Introduction to Cold Brew Green Tea

There are quite a few benefits to making cold brew green tea at home, but the main one comes down to the temperature. People tend to drink less tea in the warmer months because drinking hot tea can make you feel too warm, particularly on a hot summer day.

Seriously, who wants to sweat even more? In winter, though? That’s a whole different story. Like, a cup of Ginger-Infused Green Tea? Pure magic for chilly days. It does a ton—good for your heart, helps with stubborn pounds, tames nausea, calms down achy joints, and even gives your immune system a high-five. But in July? Yeah, nobody’s lining up for hot tea. Doesn’t mean you have to ditch all those perks, though. There are ways to keep sipping and still stay cool.

The solution is not to drink less tea but rather to learn how to prepare cold brew green tea. It is rare to find a tea shop that prepares cold brew green tea, so sometimes it's best just to prepare your own. You can easily buy green tea online and try it yourself. There are some simple steps you can follow to make great-tasting and refreshing cold brew green tea at home.

Three Basic Cold Brew Methods

When it comes to cold brew, there are three basic methods. These methods all have different advantages and disadvantages, and we're going to cover them here.

• Cool water
• Use Ice
• Cooling down hot water

This is the most basic and most obvious way to create cold brew green tea. You can use cool or room temperature water and brew the leaves just as you would with a normal hot brewed green tea. I like to use something refreshing like Mint Ginger Green Tea, as it tastes like peppermint and ginger. This process should take between one to three hours, and the flavour turns out great.

First, add five to ten grams of loose-leaf tea to a glass or pitcher. Then, pour in 500 millilitres of cool or room temperature filtered water. Next, let the leaves sit out or in the fridge for 1 to 3 hours. Finally, pour the tea through a filter to separate the leaves from the tea and enjoy.

This method of creating cold brew green tea is from Japan. To prepare this tea, you can first fill up a teapot with ice cubes made from filtered water. Next, you can put in 5 grams of tea leaves on top of the ice cubes and wait for them to melt. The reason you don't add the tea leaves first and the ice cubes on top is that the weight of the ice cubes can crush the tea leaves and release bitterness in the tea.

Yes, cold brewing results in a lower-caffeine tea. This is because caffeine is more soluble in hot water. As a result, cold-brewed green tea is a great option for drinking in the afternoon when you want a refreshing drink without a strong caffeine kick that might keep you up later. This is super useful when you want to drink a tea with a higher caffeine content, like the Doke Emerald Delight.

Why does cold brewing make green tea taste smoother and sweeter?

The smoother, sweeter flavour of cold-brewed green tea comes from the extraction process. The compounds responsible for the bitter taste in tea, called catechins, are extracted more readily at higher temperatures. By using cold water, you extract far fewer of these bitter components. This leaves you with a pleasant, fruity, and naturally sweet flavour that is often preferred over hot-brewed green tea. This concept is taken even further when it comes to cold-brewed green tea. When you use cold water, you're extracting far less of the bitterness. This is why cold-brewed green tea has a pleasant, sweet and fruity flavour to it..