What is your favorite black tea for making iced tea these days?
And do you use a hot-brew method or cold-brew method?
I am not a Ceylon fan but they make the BEST iced teas. I hot brew all of my iced tea.
Yes, definitely Ceylon for iced tea. I’ll occasionally make some Lapsang Souching iced which I find delightful as well, but 90% of the time I use Ceylon. I almost always hot brew my tea. Sometimes I’ll brew it double strength and use cool water to chill it if I want it right away, but most of the time I brew up some regular strength in a Ball jar and stick that right in the fridge.
Cookies, do you find there is much difference between hot brewing, then cooling the tea vs. cold brewing? I’ve been mostly cold brewing mine, but I can’t tell if they lose a bit of something in the process. I suspect this is more true of black teas. Greens and tisanes seem fine with cold brewing. What’s your experience with this?
I haven’t found a big difference either way. Cold brewing coffee results in a very noticeably smoother brew, but with tea hot brewing seems to work well so I usually just go with that. I don’t think I’ve ever cold brewed green teas before. I’m going to try some jasmine green right now and see how it goes.
English breakfast. Bagged because it works better when cold brewing. I only brew black teas in summer if its cold because the astringency is too much for me this time of year.
I’m not sure what to call my method. I deliberately use water that’s warm to hot, not boiled. Like distilled water that’s been left at typically hot/warm room temperature. Or hot filtered water from the tap. Fill my biggest mason jar with it, tea bags already inside and let it sit for about ten minutes. After it’s the right shade of dark, I fish the bags out, put in the fridge to cool and that’s it. I don’t know if its cold brew or not, but my tea always comes out clear, dark brown, mildly astringent and sweetly floral.
The only other black I’ll make is earl grey. In both cases I make it specifically for family and those are the only teas they like. For my self I cold brew greens/whites/Roobios/and herbals in single sized mason jars in the same way as I do the large one.
Hot brew Butiki’s Black Lotus. SO GOOD!
Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm, interesting. I have not tried that. I did the PTA by itself and didn’t love it cold but with the Darjeeling in there that could really work. Totally having that with dinner. :)
It is the best! I actually want to buy more so I have copious amounts for icing up, heh :) Let me know if you like it iced as much as I do!
Totally didn’t wait until dinner. This is delicious! Very peachy but still has some wood notes. I think this might be a new favorite iced tea. :)
Also, wanted to mention that teas that use spearmint or peppermint leaves in them taste amazing iced.
My iced tea favorites are Harney’s Black Currant and Harney’s Lychee. I also love some of the 52teas iced teas, especially Rainbow Sherbet.
I agree with the Ceylon I have been cold brewing the Ceylon Sonata from adagio refreshing!
But now I want to try Butiki’s Black Lotus!
Hubby wanted to make iced tea that tasted like nestea powder. I don’t like iced tea and didn’t really want to help with this one but it took some exploration. In the end, he steeped some assam very strong (hot) then added rock sugar to sweeten it. More than expected! The strong hot tea was cooled to room temperature then put in the fridge with more water to thin it out and the juice of 1 or 2 lemons. He also left the lemons in there to keep adding more kick. I don’t know how close it came to nestea powder but he liked it. There was more sugar in there than he would usually use but not enough to make it nestea.
Other than that, we cold brew everything. Usually herbals. I don’t know that black tea cold brews very effectively. I don’t drink it though, so what do I know? :)
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