FOOD NEWS
Elevate Your Iced Tea By Simply Shifting To Loose Leaf
BY RYAN CASHMAN
Loose leaf is the purest form of tea available for purchase, and has much more flavor than tea bags, which are made with byproducts left over after the tea leaf crushing process.
Loose leaf tea has more direct contact with water than generic teabags, which allows more flavor to be extracted. Loose leaf can also be reused for a good for multiple steeps.
You can also choose between whole or broken leaf tea, with broken leaves being dried and crushed. The flavors of these two categories of tea are generally similar.
Loose leaf tea is available in black, green, herbal, pu-erh, oolong, and white varieties. All of these have several subcategories and blends to choose from.
There are a few different brewing methods, but the best method for iced tea is cold brewing, which involves steeping the tea in the cold water in the fridge for several hours.
The cold water doesn't draw out the tea's tannins as much as hot water does, making the drink sweeter with less bitterness. You'll want to steep it for eight to 24 hours.
There’s also ambient steeping, in which tea is steeped at room temperature for about an hour, drawing out more flavor than cold steeping without making flavors too astringent.