How to Cold Brew Whole Leaf Green Tea

Cold brewing whole-leaf tea overnight extracts all the flavour with almost none of the bitterness. It's also the laziest good cup of tea you'll ever make.

The Problem with Hot Brew in Summer

Here's the problem with hot-brewed green tea in summer: temperature control matters a lot, and most people overbrew it. Too hot, too long, and green tea turns bitter fast. Cold brew sidesteps the whole issue.

The Method

The method is almost embarrassingly simple. Add 3 grams of whole-leaf tea per 250ml of cold filtered water. Drop it in a glass jar or pitcher. Put it in the fridge. Come back in 6 to 8 hours — or just leave it overnight. Pour it out and drink it.

Cold water extracts differently from hot. It picks up the sweet and aromatic compounds first, while leaving behind a lot of the catechins and tannins that create bitterness and astringency in an overbrewed hot cup. The result is cleaner, lighter, and noticeably sweeter than the same tea brewed hot. First-timers usually don't believe it's the same tea.

Things Worth Knowing

A few things worth knowing: cold brew is lower in caffeine than hot brew — roughly 30 to 40% less — so it's a gentler option if you're caffeine-sensitive or brewing an afternoon cup. It also keeps well. Refrigerated in a sealed jar, it stays good for two to three days, which means you can make a batch on Sunday night and have cold cups ready through Wednesday.

Our Blue Flower green tea is particularly good cold-brewed — the anthocyanin colour stays vivid and the flavour becomes almost dessert-like. Organic Green is clean and almost savoury cold. Try both before settling on a favourite.