounds of lemons and 2 cups (400g) of sugar. If I were to do it again, it would be with the following addendum: just use all the lemons. My grocery store sells 2 pound bags when available, instead of sticking to "just" 3 pounds, I could've done all 4 from the two bags I purchased and had just a bit more by the time I was done without more fuss, I'm not sure it would've needed much if any more sugar.
Wrapping Up
I don't know if anyone reading this will plan on changing up what they do, but I hope this lends some inspiration towards attempting the admittedly intensive scratch made lemonade at least once. As someone who has come to enjoy lemons even more over the last few years, this may still be something I make only a couple times in a summer, but it's certainly got a great effect.