Introduction
If you are just getting into tea brewing, then you will be happy to know that there are so many techniques and recipes that, if you tried them all, you will probably be drinking a different type of tea every day for a very long time! Which is great because we can guarantee you will never get sick of tea. In fact, you might become one of those weirdos who carry tea with them wherever they go – in short, an avid tea lover.
However, tea carrying habits aside, let’s chat about cold brew tea. What’s that? You mean you can cold brew tea? Glad you now know! Tea is a versatile drink and during warm weather, you don’t have to settle for the usual steaming or warm tea just to get a kick out of it or get an iced tea.
You can instead enjoy a cold brew tea whenever you are thirsty. In fact, if you want to drink water more, especially in the warmer months, but want something more flavorful, then set your eyes on cold brew. You can even play around with different types of tea, depending on what benefits you want to gain.
Cold brewing is different from the hot steeping because it takes longer and uses up more tea. It is also easier to make a cold brew tea because all you need is a pitcher or jar, tea leaves and water from your fridge. It does not even require sugar. Compared to iced tea and hot brews, it results in a better infusion.
When cold brewing, you eliminate the water heating process and make your tea using cold water. Therefore, a cold brew tea is one you make by steeping your tea in cold water for a certain amount of time, ranging from as little as 2 hours to over 12 hours, whether on your kitchen counter or in the fridge.
Cold-brew tea is especially great for delicate teas such as green tea because there is little risk for over-steeping. With delicate teas, it is easy to end up with a bitter drink if you steep for a little too long or use excessively hot water. As a result, if you are using the same amount of tea, you are bound to get tea that is stronger with hot steeping as opposed to cold steeping unless you leave it for a more extended period of time.
On the upside, green, white and herbal teas will have a more refreshing taste when cold brewed than hot steeping because cold brewing allows the flavor profile to slowly emerge. Hence, the tea will taste naturally sweet and clean without the bitterness that hot steeping often invokes.
That’s good news, but what makes for a fantastic tea taste when it comes to cold brew tea? The tea community generally has some rules of the thumb that comes with making different brews. However, this is mostly dependent on your taste buds. Every tea lover will find they like a specific taste over others or a particular brew or tea type over another.
Regardless, cold brew makes it easy for any tea lover to embrace it due to its refreshing, clean-tasting, naturally sweet feel.
Without the bitterness or astringency that can be found with hot brew tea, especially if you don’t brew them right, this makes cold brew teas an excellent drink when you are thirsty or looking for something refreshing that won’t leave you parched. And while cold brew tea is not stronger than hot brewed tea, it makes up for it by being aromatic and flavorful. This is why you will find avid tea drinkers have a cold brew tea in the fridge during warm weather.
What about bacteria?
One thing that many campaigners of hot brew teas cite is that cold-brewing your tea has a higher risk of bacteria. However, if you follow best practices for cold brewing, you will eliminate this risk.
First and foremost is to ensure that all your brewing equipment is kept clean and your hands, too, are clean. Next, don’t leave your cold brew tea exposed – not only on the counter but in the fridge as well. In fact, many tea lovers favor mason jars to keep the tea in while it brews over the hours.
Which brings us to the next point; do not keep your brew for long. In fact, once your cold brew tea is ready, make sure you drink it within 8 hours. A fresh cup of cold brew tea is always better than one that has been sitting in your fridge for days. Not to mention, there is less risk for bacteria growth.
Does cold brew tea need to be refrigerated?
Mostly, yes. The long answer to this question, however, is again dependent on the person. Some are quite content to have the tea brewing in a cooler section of your kitchen counter, while for others, refrigeration makes it better.
However, cold brew tea does not refer to iced tea, so don’t add ice cubes to hot tea, chilled down. You will only get a bitter brew with some splashes of water as you continue drinking it. The best practice is to steep your tea in cold water overnight for about eight hours to coax out those flavors without hurrying the process.
How does cold brewing tea work?
We get it: Cold brew tea does indeed sound exotic and even a little complicated. However, it is quite the opposite. Cold brewing tea is very simple and can involve the following easy steps:
- Select your tea of choice and have some cold water. You can play around with rations though a good ratio is 8-10g of tea per every liter of water.
- Pour the tea into your cold brew pitcher or jar and then add your filtered water.
- Leave the jug in your fridge for up to 12 hours for the tea to steep effectively.
- Once the tea has steeped, strain your tea leaves and enjoy your refreshing cold brew tea!
