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By John Rice, General Manager
I'm always surprised that people who insist on the high quality of loose leaf tea when they intend to drink it hot, assume they have to use bagged tea when they will be drinking it iced. The fact is, using loose leaf tea for iced tea is incredibly simple and fast, and doesn't require much equipment that most kitchens don't already have. A larger infuser, like a 6 cup tea ball or Chelsea reusable cloth tea bag, is probably all you need.
Here is how I make a gallon of the world's best iced tea in ten minutes:
- Fill a large saucepan with about 2 quarts of fresh water and put it on high heat to boil. The exact amount of boiling water isn't critical. I'm a bit of a stickler when it comes to consistency, so I always weigh the tea I use, since it is the only truly accurate way to get the same amount every time. With unflavored or lightly flavored teas, I measure out .70 oz (20 grams) of tea (about 4 tablespoons). With flavored teas that have chunks of anything other than tea (fruit rinds, spices, etc.) I usually use 1 oz (28 grams, or about 5 tablespoons). You may want to adjust to your own tastes. Put your tea in the infuser. In many cases, one 6 cup tea ball should be big enough, but if it seems a bit tight, which it will be with certain teas, split the tea between two of them. Better yet, use a Chelsea reusable cloth tea bag.
- Once the water is boiling, take it off the heat, put the infuser in the water and start your timer. Pull the infuser through the water periodically, to make sure it is getting good exposure to the water. When the time is up, take the infuser out of the water. If you want to add sugar, do it now and stir completely.
- Finally, I pour the hot tea into a gallon pitcher which is about half full of ice. For the clearest tea possible, I set a large colander across the top of the pitcher, put a sheet of sack cloth in the colander and pour the tea through it. Fill the pitcher the rest of the way with tap water and you're good to go. Rinse out your infuser, colander and sack cloth and let them dry for the next time.
I recommend trying any tea you enjoy hot. Impress your friends with a delicious tumbler of your favorite loose leaf tea. You will be surprised how good iced tea can be. Take it easy on the sugar at first. High quality tea deserves to have its flavor come through.
A couple suggestions. It is best if the saucepan is NOT non-stick. That way you can quickly scrub out any residue left by the tea. Also, an electric kettle makes the whole process even faster, since they boil water in significantly less time than the stove top. Any avid tea drinker should have one anyway and they are easy to find at most department stores such as Target. I still use the saucepan to brew the tea, and preheat it a bit while the water is boiling, but I put the infuser in the saucepan and pour the boiling water over it as it sits in the saucepan.
Got a favorite iced tea method of your own? Please share!
By Lori Bricker, MS, RD
 As a tea shop owner, one of my worst fears is that customers might inadvertently ruin their tea. This is especially easy for the novice who might not yet know the best practices. Here's a review of the most important things to do for a great tasting cup! I will assume that you have already bought nice loose leaf tea . . .
1. Please use good water. I can't overstate the importance of this. Tea is too delicate a beverage to mask the taste of poor quality water. I found this out first-hand many years ago. I had moved into a new house where the city water left a lot to be desired, but I got used to the taste and didn't think much more about it. I happily made my tea and drank it without complaint. Then I acquired a bottled water service at work, and since I made a lot of tea at work, became accustomed to its taste quickly. Back at home, I noticed my tea tasted awful! Before I realized what the problem was, I threw out a few pots of tea thinking I had let it get too old or something. Then I ordered the same bottled water service for home, and presto! Problem solved
2. Use the proper amount of tea. Most people use too much tea, which can contribute to a bitter or overly strong taste. It is also wasteful. The best way to not use too much tea is to weigh it with a gram scale (start with 2 grams per 6 oz. cup). Using a teaspoon per 6 oz. cup is also about right, but you have to note that some teas are very dense, like Gunpowder Green, while others are rather "fluffy," like Imperial Silver Needles, so you have to adjust.
3. Please pay attention to the brew time. In general, if you let your tea brew too long, it will get bitter. Some people are more sensitive to bitter taste than others, so preferences will vary widely. But it is a good habit to use a timer when brewing your tea. Even an old pro like me can walk away and get distracted only to come back 10 minutes later to an evil tasting cup. If you have your favorite tea all figured out and never ruin it, please watch it with new teas, especially green teas, which sometimes can get bitter even after one minute.
