TeaChat

I love iced tea and have been brewing Darjeeling for months.
I want to try some other teas that taste light and refreshing when iced.
Please share your specific personal favorites.

I am moving this to "Other Teas" for better exposure.

I like to use Ceylon as a base for black iced tea, then add high mountain Indian region teas like Darjeeling, Nepal, Sikkin.

Also, many greens are great and light when iced, even more so when cold brewed.

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Like Chip i use a simple ceylon black tea. When cold brewed its very light and crisp. If I want to change things up, I add dried fruit (peach is my favorite) but you have to hot brew it to get all of the fruit goodness.
A lot of people make iced tea with flavored tea or blends.

In my desperation I just made a litre of iced houjicha, it's close to +30°C out I can't stand it
I normally don't drink iced tea but wanted something else to drink besides water.
Think it came out alright.

For me, refreshing tea is black tea (ceylon) and mint. I chuck the mint leaves in with the tea when it's brewing, then I fish them out and let them float in the pitcher untill the tea is gone.

Another refreshing tea (that's not really a tea) is mint tea. Hot or cold, if you have decent mint it leaves your face tingling

unfortunately, my favorite cold tea is alishan. Generally too expensive.

Ceylon, cold brewed in the fridge. I don't even want to boil a kettle of water in my hot kitchen in the summer. Cold brewing makes a very smooth tea. I've recently started a little Assam, maybe 1/4 the amount of leaves, for a little more body. I drink all my tea straight, no sugar or lemon.

When the weather gets really hot, chilled mugicha (roasted barley tea) hits the spot for me... incredibly refreshing.

Also, one of the nice things about mugicha is that you can brew it cold in summertime. Just put a couple of bags in a large pitcher of cold water, refrigerate for 3-4 hours, and voila - it's ready to drink!

Ditto on the mugicha....that stuff is the most refreshing iced tea that I have tried. I enjoy a lot of cold brewed sencha. I just stick a few scoops of lower grade leaf in a fill-your-own tea bag, tie a knot at the end, place it in a water bottle, filled it up with water, stick it in the fridge, and wait a bit until it is thoroughly chilled. After I pour a glass of it, I just top off the bottle with more water and keep it brewing for a few days until all the flavor goes away. It is a really nice way to use certain teas that just don't work well hot.

Cinnamon Kitty wrote:Ditto on the mugicha....that stuff is the most refreshing iced tea that I have tried. I enjoy a lot of cold brewed sencha. I just stick a few scoops of lower grade leaf in a fill-your-own tea bag, tie a knot at the end, place it in a water bottle, filled it up with water, stick it in the fridge, and wait a bit until it is thoroughly chilled. After I pour a glass of it, I just top off the bottle with more water and keep it brewing for a few days until all the flavor goes away. It is a really nice way to use certain teas that just don't work well hot.

Pretty much ditto. Cold brewed iced tea has saved a lot of mediocre Japanese tea. Sencha, gyokuro, even bancha.

Yeah, big on the Mugi as well, brewed hot or cold, it ices well.

And forgot about the mints. I cannot drink mint because it seems to aggrevate my acid reflux (I think the one and only thing I gave up), but DW drinks it by the gallon as fast as I can brew it.

Does anyone besides me have an issue with sencha and other greens tasting more "marine" (translation... fishy/seaweed-ish) when cold-brewed? Maybe this is my imagination, and maybe this is because I have mostly only cold-brewed lower quality sencha... but some of my delicious O-Cha teabags which I really enjoyed hot were just not that pleasant when cold-brewed in a water bottle while on vacation. I tried to love it, but it didn't really please me.

Which O-Cha bags?

I seem to find the taste light and refreshing for cold brewed sencha. Maybe you are usuing too much leaf? Or too long especially for the first steep?

Or maybe it was the low grade sencha.

I actually tend to blend a bunch of different Japanese teas/types together when cold brewing. This works very well for me. Low grade gyokuro, sencha, kukicha ... throw it all in there.

Chip wrote:I actually tend to blend a bunch of different Japanese teas/types together when cold brewing. This works very well for me. Low grade gyokuro, sencha, kukicha ... throw it all in there.

That sounds like a really good idea. I have at least two different tins of sencha that I use for cold brewing, but never tried mixing them together. Next batch I will have to try it. Maybe that will even out some of the not too great characteristics of the two teas (one is bitter, even when cold brewed, and the other is rather stale).

Kymidwife: I find that the senchas get more grassy and vegetal and less astringent when cold brewed without any of the marine flavors. I find that the marine flavors, for me at least, are more apparent when I up the water temperature when brewing sencha as I normally would. It could be the water that you are cold brewing with, or it could be the amount of tea, or it could even just be that different people perceive flavors uniquely.

I also
find cold sencha to be "briney" "fishey" or iodine flavored.
I do love cold Chinese greens tho.

woozl wrote:I also
find cold sencha to be "briney" "fishey" or iodine flavored.
I do love cold Chinese greens tho.

Dude, your Hagi must be contaminated.

I will be POed if the next time I make it, it tastes like this because of seeds planted here today.