Brewing Iced Tea: Cold vs Hot Brewing

It is a beautiful sunny day in Toronto and I thought I'd make some iced tea. This also came to mind because I recently purchased some Agave syrup just because I have never tried it before. Agave (or Blue Agave is the type I got) is a plant grown in Mexico that had become popular because it is often used as a vegan alternative to honey, is sweeter than white table sugar (1.4 - 1.6x) so you use less to sweeten your beverage/foods, and is low glycemic. However, over the last 2 years, there has been a backlash against this product because it's composition is high in fructose. Many are concerned about high fructose corn syrup and it's association to obesity and diabetes and it is believed that agave syrup (which contains a higher percentage of fructose than high fructose corn syrup) has the same association with these diseases.

Because I believe in eating in moderation and I would only use a small amount of agave syrup to sweet cold drinks, I decided to make some iced tea to try out this syrup.

I previously tried making a Pouchong/Baozhong) 包種茶 iced tea the cold brew method way and it turned out quite nice. However, it takes longer and some think you can not get the full taste of the tea from the cold brewing method. Others like the cold brew method because it supposedly doesn't have any bitter taste to it and there is less caffeine. To experiment, I'm going to make iced tea both ways with Pouchong tea and compare.

The dry leave above. Dark green twisted leaves with some brown. This tea is a slightly oxidized oolong tea that looks similar to green tea but doesn't have the same taste profile and has a more floral aroma characteristic of oolongs.

Cold brew:

Dry tea leaves = 4 grams
Water (filtered) = 12oz or 1.5cups
Leave to steep = 12 hrs (in the fridge, glass jar, lid)

Hot brew:
Now, this is the tricky part, because you'll need to cool it down quickly with ice, the ice will dilute the liquid. Thus, you need to make a more concentrated liquid.
Dry leaves: 4grams
Slightly cooler than boiling water: 5oz.
Steep time: 3 mins.

The result:
The class on the right is the hot brew. After brewing, I added 5 cube of ice to a drinks shaker and poured the hot tea in. Added a little more than 1 tsp of agave syrup and shook. Poured into a glass, that is why it is slightly foamy.

Cold brew and hot brew liquid colour were the same, a greenish-yellow colour. Clear. Both were floral smelling.
Now for the tasting...the flavour of the tea was light, floral, sweet, slightly melony and I enjoyed it much. However, the winner is:

Hot brew iced tea!
It provided a more rounded and fuller flavour, the cold brew was a little flat.
The agave sugar also masked the tea flavour in the cold brew a bit more as it tasted more flavourful prior to adding the syrup.

I will admit that I think maybe the concentration used was on the light side as oolong tea usually requires more tea to water ratio than other teas so I would increase the tea leaves to maybe 5-6g and try it again. But, I think hot brewing is the way to go!

To go with my tea, I had a green onion pineapple cake. If you don't know, pineapple cake 鳳梨酥 is very popular in Taiwan. It has a pineapple filling (somewhat like a jam but dryer/thicker) wrapped with a pastry crust or "cake". This version was a little savory with the addition of green onion but still had a bit of sweetness from the pineapple. The cake part (that wrapped the filling) was buttery. It's a nice snack but I think paired with the paochong tea, it was ok. Not an excellent pairing but good. Maybe the buttery cake was a little too rich for the tea? But, the onion flavour did go nicely with the flowery, sweet tea.

Hot brewing iced tea provides a better tasting iced tea!