Add Fresh Cold Water To The Jar
Water is a key component to tea, so the quality of the water really matters.
Ideally, use cool, fresh, oxygenated water to make cold brew tea. Additionally, filtered water, free of funky minerals and odd tastes is highly recommended.
BPA Free, Filter-As-You-Pour Water Pitcher – Island Green
Since water can make or break a teas overall taste, having some sort of way to filter it is ideal. I have a water filter on my new refrigerator, but a Brita Filter Pitcher works really well, too.
That being said, if you dont have a way to filter water, I suggest using bottled water instead of unfiltered tap water.
So, to make the cold brew tea, pour cold or room temperature water into the jar containing the tea.
How Do You Make Cold Tea
Cold brew tea is very simple to make. Simply fill a clean glass container with water, measure out your tea leaves, and place it in the refrigerator to steep. You will need 1 teabag or 1 TB of loose leaf tea per 6-8 oz of water. You can steep it for as little as 6 hours or up to 24 hours. It is impossible to oversteep cold brew tea. You can always adjust your amount of tea per liking.
Once you are ready for a glass of your tea strain the brew to remove any tea leaves.
Strain Dilute And Chill
Remove the tea bags or strain out the loose-leaf tea. If youre adding sweetener, stir it into the hot tea before diluting the concentrated tea mixture with the remaining water. Refrigerate until chilled.
Editors tip: If you dont want to fuss with temperatures, Instant Pot iced tea is a good shortcut route to take. Simply add tea bags to the Instant Pot, fill with water and pressure cook on high for four minutes. Remove the tea bags and enjoy.
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Best Keurig For Making Iced Tea & Coffee:
Keurig has a lovely bunch of coffee and tea makers those are absolutely fantastic in serving the purposes. If you ask me the best Keurig for iced coffee or tea, I would strongly recommend Keurig K-Elite brewer.
You can brew tea and ice cubes together, and K-cups are compatible with iced coffee and tea. Most importantly, Elite models of Keurig offer a complete one-button press iced solution for you! Yes, it has an ICED button. It produces robust flavored tea, which is perfect for putting ice cubed into freshly brewed tea. The optimal flavor is not compromised a bit with this ice tea-making process.
If you already have a Keurig, you must be wondering is it perfect for iced tea or not! Dont worry, most of the Keurig are well equipped enough for preparing excellent cups of iced tea or maybe coffee.
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While The Tea Is Chilling Make Simple Syrup
If you’re going the sweet tea route , you’ll want some sweetener. Since the tea won’t be hot, you won’t be able to dissolve sugar directly into it. Instead, make a simple syrup of equal parts sugar and water to add to the tea once you’re ready to serve. You’ll need about 1/31/2 cup simple syrup to sweeten 8 cups of tea.
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Why Cold Brewing Makes The Best Iced Tea
Heat brings out the tannic, bitter flavors in tea . Without the heat, you end up with a very smooth, light, and refreshing tea with a flavor that just cant be beaten.
This is why I always cold brew my iced tea and recommend you do the same. Other than it being the best-tasting tea, its also the easiest to make.
Let me show you how.
How To Make Cold Brew Iced Tea
The method itself is incredibly simple. Just combine loose-leaf tea or whole tea bags and water in a pitcher and let the tea infuse the water for 6 to 12 hours in the refrigerator . Strain, and you have cold-brew tea that will taste great for days!
Bon Appetit suggested that they have best results with loose-leaf tea, so I used loose-leaf here, but Ive since been making lazy cold-brew tea by soaking whole bags in water, which tastes almost as good and is much easier to make.
Another option? Steep your loose-leaf tea in a clean French pressjust press down the filter to remove those loose tea leaves and pour!
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How To Make Cold Brew Tea: Basic Steps
The instructions for cold brew tea are almost too simple to call a recipe! It takes 1 minute to put together, then 6 hours to steep. Here are the basic steps of how to make cold brew at home:
- Place tea & water in the pitcher. Use cold water here.
- Refrigerate 6 hours, or overnight: Refrigerate for at least 6 hours, or up to overnight. We found there was a slight improvement in flavor overnight, but its very slight. So you can go ahead and enjoy at the 6 hour mark.
Things You Need To Make Cold Brew Iced Tea
If youre convinced cold brewing is the ideal way to make iced tea and youre ready to give it a go, this is all you need :
- Glass Jar with Lid
- Strainer or Infuser for Loose Tea
Another benefit of this straightforward manner of brewing tea is that no fancy or expensive equipment is required.
At a minimum you need a glass jar with a lid, but even then you can improvise and use a glass measuring cup or pitcher.
