If you have been drinking iced tea for any length of time, you may not be aware of how amazing fresh cold brew iced tea tastes versus what you would normally do -- which is brew tea bags in hot water to give you a great glass of iced tea.
But what if I told you that brewing tea that way is pretty much removing all the flavour and delicious tea taste? What if I told you there was a better way to make a great batch of cold brew iced tea?
Today I am going to share with you how to make the perfect cold brew tea that tastes better than any tea you will ever drink.
What Kind of Tea Do You Use For Making Cold Brew?
The best cold brew iced tea you can make starts by adding fresh loose leaf tea leaves to filtered cold water and popping the mixture in the fridge for about eight hours.
This draws all the out of the leaves slowly. By doing this, not only are you not dulling the taste, but the caffeine content is lower.
The result you get is a much fresher and lighter iced tea beverage than your usual tea bag version you make.
We recommend using loose leaf tea from tea merchants that make sourcing their teas an important part of the tea experience. You can find several of these when you sign up for a Blue Tea Box Subscription.
What Type of Loose Leaf Tea is Best for Making Cold Brew?
Any tea will really work well but my favourite for making cold brew is oolong tea.
I love oolong cold brews and once you try brewing it yourself, you’ll see why. It’s a little sweet, flavourful, and never harsh.
In fact, what I do is make several batches of different tea blends and keep them all in my refrigerator. Then, whatever I am feeling for the day -- that is the flavour I choose to drink.
How to Make the Best Cold Brew Iced Tea
The ratio for cold brew is 1 1/2 teaspoons of loose leaf tea (or 1 heaping teaspoon) to one cup of water.
It doesn’t need to be precise and you can adjust if you like stronger or weaker tea.
In a jar or pitcher, place the amount of loose leaf tea you are going to use. Fill your water up based on how much loose leaf tea you used.
Now, place in the refrigerator until it is done steeping.
It doesn't really matter how long you steep, because cold-brewed tea doesn't over-extract and turn bitter.
And once you've strained off the brew, you can use the same leaves for two or three more batches.
Why It's Better to Use Loose Leaf Instead of Tea Bags
If you’ve only used tea bags for iced tea, then you are definitely out! The teas are so much better.
Loose leaf tea will always serve as a much better quality tea than what you’ll find in tea bags. Supermarket teas lose flavour fast and those tea bags wind up tasting bitter instead of full of tea flavour.
Loose tea is a whole tea leaf. You can see the actual tea leaf after it has been steeped and unfurled.
Due to high quality, loose tea can be steeped multiple times. It costs more than tea bags but you can cold brew it more than once, which saves you money in the process.
Tea bags are basically just crushed and broken tea leaves and are many times just the ‘tea dust.’ Tea bags are a lot less flavourful and are usually a lot bitter than loose tea.
With tea bags, they use low-quality teas so it’s a lot less expensive in the end. But as they say, you get what you pay for.
Making the Change
If you love iced tea, leave behind the heated version of tea in the kettle and try making this version of cold brew.
You will find out that your taste buds will love you more for giving them a tea full of delicious flavour and lots of body from the speciality loose leaf teas found in your Blue Tea Box Subscription.
