How To Make Cold Brew Iced Tea

Here's how to make cold brew tea for a perfect glass of iced tea with lemon and mint on a hot summer day. It's so easy to steep in the fridge and so refreshing!

You may have heard of using the heat of the sun to make sun tea. But did you know you could make iced tea in your refrigerator? There's actually no need for heat, the tea steeps while it sits in the fridge. 

Cold brewed tea has less bitter flavors than iced tea made from hot tea, and it stays clear when it's chilled. 

Just put a jar of filtered cold water and your favorite tea bags in the refrigerator in the morning and have fresh brewed iced tea waiting in the afternoon. Or make it overnight and it's ready to go in the morning.

Pour it over a glass full of ice, lemon slices, and fresh mint from the garden. I always drink my iced tea unsweetened. But if you like sweet tea, a touch of honey simple syrup (equal parts honey and hot water stirred until the honey dissolves) is easy to mix into cold tea.

Ingredients

The ingredients couldn't be more simple. All You need is water, tea bags, lemon slices and mint leaves.

You can use any type of tea you like for cold brewing tea. Just make sure it's high-quality tea leaves with no artificial ingredients. Experiment with mixing different teas together to find your perfect blend.

You can even make it with loose leaf tea (though you will need to use a tea strainer to strain out the loose tea leaves after it brews). Try cold brewing with oolong teas or minimally processed white tea. Or make it with herbal teas (which are technically not tea, just dried herbs).

My favorite summer drink is a combination is a black tea or green tea mixed with Earl Grey. I love the hint of citrus from the oil of bergamot in Earl Grey. This delicious blend works really well with the lemon and mint.

How To Make It

• Fill a large glass jar or pitcher with a lid with filtered room temperature water. Add the tea bags, holding the tags outside the opening of the container when you cover it with the lid.
• Refrigerate the container, steeping 6 to 8 hours or overnight. Remove and discard the teabags.
• Fill your serving glasses with ice, lemon slices and mint sprigs. Pour tea over ice.

Optional: If you want to add sweetener, stir in your favorite liquid sweetener to taste before adding ice.

Variations

If you want to change it up, try this cold brew tea as the base for these iced tea recipes.

• Ginger lemon - swap ginger tea for some of the black tea bags when you brew it and serve with lemon.
• Raspberry - use raspberry flavored tea bags and garnish with fresh raspberries and lime slices.
• Peach - try it with peach flavored tea bags and garnish with fresh peach wedges.
• Green tea - using green tea will make a light refreshing tea.
• Arnold Palmer - make this summertime classic with half cold brew tea and half lemonade. This easy lemonade recipe is sweetened with honey.

Cold brew iced tea is so simple and easy to make. And you can always garnish the glass with extra fresh fruit like strawberries and orange slices along with the lemon and mint. It's a perfect treat for the warmer months of summer.

Here are two more of my favorite summer drinks -- an all fruit watermelon berry smoothie and a 2-ingredient pina colada smoothie.

And how about these all fruit popsicles or vegan coffee ice cream for beating the heat?

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