It’s been such a cool summer that I haven’t had to spend much time thinking about how to cool down, until the past couple of weeks when summertime temps finally arrived. On Sunday, I made a batch of sun tea using six bags of cold brew black tea and two bags of a blackberry hibiscus cold brew tea.

It was okay, but far from great. The fruity tea gave it a synthetic, room deodorizer flavor that hit ya in the back of the throat. It was quite unpleasant. It gave me flashbacks of my time at ChemDry.

We had a line of carpet deodorizers. There were three scents. The most popular one was Apple/Cinnamon, but I was sort of partial to the Mulberry. I don’t remember what the third scent was; I just remember that it was universally disliked. The mulberry scent was nice until the day a can of it fell off the shelf in the van and got wedged with the aerosol spray tip depressed. It must have discharged half the can inside the van before we realized what was happening, pulled the van to the side of the road, stopped, got out, found it in the back of the van, and got it unwedged.

After that, I couldn’t stand the smell of it or any other artificial berry scent. I’m a little better now, but strong berry scents still turn my stomach a bit.

My first batch of tea was a bit too strong on the berry scale, so when I made my second batch, I used seven bags of black tea and just one of the blackberry hibiscus, and that was the perfect balance. Just a hint of fruitiness to lighten the black tea.

Once it’s cold, I like to make my own version of an Arnold Palmer by mixing half tea with Topo Chico Lime Seltzer. There’s nothing better on these hot ass, devil’s anus, dog days of summer.