The Best Way To Make Peach Iced Tea Without Artificial Flavors

While normal iced tea is fine, an easy way to transform boring iced tea is to add in fruits. Stone fruits like peaches are known for tasting especially sweet and only a little acidic, making them a great choice. However, you don't make peach iced tea by simply squeezing the fruit into the beverage. The not-so-secret ingredient here is a homemade peach syrup, which you mix together with brewed tea, sweetening it without any artificial fruit flavoring.

You can easily make peach syrup yourself using peach juice, sugar, and water – some recipes incorporate lemon juice to add a mild citrus punch. By itself, the syrup might taste a little like a fruit candy, but once it's contrasting with the mildly bitter tea, the flavors will even out, and the ice will make it especially refreshing. 

On that note, black tea is the popular choice here, as that's typically what you'd use to make regular sweet tea or an Arnold Palmer (iced black tea and lemonade). That said, iced peach green teas exist too — even at Starbucks — so feel free to experiment with your base.

You could just buy a premade peach syrup, but there's no reason to when syrups are extremely easy to make. Fresh or frozen peaches will both work in this three-ingredient fruit syrup, but different recipes will call for varying proportions of water, sugar, and peaches. To start, you can use equal parts sugar and water and 2 cups of peaches for a more balanced syrup or increase the amount of sugar if you prefer a sweeter sip. In either case, remove the pits (if necessary), chop the peaches, and simmer the ingredients together.

If you don't mash the peaches while they cook, the color of the syrup might look somewhat muted, but the peach flavor will still be present. Once it's cool, strain out the peach chunks, and your syrup is ready for tea. Meanwhile, blending the entire mixture or pressing the peaches while straining will add more color and thickness to the syrup.

Unsurprisingly, there are plenty of ways to get more creative besides just swapping out black for green tea. Since you're making the syrup yourself instead of buying it, you can add in extras like cinnamon sticks or vanilla. Fresh herbs are simply magic in your sweet tea, and a simple mint leaf garnish makes each glass look professional.