4. Use proper water temperature. The rule of thumb is boiling water for black and herbal; steaming water (i.e., sub-boiling) for green, oolong, and white. Some of the most delicate teas really do best if you use a thermometer to make sure you don't go over a certain temperature.
5. Store tea properly for longest life. The rule of thumb here is "air-tight, dark, and dry." Don't use the refrigerator or freezer, just use any opaque container that has a good seal and keep it away from moisture and odors.
6. Clean your teapot regularly. That buildup on the inside of your teapot will tend to add a bitter quality to your brew. If you drink a wide variety of teas, you should also have a designated teapot for each type, for example, chai, unflavored black, unflavored green, herbals, etc. Especially with ceramic teapots, flavors will be absorbed over time and can be noticeable when drinking a more delicate tea.
7. Experiment!! This is absolutely the only way to tell the best way to prepare any given tea. Keep in mind that preferences will vary from person to person. Some people have very sensitive palates and can tell if a tea has steeped 15 seconds too long, while others are fine with letting a tea bag hang out of their cup for an hour. But if you are interested in improving your cup, try these things:
Use bottled water for a few days, then go back to your tap water and see if you can tell any difference. Good quality tap water is often just fine, but even so, bottled is often an improvement.
Vary the water temperature and brew time, especially if you are noticing bitter tea — keep notes for each tea so you don't forget.
Try different infusers made from different materials. I find people have really strong preferences about whether or not they like metal, plastic, cloth or paper, and often it is because of the taste.
Got a story about how you brew your tea? Please share — we can all learn from each other!
I wanted to share this email from a customer because she goes into some detail about how she managed to provide brewed loose tea for a large group at a church function. I thought others might benefit from her experience and description of her method. It is also a very sweet “thank you” which we all most appreciate! — Lori
Dear Lori,
I just wanted to share with you the appreciation of the tea “Holiday Dream” that I served at our church’s ADVENT BY CANDLELIGHT evening for ladies of our congregation and the community.
This annual event was the 14th time it was held in our Family Life Center. Twenty round tables were decorated by the women of the congregation. Each lady selects her own theme, provides all the decorations and even the tableware should she so desire. Our congregation does have cloth tablecloths for the ladies to use or they can provide their own. Naturally, candles play an important part in the table decorations since they are the only lighting during the program and serving of dessert. Its amazing that over the years a table has never been duplicated!
We serve coffee but by far, tea is the beverage of choice. We prepared 21 pots of tea, using HOLIDAY DREAM. that I had purchased from you. I bagged the loose tea in large pot sachets so each pot had its own pre-measured amount of tea. My committee heated the tea pots, boiled water, timed the brewing of the tea, placed each teapot on a tea warmer and
covered it with a cozy. Needless to say, between my daughter, my tea buddy, and myself, we have all the necessary articles to do such a large undertaking. It arrived at the tables ready for sipping. There was not a drip of tea left in the pots at the end of the evening.
So many ladies requested the information regarding the tea that I have placed the information of your web site and your toll free number in our church bulletin for this next Sunday. I hope you will have some inquiries and orders! It is my joy to use and serve tea from you.
Tea drinkers are really at a disadvantage compared to their coffee-loving counterparts when it comes to having their favorite brew at work. I’ve never been in an office that didn’t have a coffee pot. But a proper teapot? If you’re lucky you’ll get a hot water dispenser and some nasty tea bags. So it usually is up to the individual to figure out the best way to have tea-time at work.
I’ll cover the basics here and give as many ideas as I can think of. But I will ask you all to reply with your own methods. Each office setting has its own difficulties, and desperate tea-drinkers are very creative!
The typical problems are no hot water, no brewing equipment, and no tea. So let’s look at these one at a time.
1. Get hot water by
- boiling water on the stove
- using an electric kettle or hot pot
- using a microwave
- using a hot water dispenser
- toting in hot water in an insulated pot of some kind
If you’re lucky enough to have access to a kitchenette with an actual stovetop, problem solved! Bring in a kettle and get started. But that’s probably not the case. If you are allowed to bring in an electric kettle or hot pot, you also have no problem — but ask first because they can blow a fuse. A hot water dispenser is frequently found on coffee machines, and those work very nicely for green tea since they are usually a bit cooler than boiling. It would be nice to have boiling water for black tea, but honestly, I would use one of these dispensers without hesitation for any kind of tea. Lacking those options, a microwave may have to do. Purists don’t like this, and I usually don’t recommend it either. But I have to admit, my dad uses a microwave to boil his tea water, and when I’m at his house, I make my tea that way sometimes. I confess I usually can’t tell the difference. (But I would still never do it at my own house!!) If you have none of these, then you need to bring hot water in from home, which sounds bizarre, but it’s better than nothing. Insulated “air pots” really keep water fairly hot for long periods. You can get a 2-3 liter air pot for about $50. Bringing in water (hot or cold) is also helpful if the water quality at your office is poor. This can really ruin a great tea quickly!
