Brewing / Cold brew
Cold water. Long wait. No bitterness.
Heat pulls tannins and caffeine fast. Cold pulls sugars and aromatics slow. The cup comes out softer, sweeter, and impossible to oversteep.
The premise
Hot brewing is fast and unforgiving. Cold brewing is slow and almost impossible to screw up. Cold water extracts the sweeter, lighter compounds and leaves most of the tannin behind — the result is a tea that reads cleaner, with more of the delicate top-notes intact and almost none of the astringency that turns iced tea into mouth-puckering syrup at the bottom of the glass.
The ratio
About 1 gram of leaf per 100ml of water — slightly more than hot brewing, because cold extracts less. A standard one-litre pitcher takes 10 to 12 grams of leaf, which is about 5 to 6 teaspoons of loose leaf, or 4 to 5 pyramid bags. Don't bother with paper teabags here. The leaf grade is too low and the cold brew will taste flat.
The method
Glass jar. Cold water. Twelve hours.
- 01. Use a glass vessel. A glass teapot with a built-in filter is ideal; a mason jar works fine. Plastic stains, plastic holds smell. Cold brew sits long enough to notice.
- 02. Filtered water, room temp. Not boiled, not ice cold — just whatever's in the filter pitcher. Heat kills the whole point.
- 03. Drop the leaf in. Cover. Fridge. No infuser needed if your vessel filters at the spout. If not, use a basket infuser so you can pull the leaf out cleanly.
- 04. Wait. Eight hours minimum, twelve is the sweet spot, sixteen is fine. Cold brew has an enormous tolerance window — unlike hot brewing, an extra hour doesn't ruin the cup. Set it before bed. Pour before breakfast.
- 05. Pull the leaf out. Leaving it in forever doesn't make it stronger past about sixteen hours, but it can pull the cup off-balance. Strain or remove the infuser. Drink within three days.
What works best cold
Green tea. Cold brewing is a revelation for greens — Dragon Well and Oi Ocha read sweet and creamy with none of the grass-clipping bitterness that catches people off-guard hot. If you've decided you don't like green tea, try it cold first.
White tea. Bai Mu Dan and Silver Needle cold-brewed are subtle, honeyed, almost floral. Worth the twelve hours.
Oolong. The rolled greener oolongs — Milk Oolong, Ti Kuan Yin — hold up beautifully cold. The roasted ones go thin.
Herbal. Peppermint cold-brewed is the most refreshing thing on a hot day. Chamomile cold-brewed is the most boring. Pick accordingly.
Black tea — with reservations. Lighter, less-oxidized blacks like Darjeeling first flush cold-brew well. Assam-heavy breakfast blends go flat — they were built for hot water.
The shortcut
Hot bloom, then cold steep.
If you forgot to start it the night before — pour 50ml of hot water (180°F) over the leaf, let it bloom for 30 seconds, then fill the rest of the vessel with cold and refrigerate for four hours instead of twelve. The hot bloom opens the leaf fast; the cold finish keeps the tannins out. Not quite the same cup as a full slow-cold steep, but close enough to drink.
House note
Iced tea is hot tea poured over ice and watered down. Cold brew is its own drink. Don't confuse the two and don't accept the substitute.