How to make the best iced green tea
When it comes to making the best iced green tea, you need to make sure you select the right tea and you are following the correct guidelines. Here are a few things to keep in mind when you are making your iced green tea.
Choosing a good tea for the iced green tea recipe
Certain teas work well in the iced green tea recipe and others don’t work quite as well. From our experience, the best teas to cold brew are Fukamushi sencha and Gyokuro. These teas have a powerful flavor that doesn’t get diluted when you prepare them with cold water and they tend to pick up some nice fruity flavor profiles.
If you’re looking for a best iced green tea and you like gyokuro, you should try the gyokuro sasa hime
Leaf to water ratio
The key to making the best iced green tea lies in the leaf to water ratio. If you use too much water and not enough tea leaves, you will end up with a diluted flavor. We recommend 5 grams of leaves and 250ml of water.
This may seem like a lot of tea leaves, but in this iced green tea recipe you will be adding ice cubes to the drink. That’s why you’ll want to start with a slightly stronger tea so you don’t water it down.
Brewing Time
When it comes to how to make iced green tea, this is the part where you really need to experiment. We have typically found that 3 hours of cold brewing is just about the sweet spot for iced green tea, but we encourage people to play around with the time.
Remember, you can always brew the iced green tea longer, but you can’t brew it shorter. After about an hour has passed, pour a little bit of the iced green tea out and see if you like the flavor. If it’s not strong enough, keep brewing until you get a flavor you do like. This is a great way to customize the iced green tea recipes.
If you want to become an expert on cold brewing tea, you might want to read this guide for a quick refresher 👉 Cold Brew Green Tea explained by Tea Experts
Is iced green tea good for you?
So now that we’ve talked about how to make iced green tea, is iced green tea good for you? As long as you are making it without additives, iced green tea is a very healthy drink. It contains no sugar, no chemicals and barely any calories.
How to make iced green tea even better for you
If you want to know how to make iced green tea even better for you, just add a few healthy additives. For example, by adding a few peppermint leaves into your iced green tea, you are enhancing not only the flavor but also the antioxidants.
Lemon and lime are also very high in antioxidants, and these flavors can complement the iced green tea recipe.
Iced green tea benefits
So we’ve covered is iced green tea good for you, but why is it good for you? There are many different iced green tea benefits that you won’t want to miss out on. Let’s cover a few of the highlights!
By the way, if you want to learn which teas are highest in caffeine, you can follow this guide here 👉 Green Tea Benefits and Why You Should Drink it Everyday
Lower in Caffeine
Caffeine is extracted better at higher temperatures. For this reason, iced green tea will have less caffeine than hot brewed green tea. So is iced green tea good for you? If you are sensitive to caffeine it is!
The amount of caffeine in your iced green tea will depend on the type of tea you use. If you want to learn more about that, you'll want to read this guide 👉 Which tea has the most caffeine
Less Acidity and Bitterness
Luckily, the bitter components of the tea leaf are harder to extract. They require either a hotter temperature or a longer brewing time. For this reason, iced green tea tends to have less bitterness than hot brewed tea.
The iced green tea will have a smoother and sweeter flavor, as long as you use the right type of tea. As you can see, the iced green tea benefits go beyond health!
Antioxidants
Of course one of the iced green tea benefits is the antioxidants. While antioxidants like catechins are best extracted at higher temperatures, you’ll still be getting some in your iced green tea.
How do I make iced green tea if I don’t have the proper tools?
People ask us often how do I make iced green tea without tools like brewing bottles or teapots. The answer is simple, you just need 2 cups and a strainer. Put the tea leaves into one of the cups and pour in the water.
Once the tea is done brewing, place a tea strainer on the second cup and then transfer the iced green tea. The tea will have enough space to expand in the first tea cup and then the leaves will be filtered out on their way to the second tea cup.
Other iced green tea recipes
If you’re looking for a different kind of iced green tea, you may want to try these recipes for an iced strawberry oat matcha latte and strawberry matcha latte recipe 🍓
