How to Make Iced Tea with Loose Leaf Tea (Two Methods I Love)

Making iced tea with tea bags is pretty self-explanatory. Steep, cool, done. Loose leaf is a little more involved, but once you know what you're doing it's just as fast and the result is noticeably better.

I used to work at a tea house where we served over 200 loose leaf teas and made iced tea out of every single one of them. These are the two methods I still use today.

The Cup-by-Cup Method

This one is ideal when you're making one drink for yourself or serving a few friends and you want each cup to be fresh and perfectly balanced. Just make sure you have more ice than a few cubes... like I didn't yesterday. Oops.

Fill your cup or glass nearly to the top with ice.

Then brew a strong concentrate of whatever tea you want: a generous amount of loose leaf and just enough water to cover it, maybe a touch more. Two minutes is plenty. Then strain it directly over the ice.

The logic is simple. The concentrate is hot and strong, but there's not much of it. ***As it hits the ice, the small amount of hot water melts just enough to dilute and chill it, and the remaining ice holds everything cold***. You end up with a perfectly balanced cup that still has ice, and a perfect strength and color. 

You can do this with a regular teapot and strainer, but my favorite way is with a kitchen grade gravity tea dispenser: a wide-opening brewer with a fine filter at the bottom and a latch mechanism that only opens when you set it on top of a cup or thermos.

You load in your leaves and hot water, let it steep, and then place it directly over your ice-filled glass. The latch releases and the tea flows down through the filter, leaving all the leaves behind. EASY TO CLEAN, THANK GOD.

It's genuinely beautiful to watch, especially with teas that bloom and expand as they steep. A milky oolong over ice this way is something else. I used these dispensers at the tea house and still reach for mine constantly. They're inexpensive, easy to clean, and never fail to impress someone who hasn't seen one before.

Here's the gravity tea infuser I use. 

The Bulk Method

When you want a full pitcher or jug ready in the fridge, you need a different approach.

The key with loose leaf is that you want the leaves to have room to move during brewing. A few options work well here.

A large electric kettle is the most straightforward. The Breville variable temp kettle boils a serious amount of water fast, which is ideal when you're making a big batch. Steep the leaves right in the kettle or transfer to a large vessel once it's boiled. I write extensively about my top kettle picks here. I write extensively about my top kettle picks here. 

If you want something you can steep and store in the same container, a large French press is excellent for this. The Stanley French press is the one I'd point you toward if capacity is what you're after. Press, strain, done.

The one I've been experimenting with lately is the coffee pot. If yours has been recently cleaned, it works surprisingly well: add your loose leaf directly to the empty carafe or the basket area, load the water reservoir as usual, and hit start. The machine does the brewing for you.

One important caveat: I'd only use this method with teas that don't turn bitter from extended heat or a bit of over-steeping. Mint, rooibos, hibiscus, fruit blends, most herbal and flavored teas work great.

Skip this method for anything that's straight Camellia sinensis, meaning green, black, or oolong teas, which can get astringent fast. You can always sweeten to combat bitterness, but that's up to you. For real tea, try to not steep over 8 minutes, even when doing bulk... unless you're adding sweetener.

You can read about why tea gets bitter here. 

Once it's brewed, let it cool slightly, then pour it through a fine mesh strainer into your final jug or pitcher. A simple kitchen strainer does the job.

Find a fine mesh kitchen strainer

Let it sit in the fridge overnight. By morning you have a big batch of cold, clean, properly brewed iced tea ready to go.

Summer is coming, and if you've been standing in the grocery store aisle squinting at ingredient lists trying to find a bottled iced tea that doesn't have added sugar or artificial flavoring, I understand the frustration.

There is a lot of incredible loose leaf tea out there, and making it at home costs a fraction of what you'd spend on bottles. These two methods are where I'd start.

If you're interested in learning more techniques for making loose leaf tea, here's the more ancient way: Gong Fu Cha ceremonies. 

Or if you're looking to do some high tech brewing with your coffee equipment, check out Aeropressing Tea.