Earl Grey Tea Ice Cream

Making Earl Grey flavor in bulk proved to be quite a challenge. We needed to find bags large enough to steep such big quantities of tea, and durable enough so that the bags would keep together when we were done steeping. Tea absorbs a lot of liquid, and those bags grow heavy. A friend of Ben's who was working at Brooklyn's Sixpoint Brewery at the time gave us giant mesh steeping bags the brewery used for hops—and they made the whole large-batch operation a cinch. Of course, at home, things are much simpler; you can use good tea in tea bags or loose tea that you place in a separate tea bag, and you can even let the tea leaves float in the dairy mixture and strain them out later. The key is to find tea you love—it will make a real impact on the quality of your ice cream.