Enjoying a cup of tea has been a civilized human experience for centuries, for health reasons and for the simple enjoyment of its great taste and aroma. Who doesn’t love a warm cup of tea while enjoying a crisp autumn morning, or a refreshing iced tea on a steamy summer day? Steeping tea in hot water or creating ice tea are two common options. But what about steeping tea in cold water? Let’s cover the steps and benefits of doing just that!
You can use tea bags in cold water. There are tea bags that are made specifically for this purpose. Cold brewing entails soaking tea leaves in cold water. This process extracts the healthy compounds and the high level of antioxidants found in tea.
In northern African countries like Morocco and Tunisia, drinking Mint Tea is considered “the heart of culture.”
In China, tea is prepared in numerous ways. It’s also used in traditional Chinese medicine.
Japan is well known for the Japanese Tea Ceremony, where they prepare and drink Matcha tea. The ceremony can take up to 4 hours in total. The tea ceremony is also called “The Way of the Tea,” and the purpose is to achieve harmony, respect, peace, and tranquility.
The consumption of tea might have various reasons. Some like it hot; some like it not.
What some people fail to consider is that, like cold brewing coffee, you can also cold brew tea.
In fact, cold brewing your tea might be even more beneficial to your health!
Can You Use Tea Bags in Cold Water?
Yes, you can, and it’s going to taste great. Cold brewing tea is something anyone can do at home without a lot of tools or special equipment. It is simply the process of soaking the tea bags in cold, filtered water for a few hours before drinking.
This does demand more time for the tea to be prepared, but it’s worth it.
Soaking the tea bags in cold water will extract more of the nutrients and antioxidants without it getting bitter. This will leave the tea with loads of that aromatic sweetness. Keep reading to learn more about the process, the best types of tea to use, and the multiple benefits of drinking cold brew tea.
How to Cold Brew Tea
The great thing about cold brewing tea is that you really cannot go wrong with it. If the result is too strong, you simply add more water and vice versa.
Step #1: Combine Water and Tea Leaves
Cold brewing tea is super simple. You can choose to use loose tea leaves or tea bags. You can even find teabags specifically made for cold brewing in many stores. Add water and the tea in an airtight container, like a bottle or Mason jar. Generally, add one teabag for every four cups of water. Shake it and leave it in the fridge.
Step #2: Steep
For the amount of time needed, there are a variety of recommendations out there, but generally, it ranges from 4 hours to leave it overnight. When you are using tea bags, they usually come with instructions on the packaging.
Step #3: Add Flavorings
One of the best benefits of cold brewing tea is the sweetness of the tea. It does not turn bitter. However, if you prefer a sweeter tea, you could add some dried fruit or herbs for taste. You can even add flowers, like chrysanthemum flowers. This leaves the tea with a fresh taste and a wonderful smell. It also makes your tea look pretty when serving!
Step #4: Serve in a Glass
Serve your perfectly cold-brewed fresh tea in clear glass. If you are questioning what kind of tea is best for cold brewing, there really is no correct answer. The best way to figure this out is to try out different tastes and see what you prefer.
“Cold brewing your tea might be even more beneficial to your health.”
TEA CROSSING
Brew Tea with Help from the Sun: Sun Tea
Another way to make tea instead of using the traditional way of boiling water is to make sun-brewed tea. It is just as simple as cold brewing tea.
You just place your container with water and tea in the sun instead of putting it in the refrigerator.
How Long Should the Tea Steep?
Steeping time is reduced because of the heat from the sun. The tea is usually ready when it looks like tea ranging from 2 – 3 hours, depending on how hot it is that day and where you are located.
Serve the freshly brewed sun tea with some ice cubes and perhaps a fresh slice of lemon. You now have a refreshing drink for hot summer days with the health benefits of brewing tea without boiled water.
What Teas Are Best for Cold Brewing?
The most common answer to this question is Oolong teas because of their natural sweetness. However, you can cold brew all teas. Everyone has different preferences in most things in life. This also includes tea, and the best answer is that all teas are best for cold brewing!
It is ultimately up to you and your taste. The best way to figure this is out to whip up a few different blends and see which one you prefer.