I really like the Ball glass jars I picked up at Target that allow me to make lots of individual flavors of iced tea. Plus, their flat sides fit snugly together in the refrigerator, saving space. And obviously, I can use them over and over.
4 Pack of 32 ounce glass canning jars with lids and regular mouth.
In addition, if you make cold brew tea with loose tea , you need a fine mesh strainer or an infuser to pour through. My infuser from Old Barrel Tea Company gets the job done perfectly.
Now, making large batches of iced tea, clearly requires a larger container. While a fancy tea maker is not necessary at all, if you make large batches of iced tea often, you may consider getting one.
Really, the tea maker is nothing more than a pitcher with an infuser. But its a cinch to use since all you have to do is remove the infuser when the cold brew is ready to drink.
Iced Tea Maker with patented Flash Chill Technology Made in USA, 2 Quart, Blueberry
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How To Make Cold Brew Tea
This is what you need for making cold brew tea at home:
- Mineral water: At room temperature. Around 1 litre of water for every 510g loose tea
- Tea leaves : Loose green tea, black tea, herbal tea or even tea bags can be used
- Sweetener : Honey, maple syrup or some chopped fruit is also an excellent choice if you are looking for a healthier option
- Ice-cubes : Fresh, for a better flavour
- Finishing touch: Try a slice of lemon, pieces of ginger, mint, fresh lime
- A large container, jar or bottle
Simply put all the ingredients in a jar and store this in the fridge for 4-6 hours.
Taste after the first 2 hours to see if the flavour matches your preference. Then continue tasting often, and as soon as it tastes perfect, take out the container and remove the tea with a strainer.
How To Make Cold Brew Iced Tea Safely
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Cold-brew tea is a major iced tea trend because it’s simple to brew and creates smooth classic flavors. It couldn’t be any easier.
Boutique teahouses and even foodservice tea outlets are offering cold brew options for iced tea.
The reason for this popularity is the smooth and subtle flavor profile of the cold brew method. Combined with the ease in preparation, making cold brew tea is a perfect summertime choice.
But how can you cold brew tea at home safely?
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Which Teas Are Good For Cold Brewing
You can use almost any tea for cold brewing, but some of them may require much more time to give the best flavor. For example, Chinese sencha is one of the best choices for cold brewing, while dark puerh is rarely used.
Brew green tea for at least 3 hours, white for 4, oolong and black for 5-6 hours, herbal tea for at least 8-12 hours and fruit teas for 12+ hours. Broken leaves will release flavor much faster than unbroken leaves. Tightly rolled oolongs such as Ti Kwan Yin may need more time too, compared to oolongs with twisted leaves.
Variation: Cold Brew Sweet Tea
Want to make sweet tea? Sweet tea is a popular style of iced tea with sweetener added. Its very popular in the Southern US and other countries like Indonesia. You can also use this cold brew tea method to make sweet tea: even though you dont heat it! Heres one step to add to the process:
- Stir in sugar: Add & frac13 cup sugar and stir until it dissolves.
This amount of sugar sweetens the tea just enough so that it accentuates the bold flavor of black tea, but not so much that its syrupy sweet. Its sweetened just enough .
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The Best Teas For Cold Brewed Ice Tea
Before I get too tea-snobby on the subject, I’ll say it again: you can cold brew any tea you want and get something good to drink. And yes, the difference between decent tea and great tea is much smaller with cold brew than hot. But chances are, if you’ve read this far, you’re okay going the extra mile for an amazing sip, and higher quality teas do yield higher quality cold brew. And if you want to dig really deep, some teas take much better to cold brewing than others.
Black tea, the most common tea in the West, is in many ways the worst candidate for serving iced. Its golden-fruitiness gets downplayed by cold temperatures, and oftentimes it’s plagued with high levels of tannins that dry out the tongue. I’ll drink iced black tea, but it doesn’t leave me feeling that refreshed. Those tannins are likely why many iced teas are made deliberately weak, or loaded with sugar to fight back against the astringency.
Instead, consider broadening your tea horizons to other styles. Here are the four that I find myself cold-brewing the most.
Tea To Use For Cold Brew Tea
I really like the Luzianne Family Size Iced Tea Bags which are ridiculously inexpensive on Amazon. The price comes out to just $0.32 per half gallon of tea. These tea bags arent corporate office priced , but its much cheaper than soda or seltzer!
Luzianne claims to be specially brewed for iced tea. Im not sure what that means, but I do know that I had several boxes of this tea in my pantry for YEARS and the tea tasted great until the end. Now that I make iced tea more often, I go through them much faster, these days.
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I also like hibiscus tea as an alternative to black tea. Its slightly fruity and floral tasting and reminds me of Koolaid in the best possible way. Starbucks sells this stuff as a refresher, but save your bucks and brew your own! I like Tazo Passion Tea and The Republic of Tea Hibiscus Sangria.