The ratio of your tea to water, while not that impactful, can still determine the flavor of your tea. If you use too little tea, you will have a bland, watery cold brew tea that is no better than water. However, using more is wasteful and we all know that high-quality teas do not come cheap! A rounded teaspoon of tea leaves for your liter of cold water can be an excellent ratio to use as a starting point before trying other ratios.
We have already mentioned that overnight brewing often yields the best result for a cold brew tea. While you can cold brew tea for even 12 hours, brewing for 24 hours will not produce much of a difference.
You can use water at room temperature if you want your brew to be lukewarm instead of very cold, but for best results, we suggest popping your brew in the fridge.
You can play around with your refrigerator’s thermostat to avoid an extra cold brew if that’s not what you want.
How to cold brew fast
Say you want a refreshing cold brew tea ASAP what then? How do you cold brew fast? This depends on the type of tea you choose. For example, for green tea, you can cold brew for at least 3 hours, and for white tea, 4 hours or more should be the steeping time you are aiming for. Black teas, herbal teas and fruit teas take more time to cold brew. Hence, if you want some cold tea fast, your best bet is to go with green tea.
Cold brew iced tea
As we showed earlier, iced tea is different from cold brew tea since to make iced tea, you steep your tea in hot water, chill it and pour over ice. While for cold brew tea, you steep in cold water for some hours. However, you can also enjoy a cold brew iced tea. What\’s that? Well, this is a cold brew tea that is poured over ice to make a cold brew iced tea.
Cold brew iced tea using tea bags
You can brew this using loose tea, which most tea geeks will swear by, but to avoid the risk of being tea snobby, let\’s also talk about teabags.
You can use cold brew tea sachets, which are somewhat similar to regular tea bags used for hot steeping, except for the fact that they contain bigger pieces of tea. You can also use standard tea bags.
To brew cold brew iced teas, you have to make the tea stronger than regular cold brew tea because you will add some ice. A good rule of thumb is to use 1.5 teaspoons of loose tea or 1 cold brew tea sachet or 2 teabags for a quarter-liter of water.
Use filtered or fresh, cool water to avoid the odd taste of unfiltered or stored water from interfering with the tea\’s flavor.
Pour the tea into a jar, add the water, close the jar, and store it in the fridge for 8-12 hours. Once you take it out, remove the tea bag or strain the tea add a sweetener such as honey, stevia or sugar and pour over ice.
One great tip for cold brew iced tea is to avoid using metallic containers while cold brewing tea. Use a plastic or glass container such as a mason jar. Also, ensure the container you are using to cold brew your tea has a lid to reduce the risk of bacteria growth and avoid the other food smells in your refrigerator from interfering with your tea\’s aroma and flavor.
Don\’t hesitate to experiment with your cold brew iced teas to enjoy multiple flavors, such as by mixing herbal tea and fruit teas with green teas and pouring the mix over ice.
What are cold-brew tea bags?
Cold-brew tea bags are different from regular tea bags. Often referred to as cold brew tea sachets, as mentioned earlier, they often contain larger pieces of tea leaves as opposed to tea bags, which mostly contain leaves crushed to dust.
While the leaves in cold brew tea bags are not as large as loose tea leaves or have more furl, they are nevertheless large enough for better infusion with cold water. But don\’t worry, you can still make a delicious cup of cold brew tea with regular tea bags. Just use twice the number of tea bags than cold brew tea bags. For a gallon of water, for example, use at least 4 regular tea bags.
Since they are relatively midway between regular tea bags and loose tea leaves, you can use cold brew tea bags with hot water. However, ensure you don\’t use water that is too hot or steep it for long; otherwise, you will end up with bitter tea.
Of course, as with hot tea, the quality of your tea also matters when it comes to cold brew tea. Whether you are using regular tea bags or cold brew tea bags, the higher the quality of your tea, the less the amount you will require to make a perfect cold brew tea. For example, for Lipton cold brew tea bags, you will require 2 tea bags for a gallon of water.
Combinations
While you can cold brew any tea, there are, however, teas that are the best candidates for this brewing method. For example, black tea has high tannin levels and hence can fail to hit the high refreshing notes that cold brew tea is known for.
For most tea drinkers, black cold brew tea is often made to be weaker to avoid giving the parched feeling. These teas are some of the best teas to use for cold brewing:
- White tea, which is creamy, delicate and aromatic
- Green tea, which is natural tasting and fresh
- Oolong tea when you want a balance between black
- Green tea and herbal or fruit teas for those herbal and fruity tones, respectively
But why stop there? You can make great cold brew tea blends using combinations of the teas such as green tea and herbal tea. You can also try combinations such as cold brew tea in milk. With this, add milk to your tea and then let it steep in the fridge. If you are using loose leaf teas, cold brew it, strain and add fruit such as strawberries, lemon or orange.