Consider having some guests over for a tea tasting. It’s a great way to gather some friends for some healthy fun!
The Different Types of Tea
As important as the brewing method, it’s important to know what tea you are working with and how it best handles hot or cold brewing.
Here are the most common types of tea and what makes them unique:
White Tea
This type of tea is, as mentioned above, practically unprocessed. It is called White Tea because of the white down-like substance on an unopened bud on the tea tree. White tea is simply picked and withered. Some natural oxidation occurs during the drying process.
Green Tea
Green tea has been through some steps of the orthodox method, with the exemption of oxidation by applying heat. The heat stops the leaves from browning and leaves the color of the tea a light green.
Oolong Tea
Oolong Tea takes the longest to make as it goes through all the steps of the orthodox method of processing tea. This leaves the Oolong Tea with loads of aroma and flavor. This is probably why the Oolong Tea is highly recommended for cold brewing tea.
Black Tea
This type of tea also goes through all the steps of the orthodox method. The difference between Oolong Tea and Black Tea is that the Black Tea is left to oxidize more. The oxidation gives this type of tea its dark color ranging from brown and a reddish color. The process also gives Black Tea a strong flavor and makes it widely used as iced tea.
Pu’erh Tea
Pu’erh tea is a less common type of tea, similar to Green Tea. This type of tea actually is fermented. The tea goes through a long process, sometimes pressed into different shapes. The process can last from months to many years.
Some call this type of tea “living tea,” due to the fermentation process.
“Oolong teas are ideal for cold-brewing because of their natural sweetness. However, you can cold brew all teas.”
The Health Benefits of Steeping Tea Bags in Cold Water
Tea is water infused with leaves that are processed in a certain way. There are different types of tea. For example, green, black, white, and Oolong are different types of tea, but they all come from the same plant, Camellia Sinensis.
Tea leaves are high in antioxidants. Antioxidants are compounds that assist the body in getting rid of free radicals. Studies show that time and temperature significantly affect antioxidant capacity.
The use of low temperature and longer extraction time allowed more active compounds and protected the bioactive compounds from degradation. This means that cold brewing tea is making all of those healthy molecules found in tea leave more bioavailable.
Studies also show that cold-brewed tea has a sweeter taste. The extended infusion time and low-temperature reduce caffeine and other compounds that can give the tea a bitter taste.
Defeat Free Radicals
Free radicals are molecules in the body that damage your cells and change DNA. Free radicals are also known as oxidants. Antioxidants help your body fight these free radicals to prevent them from doing this as well as to help to repair the cells affected.
The polyphenols found in tea leaves may help with other diseases as well. Polyphenols also contain flavonoids. Flavonoids are the antioxidants that are connected to fighting cancerous diseases and heart disease.
L-theanine – A Relaxing Brain Boost
L-theanine is an amino acid found in the plant mother of all teas, Camellia Sinensis. Drinking tea is actually the only way to consume this amino acid unless you are taking it as a supplement.
The health benefit of L-theanine is the natural brain-boost you will get from it without the sleeplessness you get from drinking coffee. L-theanine actually does the opposite; it calms you down. This means that you will get a brain-boost, but a calm one which will let you do your work effectively, but calmly.
Does Drinking Tea Inhibit the Absorption of Iron?
You may have heard that drinking tea can decrease iron absorption. There are compounds in tea called Tannins. Tannins are polyphenolic molecules that bind to certain proteins and other organic compounds found in the body.
Tannins will bind with iron, non-heme iron, to be exact. This is the type of iron usually found in plant-based foods. This is why there are a lot of recommendations not to drink tea with meals.
Luckily, cold brewing tea decreases the level of tannins.
Tannins are also the reason your tea sometimes gets a certain bitter flavor that leaves the tea an astringent flavor.
This way, cold brewing your tea not only has a lesser impact on your iron uptake but also leaves your tea with a sweeter, more aromatic taste.
“Cold brewing might be more beneficial to your health than other brewing methods.”
TEA CROSSING
The Difference Between Hot, Iced and Cold Brew Tea
The difference between hot and cold tea might seem obvious, but iced tea is actually tea that was made with boiled water, then cooled down with ice added to the mix.