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Cold Brew Iced Tea Drink Ideas
If you made ready to drink cold brew tea add sweetener if desired and pour over ice. Simple syrup is ideal since its already dissolved.
Heres an idea. If you made multiple flavors like a fruity herb tea and green tea, mix them together and pour over ice.
If you made cold brew tea concentrate, the combination of drinks you can make are as limited as your imagination.
You can even look at the Starbucks iced tea menu to see their lineup of delicious iced tea drink combinations.
For instance, they combine tea concentrate with another drink like lemonade or peach juice to create a thirst-quenching iced tea. Here you can see my Starbucks copycat recipe for Iced Green Tea Lemonade.
Furthermore, cold brew tea concentrate is ideal for making iced tea lattes. As a matter of fact, I cold brew English Breakfast tea to make an Iced Caramel English Breakfast Tea Latte. Yum!
And heres my recipe for a decadent Iced London Fog Latte with Vanilla Sweet Cream, made with cold brew earl grey tea.
Finally, to make regular iced tea using concentrate just add fresh water or even seltzer water to make it a little fizzy.
The Tea Lover’s Way To Make The Best Cold
Summer can be tricky season for a tea lover. At a time when tea shops everywhere are hawking their freshly picked spring harvests, it’s too damn hot to pull out the kettle and brew any of them. The solution for those of us who can’t stand the heat is to brew our tea ice-cold, especially considering how most of the bottled iced tea you can buy in the Statesoverly sweetened to cover up a jolt of tannins, and rank with off flavors isn’t worth its bottle.
There’s more to making quality iced tea than meets the eye. On the surface, you can ice any old tea any way you want and get a refreshing drink, but the way I see it, “refreshing” and “drinkable” are just the starting point. A good iced tea can be just as complex, interesting, and delicious as a hot tea, and we shouldn’t have to sacrifice cold temperatures and Collins glasses for the most interesting facets of the teas we love. If coffee nerds can geek out about iced beverages, there’s no reason us tea people can’t do the same.
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What Is Cold Brew Tea
The cold brew tea concept is very simple: tea thats soaked in cold water. The process takes several hours, so that the flavour can be slowly extracted.
This brewing method results in less caffeine, and gives a milder flavour. Perhaps comparable to a refreshing soda drink. This makes it ideal for during the day , and serves as a perfect summertime beverage.
Making cold brew tea at home is super easy. It doesnt require an exact water temperature compared to traditional brewed hot tea. Also the infusion of flavours in cold brew tea or iced tea is a slow-cooking process. The leaves are soaked in water for several hours, you just have to sit back and wait .
Use Loose Leaf Or Bagged Tea
There is some debate on whether it is more effective to use loose leaf or bagged tea. In reality, either type will work. The process for using bagged tea is simpler, whereas using loose leaf requires a couple of extra steps in the brewing process.
With bagged tea, the leaves come pre-packaged for you. When adding them to the water, you only need to determine how many bags to add. For a pitcher sized batch of cold brew tea, it is typical to use between 6 10 bags. The more bags added, the stronger the tea will be. How many you choose to add comes down to your personal preference. After brewing, you simply remove the bags from the pitcher.
With loose leaf tea, you will need to actually measure the tea out. The generally used ratio for loose tea is two teaspoons per cup of tea. Thismeans for every tea bag you would have added, you should instead add two teaspoons of the loose leaf.
Many tea fanatics prefer loose leaf tea for a couple reasons. It is considered more sustainable, as it creates less waste by not using a bag. Plus, the tea may diffuse better since there is no bag as a barrier. When using loose leaf tea, you will need to strain after brewing to remove the leaves and debris. Some minor remnants of the tea may be left at the bottom, so remember to stir before drinking.
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How To Prepare Multiple Servings Of Cold Brew Tea
For the multiple servings, double, triple, or quadruple the single-serving ingredients by the number of servings we would like to prepare.Gather your ingredients and repeat the instructions described for the single serving.
You can add any other ingredients like fruits, sugar, or sweetener if you like to make a refreshing drink. Also, add it to smoothies or even freeze it using ice cubes and then add it to your beverage to keep them cold.
- Remove the thread from the tea bag and add to a mason jar.
- Add cold filtered water, stir and wait for 2 minutes.
- Refrigerate for 8 hours or overnight.
- Serve with ice, mix with fruit if you like and enjoy!
Try The Ice Brewing Method
While steeping tea in water over a period of 12 hours is the most popularized way to make cold brew tea, there is another method that you can try. It involves using a cube of ice to ice brew the tea leaves and comes from Japan. For the more adventurous tea makers, this can be a great way to explore different ways of tea brewing.
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