Benefits of cold brew tea
You must be wondering why so many people swear by cold brew tea, whether to just drink it cold or to make iced tea. Besides what we have highlighted throughout this post, such as easy technique, smooth complex flavors and better results with delicate teas, cold brew tea has many more benefits. Here are some of them:
Great for blending
Cold-brew tea is not only great for standalone teas but can also be enjoyed blended with herbs and even flowers or liquors. The long duration of steeping and the fact the temperatures are low allows the flavors to mix and complement each other perfectly, making it the best way to blend teas.
Less bitterness
Hot cups of teas can get bitter, especially if you use boiling water or let your tea steep for more than a few minutes. For delicate black tea, it doesn\’t even take boiling water for as long as your water is hot enough, you will end up with bitter tea.
On the other hand, cold brewing only extracts flavor and aroma and does not coax out the components that cause bitterness making it the best technique to enjoy less bitterness. That is why you will find quite many tea lovers that actually only enjoy cold-brewed tea. Besides, cold brew tea is refreshing for hot weather.
Enhanced nutritional benefits
When cold brewing tea, the technique helps coax out ore nutritional benefits. For example, due to the improved flavor, you will not feel the need to add more sugar and we all know that sugar undermines your health.
How much caffeine does cold-brewed tea have?
Cold brewing caffeinated tea usually results in tea that has half the tea caffeine content that hot steeping produces. This is great, especially for people who experience acidity yet love tea. So you can enjoy your tea without feeling the sometimes inconvenient effects of too much caffeine. Finally, when it comes to the cold brewing process, the resulting teas tend to retain even more antioxidants than hot steeping.
Improved aroma and flavor
Another benefit of cold brewing tea, especially for black teas and other caffeinated teas, is that it creates a sweeter flavor compared to hot infusion, which releases tannins that cause bitterness and causes a parched effect after drinking. This is because cold brewing will extract the smoother, more complex flavors.
Ease of making tea
With hot steeping, you have to be careful about the amount of tea and length of time it takes to brew your tea, among other things. However, cold brewing has an easy step and there is no need to worry about the temperatures of your water.
All you need is your quality tea, filtered water and then combine them and store in the fridge for later. Easy peasy!
In fact, you won\’t need fancy tools or tea kettles. As long as you have a jar, bottle, or pitcher with a lid, you are good to go. Just ensure you use mainly glassware as plastic bottles will make your cold brew grow warm faster. Plastic can also lend its aftertaste to your tea, so to be on the safe side, use a glass jar.
A mason jar is sufficient if you don\’t want to brew a large batch. In most cases, you don\’t even have to worry about a strainer because you can decant and leave the tea leaves in your brewing containers. If you are using cold brew tea sachets or tea bags, then you won\’t even have to worry about decanting at all.
Of course, just because you are cold brewing doesn\’t mean you cannot get tannins in your tea. Black tea is not a very good candidate for cold brewing for this reason. It has high levels of tannins that will still come out even with cold brewing, though not as much as they do with hot brewing. For this reason, you will find that many iced teas made using black tea are deliberately weak to avoid the presence of too much tannins. Even worse, you will find these teas loaded with sugar to find the astringency of the tannins.
Cold brew tea concentrate
What if you want to make a lot of iced tea at once but don\’t want to brew it all at once? Well, the answer to this question is cold brew tea concentrate. Cold-brew tea concentrate is made using less water and more tea to make it strong, which can then be mixed with ice and water.
Cold brewing your tea concentrate will result in a more naturally low acid concentrate that you can refrigerate for up to 14days. You can use it to brew your tea hot or cold with milk or cream or even iced over a period of days.
The ratio of your concentrate depends on how strong or weak you want your resulting number of cups of tea to be. Most people go with a 2:1 ratio. For example, for 4 cups of cold brew tea concentrate, combine 4 cups of water with 8 to 10 teaspoons of tea or a similar number of tea bags. You can buy cold brew tea at tea shops and supermarkets.
Alternatively, brew it yourself, especially if you are on intermittent fasting, as it helps keep you refreshed without adding many calories to your daily intake. Finally, if your tea turns cloudy, this could be due to tannins and caffeine bonding, especially if there is a change in temperature. So if you start with warm water, then refrigerate immediately, expect some cloudiness. To avoid this, use filtered cool water.