Camy's Hot and Cold Brew Fruit Iced Tea

At first I thought this was a stupid recipe to post, but then I thought I’d just post it in case someone hadn’t thought of this and was interested in it.

Captain Caffeine has been known to remark that I’m very picky about my tea, although I don’t consider myself a real connoisseur. I don’t like tea that’s been made in a coffee carafe because I can taste the old coffee and it’s nasty, but I will not scoff at using a Lipton tea bag if there’s nothing else available.

However, as the weather has gotten hotter I’ve been searching for the perfect fruit iced tea to drink. I love those fruit flavored black teas like mango or peach or strawberry. However, I notice that in restaurants, especially, many times the tea is bitter because they oversleep it.

However, I’ve found that in order to get a strong fruit flavor, especially when steeping real dried fruit as opposed to just artificial fruit-flavored tea, I need to use hot water and a long steep time. It’s also generally recommended that you hot-steep fruit and herbal infusions to eliminate any possible bacteria since the fruit isn’t always heated during processing (it depends on the company who makes the infusion).

So I decided to combine hot and cold water steeping to create my perfect black iced tea for this summer.

I steep 2 tablespoons of black tea in 1 quart of cold water for at least 4 hours in the fridge. It can go even longer, 24 hours or longer, and still taste fine—I haven’t been able to oversteep a cold black tea yet. I use a mason jar and throw the tea leaves in directly so they have lots of room to float around.

I then steep 2 heaping tablespoons of my favorite fruit blend infusion in 1 quart of near-boiling water (205 degrees F) in a teapot or a tempered glass pitcher made specifically for steeping hot teas. These fruit infusion blends are non-caffeinated—my favorites are Mango Melange, Wild Strawberry, and Berry Blues from Adagio.com. (If you want a $5 gift certificate for Adagio, let me know and I can email it to you or message you on Facebook.)

I let the fruit infusion steep for at least 15 minutes, but usually closer to an hour since I tend to forget about it. (FYI, I’ve tried a quick rinse of boiling water and then a cold brew of fruit teas, but I just don’t get the bold flavor I like when doing a long hot water steep.)

Then I combine the cold brew tea and the fruit infusion in a pitcher. I typically add the juice of one lemon (to promote good kidney health) but that’s optional if you don’t like the flavor. I pour my cold brew tea from the mason jar through a strainer (to catch the loose leaves) into the pitcher. Then I pour the fruit infusion into the pitcher through the tea strainer. I then refrigerate for an hour or so before drinking.

Mango Melange iced tea with roses from my garden

I like this iced tea because the cold brew black tea is sweet and non-bitter, but with that nice tea flavor. And the fruit flavor is also strong and bold from the hot water steep.

Online articles say that the more expensive white and oolong teas are better for cold brewing, but I haven’t yet tried that. Adagio has actually offered me a gift certificate to buy some of their teas and blog about it, so I intend to try some white tea and blog about that later.

I’ve had decent results when I cold-brew David’s organic whole leaf Darjeeling black tea from Amazon. There’s a slight tannic taste to the tea, but it’s more mild than other cheaper black teas.

I like Adagio’s Ooooh Darjeeling (an unusual oolong tea from Darjeeling) as an iced tea also, but I tend to like the oolong flavor better when I instead hot brew that for 3 minutes and then cool it in the fridge, and I don’t drink that with fruit infusions.

A random note: Another cold brew infusion I really like is Mugicha, which is roasted barley. It’s non-caffeinated, and I buy that on Amazon and enjoy that all summer long.