2. Brewing Equipment
- Teapot or
- Mug or cup of some kind or
- Thermos or
- Coffee pot
- And some kind of filter
Apart from my own office, I don’t think I’ve worked anywhere that had easy access to teapots for the staff to use. No one knows how to use them and they take up a lot of space. If you can bring in a teapot, great, keep it in your office so it doesn’t get broken. You’ll need an infuser that fits the pot, or you can use disposable filters so you don’t have anything to clean. Bring in a tea cozy too, so you can keep your tea hot in your office, and you might get a cork coaster or tea trivet of some kind so you don’t get water rings on your desk. I know most people won’t do all this, but I would. I love to use a real teapot.
But most people use mugs. That’s fine and offices are rife with mugs. So grab a mug, and again, you’ll need an infuser that fits it or disposable filters. My biggest complaint about mugs is that the tea cools off quickly and it’s just too small a portion for me. You can get one of those electric mug warmers, which work OK for a while, but if you leave your cup on there too long your tea will taste sort of “stewey.” You can also throw a tea cozy over your mug, or you can get a mug with a lid (you’ll have to bring one in from home).
Some kind of insulated thermos really works great for keeping tea hot for long periods. But they are often hard to brew in because they are so tall and skinny. There are long paper filters that are made for brewing vessels that shape, or you can brew your tea in something else and transfer it to a thermos. But if you’re going to do that you might as well just brew your tea at home and keep it in a thermos all day at work (which isn’t a bad idea either if your thermos is big enough).
A coffee pot is really the last resort, and I’m just going to say it is a bad idea. Your tea will taste like coffee. Yuck.
3. Tea
Unless you want to use the rank office tea bags, you’d better bring in your own tea. And if tea bags are easier for you, I don’t see anything wrong with using good tea bags. I use tea bags sometimes when I travel, and it really is quick and simple, Just pick one you really like. But, if it is at all possible to make loose leaf tea at work, do it! I don’t need to sell you on that point. What I find the most convenient is to make up my own tea bags at home. I use paper filters, load them up with the tea I want and put them in one or more plastic baggies. Then I don’t have to do the measuring in a hectic or inconvenient environment. On the other hand, how hard is it really to reach into a pouch of tea with a scoop and measure out how much you need? It just takes a moment, and people will think you’re special.
I would also recommend choosing a tea that isn’t too delicate or complicated. Better to have a really good cup of “ordinary” tea than a poorly brewed cup of something exotic. Frequently, people are busy working at work (!) and may have to leave their brewing tea unattended. So be prepared for it to over brew. Choose a tea that can take an extended brew time or one so inexpensive that if you have to throw it out and start over, you won’t be depressed about it.
My last bit of advice is to get your co-workers drinking tea also. They’ve probably just never had good tea and will be eternally grateful to you for improving their lives. And there is power in numbers! If everyone starts to complain to the management that they need better tea equipment in the break room, they might actually listen to you. We have several customers who have turned their whole office on to tea, and they place large group orders for all their co-workers. I love to imagine the day the big box of tea arrives at the office, and everyone stops what they are doing to collect their goodies. Then the kettle goes non-stop for about an hour while everyone takes turns brewing up!
So, everyone, what clever methods have you devised to have a great cup of tea at work?
Here are a few products we carry that might be helpful:
Mini Minit Filters
T-Sacs
Jug Size T-Sacs
Paper Tea Bags
Chatsford Infuser Mug
For Life Curve Infuser Mug
Roli Gourmet Tea Steeping Mug
Covered Mug
A 1-2 month supply is a good starting point for most people. If you are really set on one or two teas and you are confident you will continue to like them and drink them daily, you may get a year’s supply at one time. One pound of tea makes roughly 200 cups, so that may give you an idea of how long that would last. If you buy much more than that, you risk it going stale or you may just tire of it.
