Temperature is on the rise so naturally everybody craves for cold drinks, us included.
Iced tea is one popular drink in hot weather but its time to up your game with cold brew tea if you haven’t tried it. One might wonder why bother with cold brew, when you can simply hot brew a tea and add ice to it.
Why should you cold brew your tea?
The big plus of cold brewing your tea is that when it slowly extracts the delicate, delectable flavor notes from the tea, the cold water temperature helps to keep the tannins at bay. The result is a clean, crisp tea with many of the intricate flavor. It is also a great way to push the last mile out of spent tea leaves. We are often surprised by how much you could squeeze out with cold brew.
How to cold brew loose leaf tea?
Even though it might take longer to brew (we usually brew ours overnight) but the preparation can’t be any simpler. All you need to do is to put the tea leaves with room temp or chilled water in the fridge and your tea will be ready 8 hours later. We like to start with a tea to water ratio of 1g:100ml and adjust to the taste for subsequent brew. Just make sure premium whole tea leaves are used so you won’t end up with a flat tasting tea.
Drinking it straight is the most thirst quenching way to enjoy the many wonderful flavor a cold brew tea has to offer. Yet sometimes you might like your tea sweeten. We recommend using natural sweetener, such as raw cane sugar or honey, to compliment the botanical feature of cold brew tea. Infusing tea with fruit is another favorite. We like to cut up citrus slices or place whole berries in the brew without crushing or juicing. Just a hint of fruitiness gives you the perfect balance to the delicate cold brew tea.
More drink ideas for cold tea
Another interesting twist is to cold brew your tea other beverages other than water. Courtesy to Jan, we have been brewing our tea in oat milk and the result is interestingly different. Compared to adding brew tea to the milk, cold brewing the tea directly in the milk seems to gel the flavours well.
And if you wish to play with stronger flavor, you should brew a tea concentrate by lowering the tea to water ratio. Tea concentrate is great for mixing. While there is no hard rules but some of the juice combo we like are white tea + peach juice, oolong + berries and black tea + citrus. And if you are into mixology, the botanical flavor profiles from tea would give you another great ingredient to play with for your creations.
There are many ways to enjoy cold brew tea so be creative and let us know which is your favorite.