Cold-brew, on the other hand, means steeping tea leaves in cold water for an extended amount of time.
Steeping the tea leaves in hot water might make the extraction go quicker, but this method also means higher compound degradation. Cold brewing your tea will extract all of those valuable tasteful and nutritious molecules with less degradation.
This means that cold brewing by conserving these compounds while also producing a higher level of antioxidants stands out as the healthier method in preparing tea.
How is Tea Made?
Leaves and water. Simple, right? Not so much.
The process of how tea is made is quite intricate. There are orthodox and non-orthodox production methods.
Orthodox Production Method
The orthodox production method consists of plucking, withering, rolling, oxidation, and firing.
This process starts with the tea leaves being harvested by hand before withering. To make hand picking possible, the tea trees are being pruned waist-high. Withering is a process where the leaves become more flaccid, which leads the membranes of the leaf open up and more permeable.
Being permeable means that the leaves lose moisture. Moisture loss is important for the rest of the processing while also increasing shelf-life for the final product. Withering in itself is quite simply putting the leaves thru some sort of heated air to draw out moisture.
Non-Orthodox Production Method
The non-Orthodox method for making tea is what is known as the CTC (crush-tear-curl). This is the method that is used when producing larger quantities of tea, like in the production of teabags.
Here, the tea leaves get shredded in a machine. This method might be faster, but it cannot be used when making Oolongs and white teas. This is because when shredded, the lea leaves oxidize quicker.
This is why the CTC method is used in the production of black tea and iced tea.
What is Rolling?
Rolling is a process where the flavor literally is pressed out of the tea leaves by wringing out the juices inside the leaves. During rolling, enzymes and essential oils are being exposed to oxygen. This is the beginning of the oxidation process.
In some countries, like the mother country of tea tradition, China, the style and shape of the final tea product can be even more important than the actual flavor. Luckily, the rolling itself helps preserve the essential oils, which is what gives the tea the sweet aroma it is known for. The CTC process, sadly, destroys the essential aromatic oils and steals away some of the flavors of the tea.
Rolling the tea helps preserve the tea for a longer duration of time, which the CTC process also decreases. Loose tea, on the other hand, processed the orthodox way can keep for as long as two years.
To work around the fact that the CTC method has this impact on the tea leaves, the tea bag industry has come up with the solution of using whole leaves in bigger bags. Even though this helps a bit, the consumer should be aware that bagged tea won’t have the freshness of loose tea.
So, if you are looking for a fresh, cold-brewed tea with lots of sweetness and flavor, be sure to buy loose tea. Loose tea brewed with flowers will create a beautiful symphony of aroma and flavor for you and your guests to enjoy.
Oxidation. What Is It?
Oxidation is crucial in order to dry and darken the tea. It also increases the smell and flavor of the tea. Some people refer to the oxidation process as fermentation. However, oxidation and fermentation are not the same.
Fermentation is a process commonly used when producing wine or other alcoholic beverages. Oxidation, on the other hand, is what happens with fruit when exposed to oxygen in the air. Rolling the tea leaves speeds up the process of natural decomposition, like a banana turning brown after a while on the counter.
Some teas like Oolong Tea, use all the basic steps of the orthodox method while other teas, like Green Tea, aren’t oxidized at all. The oxidation has been prevented using heat, which stops the enzymes from decomposing the leaves. White tea is practically unprocessed, and Black Tea, like Oolong Tea, has been through all the steps of orthodox processing.
Fermentation is a completely different process where an absence of oxygen leads to an extraction of energy from carbohydrates. In wine production, the carbohydrates are converted into alcohol using microorganisms like yeast in environments without oxygen. Confusing fermentation with oxidizing is still a common thing when discussing tea production, but now you know the difference.
Now you know a lot about tea. Making tea has been a tradition all over the world for centuries. Drinking tea provides priceless health benefits, and does it with a wonderful fresh taste.
Luckily you can enjoy both hot and cold tea, and you can use tea bags for both.
However, loose tea and cold brewing might be more beneficial. Plus, it will take your taste buds to new dimensions.