Cold Brew vs. Iced Tea: What’s the Difference?

Summer is when your body and mind demand refuge from heat, either through seeking shade or some cold drinks. When we talk about cold drinks, a non-alcoholic beverage has become a fan favorite over recent years: Iced Tea.

Iced tea can be made using several methods, one of which is cold brew. People often confuse cold brew with iced tea. Let me clear up the confusion for you.

Understanding Brewing

Before going deep, we first need to understand what brewing is. Brewing is the method used to extract the flavor and compounds out of the tea leaves by adding them to water under specific conditions. You usually bring water to a certain temperature for the particular tea, add the leaves to the water, and steep them for a specific time to extract the flavours.

There are the following types of Brewing methods which can be used to make iced tea:

• Hot brew
• Cold brew
• Sun Brew
• Ice Chill Method

Cold Brew

Cold brew is a brewing method from Japan and known as MizuDashi, where mizu means water and dashi means infusion. In this method, the tea leaves are left in normal water and left alone for several hours so that all the flavour from the tea leaves is gradually extracted and infused in the water.

How to Make Iced Tea with a Normal Brewing Method?

Making iced tea is as simple as making regular tea with a few extra steps. To make iced tea, you will need to take the following steps.

Ingredients

7 cups of water, two family-size loose leaf tea, one can of lemonade concentrate, Sugar or honey, lemon slices

Instructions

• Add three cups of water to a saucepan, and bring the water to a boil.
• Remove the saucepan from heat, add the best loose leaf tea, and steep well for ten minutes to extract all the flavors.
• Stain tea from the water
• Add the can of lemonade concentrate to the tea and stir it well.
• Add Sugar or honey according to your taste to sweeten the drink. Generally, half a cup of sugar will suffice for the other ingredients.
• Stir the tea well. Now, add four cups of ice-cold water to the tea concentrate.
• Stir well; now your tea is ready to be served.
• Add crushed ice to a glass and pour tea into it. Add freshly cut lemon slices on top for garnishing.

Flavour

The flavour of tea brewed with this method is robust. Without adding Sugar, the tea feels somewhat bitter and leaves a strong impression on the taste buds.

How to Make Iced Tea with Cold Brew?

You can make the same Lemonade Iced tea with cold brew. The only difference is that we will not use heat to brew the tea. Instead, we will rely on time.

We will take a saucepan, add three cups of water and loose leaf tea, cover the saucepan, and leave it like that for at least 8 hours so the tea is fully infused in the water. Then, follow the same steps 4-9 from the method mentioned above.

Flavour

The flavour of tea brewed this way will be milder and smoother than commonly brewed tea. There will be no bitterness in the tea brewed like this, as the compounds that make the taste bitter require a long time to be released in cold brew. This will give you a better and more refreshing experience.

Where to Buy the Best Summer Teas?

If you are searching for a reputable brand to buy your favourite summer tea, search no more. iTeaworld is the ultimate solution. This brand is known for delivering the best summer teas and other types of best loose leaf teas.

They have a wide collection of summer teas in their store. The best thing about their products is that they contain quality ingredients. They choose the tea leaves that undergo careful processing, which preserves their natural nutrients and aroma.

So, when you plan to buy quality summer tea or any other Chinese tea, do not hesitate to visit iTeaworld’s online store. You will surely find quality products there.

Conclusion

Cold brew and Iced tea are entirely different, while cold brew is only one method of making iced tea.