Quick and Easy Cold Brew Tea Recipe

It's 90 degrees outside. Do you drink your tea hot or cold?

Cold brew coffee is one of the most popular drinks. But for the same reason, cold brew iced tea has been gaining more attention lately.

I am that person who sips on piping hot tea even on a 95-degree day, but I do occasionally batch make cold brew in advance for a hassle-free summer BBQ.

Cold brewing is the easiest and most forgiving way to make iced tea.

Although many recommend using oolong, white, green, or herbal teas to make cold brew tea, I’d say that with the right technique, you can actually make any cold brew tea taste amazing.

And you’ll still get the same health benefits as the hot brewed tea.

As a tea sommelier specializing in aged tea, I am sharing a cold brew tea recipe that is adapted for compressed aged tea, such as raw pu-erh and ripe pu-erh tea.

Here’s the basic recipe for cold brew tea.

Quick and Easy Cold Brew Tea Recipe

Serving size: 2 servings

Ingredient List

• Smoky Pu-erh (2017) or other aged teas (3g)*
• Room temperature water (2 cups or 500mL)**
• A cold brew bottle***
• [For aged teas] A kettle

Step-by-Step How-to

1. Boil the water to boiling temperature.
2. Measure out 3g of tea for 500mL of water.
3. Add the leaves in a strainer or a cold brew bottle.
4. [For aged teas] Pre-awaken the leaves with boiling water by giving a quick 5-second rinse.
5. Fill up the bottle with room temperature water and leave it in the fridge for 12 hours or more (or overnight).

Adapting the Recipe to your specific tea

* The ratio of 3g/500mL works well for this specific tea. However, you can experiment with the specific tea that you are using ranging from 3-5g/500mL.

** You can always scale up the recipe depending on the size of your jar.

*** You can substitute with a combination of any jar or pitcher and a strainer (or cheesecloth or DIY tea bags)

Keep in mind that HOW you make your cold brew has a huge impact on its FLAVOR so you may need to adapt the recipe based on the exact tea you are using.

If you want to see how you can end up with drastically different batches of cold brew from the same tea, check out our IGTV video below.

It was truly eye-opening!

This video is from our weekly IG LIVE Tea Hour, so my reactions to these brews are candid.

View this post on Instagram

Did you know that HOW you make your cold brew has a HUGE impact on its FLAVOR? Many of us resort to the usual “leave it in the fridge overnight” method for cold brewing. But when I ran a cold brew experiment a few weeks ago, I ended up with THREE VERY DIFFERENT batches from the same tea! It was eye-opening. This video is from our weekly LIVE Tea Hour, so my reactions to these brews are candid. To learn how NOT to brew your raw pu’er, see the video until the end!

A post shared by Mansa Handcrafted Aged Tea (@mansa_tea) on Jul 17, 2020 at 7:46am PDT

Take your Cold Brew Technique to the next level

As you can see from the video, I ended up with three very different batches of our Smoky Pu-erh (2015).   

• The first batch was light and more fruit-forward, like summer white wine.
• The second batch was quite citrus, like a summer cocktail.
• The last batch was oaky and woody, like an old-fashioned. 

If you'd like to master how to adapt the cold brew method for different types of tea, including aged tea, join our next Cold Brew Technique workshop, held virtually on Sunday, July 26, at 2pm EST. Hope to see you there!

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