By John Rice, General Manager. When a customer is brewing loose tea for the first time, they sometimes comment that it came out tasting bitter. Unlike most bag teas, high quality loose teas require more care in brewing, and how to do this properly will vary with the particular tea being made. This is why we have specific brewing instructions on each bag of tea.
If your tea is coming out bitter, it is usually due to any of three different reasons. 1) The water is too hot; 2) The tea has been steeped too long; or, 3) You are using too much tea. The first thing to do is make certain the proper water temperature and steeping time are followed, as indicated on the label. For example, Sencha is a particularly delicate tea and should be steeped for 1 minute (no more) in steaming (not boiling) water or it will rapidly turn bitter. The final solution is to use less tea. Customers sometimes hesitate to try this, fearing they will lose flavor, but the fact is that the astringency of tea can actually cover up the flavor when too much tea is used. Using less will sometimes increase the actual tea flavor. The most fail safe way to measure your tea is with a scale, which needs to be accurate to at least 1/10 gram. Use 2-3 grams of tea for each 6 oz of hot tea or 12 oz of iced tea, starting more toward 2 gm for unflavored or lightly flavored teas and more toward 3 gm for flavored teas with large pieces, like chunks of cinnamon or fruit rinds.
Tea will easily get stale if stored improperly, and can sometimes even spoil. For best flavor retention, tea needs to be kept in an air-tight, dark, and dry environment, ideally at a constant temperature and away from odors. Because tea leaves are dried, they are prone to absorbing moisture and aromas of nearby items. Light will also degrade the color of the leaf and over time can affect the flavor (not true for most herbal teas). Even simple exposure to air will cause tea to lose flavor and aroma over time. Temperature changes can also cause moisture to build up inside the tea container. This is often what happens when tea is kept in the freezer or refrigerator, where the door is opened frequently and/or the unit cycles through various temperatures — you may get ice inside your tea container.
I like to use ceramic canisters or metal tins with tight fitting lids for my favorite teas. Zip-lock style foil bags lined with plastic (like the ones we sell our tea in) are also good, and have the advantage that you can press out excess air before you re-seal the zip closure. If you really like to use glass jars for your tea, please keep them in a dark cupboard.
If you use tea bags, be sure not to store your chai bags along with your Darjeeling bags in the same container. You’ll end up with all chai!
If you are going to re-use a container for a new tea, be sure to clean it thoroughly and let it air out for few days with the lid off to purge the odor of the previous tea. Baking soda can help absorb these lingering scents.
Tea kept properly should last 6-12 months at least. This will vary quite a bit with the type of tea, its freshness when you bought it, how it is stored, and how often you open the container. Unopened tea that has been vacuum sealed (and better yet, nitrogen-flushed) will keep for many years. Once open, I like to use up a tea within 6 months if possible. But I frequently have customers tell me they have had some tea around for a few years, and they still think it is fine. Let your taste buds guide you.
Have a look at our Tins and Canisters category to view or purchase any of these items.
In general, freshly boiled water is appropriate for black and herbal teas, but steaming (sub-boiling) is best for green, oolong, and white teas. A lot of people use boiling water all the time and report their tea tastes fine. Ultimately, your taste preferences are all that matter, so feel free to experiment a bit with different brewing temperatures. We always put our suggested brewing instructions on our packaging for each tea, so use that as a place to start. If you ever find that green, oolong, or white teas are tasting bitter, be sure to try brewing them at a lower temperature first.
The best way to control the strength of your tea is the alter the amount of tea leaves you use rather than changing the brew time. People will often try to let their tea brew a long time to get a strong cup, only to find it tastes bitter. To get the best flavor, you should brew the tea according to the directions (or according to your own experiments). Then if you find the tea is too strong, try using a smaller amount of tea leaves; if too weak, try a larger amount of tea leaves.
This can vary significantly from tea to tea, but there are rules of thumb. In general, black tea needs to brew 3-5 minutes for best flavor. They will often get bitter if you let them brew more than 6 or 7 minutes (some much sooner). Green tea often needs only 1 minute, but 2-3 minutes is not unusual. Oolongs typically need 2-3 minutes. Herbals need 5-10 minutes, and they generally don’t get bitter, so you can let them brew as long as you like. Keep in mind that finely cut teas, whether black, green, or herbal, require shorter brewing times than large leaf teas.
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