COLD BREW

One of the biggest trends in tea consumption in recent years is Cold Brew. This is an alternative method of brewing tea instead of the classic hot brew method. This method is great for tea drinkers who live in hot climates and is perfect for summer.

Cold brewing tea is simply another way of extracting the flavour from the tea leaves. It’s just a much longer and slower process, often 8-12 hours. The flavours are released more slowly, resulting in a smoother tea and leaving the bitterness behind.

Tea Cold Brewing and How Do You Make It?

Brewing cold tea is a relatively new phenomenon. In supermarkets you can find not only conventional tea bags, but also Cold Brew Tea bags.
Since it is a new topic, it is normal for consumers to have doubts about this new way of preparing tea. We will therefore try to answer questions like the following.

Why has cold tea become so popular?
How does the preparation process work?
And how can you prepare it yourself at home?

You will find the answers to these questions and more in this expert guide to cold brew tea.

What is cold brew?

Tea has always been a drink that we enjoy and consume very hot. If you want to make iced tea, the quick and obvious solution is to add ice cubes, which sometimes comes at the expense of flavour due to the amount of water or the slow cooling process in the fridge.

Cold brew is a technique / method of Brewing tea in cold water.

The commercially ready to drink ice tea or home ice tea does not work this way.

They are brewed hot and set to cool naturally, by machine or adding ice to it. Instead, you brew the tea in cold water.

Cold Brew

Cold brew or Hot Brew: How Does Cold Brew Tea Work?

In fact, cold brewing is not so different than brewing a cup of hot tea. Only the brewing parameters are different.

For a cup of hot tea, the temperature is between 80 and 100 °C, depending on what kind of tea you are brewing. For cold brewing, simply use cold water.

To compensate for the low temperature, the tea is steeped a lot longer. The tea should be steeped for at least 4 hours to allow the flavours to properly infuse. This can be inconvenient, but can be easily avoided with advanced planning. It’s best to brew the tea in the evening and store it in the fridge overnight so you can enjoy it the next day!

Why cold brew tea?

There are many reasons why a cup of cold brewed tea can be delicious and soothing:

It is less bitter

For some people, a hot cup of tea can be too bitter. Cold brewed tea only extracts the flavor and aroma, leaving out the chemical components that cause bitterness! In fact, there are many tea lovers who only drink cold tea.

Hot Weather – Summer Season

When it’s hot outside, you just don’t feel like having a cup of hot tea. The iced tea bags from the supermarket will do, but they contain too muchsugar. To replace your a suggary dring or soda, there is one smart solution…The solution: prepared your own Iced Tea.

Affordable

Cold drinks are not only easy to prepare, but also very inexpensive. All you need to prepare a liter of tea is 5 grams of loose tea leaves or two tea bags!

Perfect for Blends

Cold Brew Ideal for mixtures

Cold tea can be drunk pure or mixed with various herbs, flowers and even with liqueurs to make cocktails. The combination possibilities are endless, let your creativity run wild!

How To Brew Your Cold Tea ?

Making cold tea may seem strange and complicated, but it is even easier than making hot tea. You don’t need a special teapot and you don’t have to pay attention to the water temperature. And no matter how long you steep the leaves, they won’t get bitter! The only thing you need to pay attention to is the amount of tea leaves.

How to Cold Brew teas - Organic Tea Wholesale- Gräfenhof Tee GmbH — Cold brewed tea with loose leaf tea

What tools do you need?

You don’t need anything extraordinary to start making Cold Brew. You can simply use a clean glass lemonade bottle or buy a glass pitcher (with a lid).

The advantage of glass is that it stays cold longer outside the fridge than plastic bottles. They are cleaner and more transparent so you can enjoy and observe the colour of your tea. So, if you plan to brew cold tea often, consider investing in a large glass teapot or a glass jug with a lid.

Glass bottles are also excellent, but the smaller opening makes it more difficult to put the leaves in and take them out. Regardless of what option you choose, it’s important that the teapot has a lid, otherwise the tea will absorb other flavours from the fridge.

There is no need for a filter as the tea leaves/bags can simply stay in the pot.

cold brew tools - Organic Tea Wholesale- Gräfenhof Tee GmbH — The tools you need for cold brew tea: High quality lose leaf tea, good water (fileter water) and a sif

Instructions for cold brewing

To prepare one litre of tea, you can assume the following tea-water ratios

Green tea/jasmine: 10g
White tea: 8g
Black tea: 5g
Oolong tea: 5g
Pu erh tea: 4g

When brewing cold tea with tea bags, use 2 tea bags per litre of water (regardless of the type of tea).

There are no exact measurements for cold brewing. Every tea is different, therefore feel free to adjust the amount to your taste. Fortunately, measurement errors are very easy to correct: If you get too strong a drink, you can soften the taste by adding water.

The brewing time of the tea can vary from tea to tea, but usually the tea is ready after 4-6 hours, depending on how intense you want it to be.

If the tea is too weak, leave it to steep for a few hours longer. If that doesn’t help, add a little more tea.

Some tea bags designed specifically for cold brewing are made to release flavours more quickly. To find out how long to steep your tea, be sure to check the instructions on the packaging.

How to Sweeten Cold Tea

Sweetening a cold brew tea should only be a last resort.

If you choose the right types of tea, cold brew tea can taste naturally sweet. If it’s still not sweet enough, the best solution is to use dried fruit. The best options are:

getrocknete Gojibeeren
getrocknete Jujube-Beeren

If it’s not the sweetness but the flavour that’s the problem, dried flowers such as chrysanthemum tea or osmanthus flowers are great ingredients!

Quantity: Experiment by adding 2 g of the fruits or flowers to the tea and brew it together cold.

How to serve the cold tea?How to serve the cold tea?

Ideally, serve the tea in clean, straight glasses, wine glasses, Mason jars or whisky glasses and garnish with pretty decorations.

Conclusion

We hope we have provided the necessary information to get started with Cold Brewing Tea.

If you still have any doubts about cold brewing tea or any other tea related issue, please do not hesitate to contact us.

Would you like more information about Cold Brew Tea?

Please contact us for more information

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