Decades ago, I had got a leaflet from a tea shop in Germany (of which I was a regular customer) explaining how to best make iced tea.
1. Fill several long-drink glasses up to two-thirds with ice cubes.
2. Brew the tea. Use double the amount of tea leaves as you normally would for a given amount of water, but let infuse for only half of the time. (Add sugar to taste.)
3. Pour the hot tea on the ice cubes. The tea will be "flash-frozen" instantly, while part of the ice cubes dissolve.
I tried to make a larger amount at once. A while ago, I had bought this "refrigerator pitcher".
I filled it with a lot of ice cubes. The pitcher holds 2 liters, and I filled it approximately to the 1.5-liter mark. Then I brewed the tea. I filled a paper tea filter with 8 teaspoons of green tea.
This is sencha with extra flavor added. I used earl grey flavor (a small rest) and blood orange flavor.
After I had added water of 80 degrees Celsius, it looked like this:
I let it infuse for one and a half minutes, then poured it on the ice cubes.
Hm. Again, I was not so happy with the color. I tried it. I wasn't that happy with the taste, either.
Possible ways to improve it:
1. Less ice cubes.
2. Distribute the tea leaves evenly among two tea filters, so they have more room to expand in the hot water.
3. Use fresher tea. (The blood-orange flavored sencha was more than a year old, I think.)
To be continued.
You like iced green tea? As for me, I like hot green tea, but for some reason, I can never like iced green tea. Every summer, when it starts to get really hot, I switch to hot green tea to cold barley tea. Do you know that barley tea is the oldest tea in Japan?
ReplyDeleteI'm looking forward to your improvements!
Yes, I like iced green tea, and I had already achieved satisfactory results with the above method in the past. Whenever I stop by the specialty stores, I always take a bottle of iced green tea with me to drink on the way home :)
DeleteThe local supermarkets also carry iced green tea, but it's sweetened and I don't like that anymore after I have been to Japan.
No, I didn't know that mugicha was known in Japan before green tea. I've never had it. I wouldn't know how to make it, either. The local supermarkets have pearl barley (for use in soups and stews), and Ben made a huge pot of vegetable stew with pearl barley not long ago. I think there is still some in the fridge. He eats it as a snack in-between meals ;)
At the moment, there is a thunderstorm outside. So not quite the right weather for iced tea :) But I have supplied myself with fresh green tea with additional flavor (earl grey and vanilla) today. I also want to try making iced tea with plain sencha.