First bottle of cold brewed loose-leaf tea – Uji Gyokuro

Hey there, tea drinkers! I decided to start experimenting with cold brewing some loose-leaf teas. I pulled the first of these experiments out of the fridge this morning and transferred the brew from my cold brew press to a glass bottle: an Uji Gyokuro tea. For this brew, I used roughly 50 g of dry leaf in about 1.5 L of spring water, and I let it cold brew in the fridge for about 11 hours. As you can see from the pictures, the result was a bright yellow-green nectar. It might be harder to tell from the images, but it is also very cloudy.

The flavor of the brew was strongly vegetal and intensely umami: a potent but delicious concentration of gyokuro flavor. And it had minimal astringency and was surprisingly low in bitterness, despite brewing for so long (11 hours). I enjoyed it, and I shared some with a few people I know who said they liked it too. So I guess this experiment was a success. I look forward to trying out making more cold brewed teas!

Anyways, that’s basically it tea-drinkers. I just wanted to briefly share this first experiment in cold brewing tea with you. If you want to read/learn more about cold brewing tea, I found the following resources helpful:

• “How to Cold Brew Tea” from Don at Mei Leaf : https://meileaf.com/article/how-to-cold-brew-tea/
• “How to Cold Brew Loose Leaf Tea” by Krista at I Love Loose Leaf: http://ilovelooseleaf.com/how-to-cold-brew-loose-leaf-tea

And if you’re curious about the press I used, it’s a Bodum BEAN SET cold brew coffee press: I purchased mine at my local Target store. It was relatively inexpensive and although designed with coffee in mind, it works great with loose-leaf tea too.

Update 10/11/2019: I put the same leaves on for a second brew. I forgot to decant them last night, so I did it earlier today which meant the leaves ended up steeping this time for about 25-26 hours. This second brew had a similar color, but wasn’t as cloudy. The vegetal and umami flavors were much lighter and it had more of a bitter-sweetness (reminded me somewhat of the bitter-sweetness of an unsweetened dark chocolate). It was quite a bit different, but I still enjoyed it. So if you are thinking of trying some cold brewing, it might be worth trying re-infusing the leaves in a second cold brew session.

Thanks for reading! What tea should I cold brew next? Comment below and share your suggestions.

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That’s it, tea drinkers. Until next time, keep enjoying the wondrous taste of tea! — Blake – the tea drinker behind Blake’s Tea Journal