When you cold brew gyokuro, you not only get a cold refreshing drink, you also get plenty of health benefits and a smoother and sweeter taste. In this article, we are going to be talking about how to cold brew this green tea and why you may want to start getting into cold brewing gyokuro. Let’s get started!
How to cold brew gyokuro green tea
When it comes to how to cold brew gyokuro green tea, there are a few basic steps you can follow. Let’s walk through each one of them here:
- Add 5-10 grams of gyokuro tea to the bottom of a pitcher or glass
- Pour in 500ml of cool or room temperature water
- Let the tea sit for 3 hours
- Pour the tea out through a strainer to separate the leaves and stop the infusion.
You can occasionally pour off small amounts of the tea to see if you like the flavor and then stop the infusion. All of this is about your personal taste!
Should you cold brew gyokuro overnight in pitcher
We have found that when you cold brew gyokuro overnight in a pitcher, you can sometimes extract more flavor than you bargained for. If the tea leaves are left in for too long, the tea can become bitter. The best time for cold brewing gyokuro is around 3 hours, but if you are okay with stronger tea, you can try it overnight!
Gyokuro cold brew benefits
Even without cold brewing this tea, there are many Gyokuro tea benefits. The brewing temperature you use to prepare green tea can have a huge effect on not only the taste of the infusion but also the chemical composition of the final brew. The reason for this is that unlike matcha, leaf tea is an extraction. Different gyokuro brewing parameters will extract different chemical component of the green tea.
Catechins, for example, are some of the more bitter components of green tea. These are extracted at higher temperatures or after longer brewing times. These bitter flavors can explain why your green tea is bitter. The bitterness will quickly overtake the flavor of the tea, causing you to miss out on a lot of the more subtle flavors.
If you brew a tea too hot or for too long, you will extract more of these catechins and end up with a tea that is extremely bitter. This is why we recommend such low brewing temperatures for Japanese green tea, like 140 degrees Fahrenheit for a normal gyokuro. If you want to take this concept even further, you can try cold brewing gyokuro and end up with even less bitterness.
Caffeine in cold brew gyokuro
Caffeine is another chemical compound that tends to be extracted at a higher temperature. As a result, cold brewed teas will contain less caffeine than their warm counterparts. This can be used to your advantage, as cold brew gyokuro can be enjoyed later on in the day without keeping you up all night.
Gyokuro is one of the tea with most caffeine, and if you are sensitive to caffeine, you may want to avoid drinking it hot. Cold brewing gyokuro can make the tea more accessible to people that normally avoid high caffeine teas.
Final Thoughts on cold brewing gyokuro
Cold brew gyokuro green tea is a wonderful and healthy beverage to enjoy on a warm day. It can also have plenty of benefits to it when it comes to health and flavor. If you are interested in trying your own cold brew gyokuro, you can find our pick for the best one below!
The best gyokuro cold brew
The gyokuro sasa hime is the best cold brew gyokuro. This tea is made by the legendary Mr. Sakamoto in Shibushi, and it is carefully blended with 3 different cultivars: yabukita, okumidori and saemidori. This careful blending really gives a lot of nuance to the tea, which is revealed nicely when the tea is cold brewed. Try this tea both hot and cold and see which way you prefer!
However, if you're looking the best gyokuro available in the market, we wrote an article with a detail guideline to find the best gyokuro in the World. It also include our personal top #4 of the best gyokuro. Here is the link for the article 👉 What’s the Best Gyokuro in the World?
