Bing bing cha!

If you living in Seattle, you may be wondering when the summer weather is coming. It is June for crying out loud! Where's the sun been lately? I am hoping we'll have it eventually. Even with the lack of summer time weather, people in Seattle already treat it like it has arrived. Shorts and sandals are out, and people are enjoying iced coffees and teas.

However, if you live else where in the northern hemisphere, perhaps you are already enjoying the spring/summer weather, and enjoying some iced tea. I have never been a huge fan of iced tea until one very hot and humid day working in the tea fields I wanted to drink anything cold that would cool down my body temperature.

 The family I lived with loved the cold tea, especially the little five year old girl. She would always beg her mother for "bing bing cha" and would gulp down high mountain oolong cold steeped tea in the warm weather.

They are the cutest Taiwanese kids ever!

The farmer was so nice that she would bring me lunch and a cold brew when I took a break mid day.

Ever since then, especially in hot weather, drinking tea this way is amazing. I also found that it is very very hard to over steep or screw up, which is great for beginners and novices. You can oversteep it without it getting bitter.

I took about 10g of loose leaf (Baozhong farmers choice from www.floatingleaves.blogspot.com) for this cold brew.

I found this great glass bottle for my brew. You can always use plastic water bottles (or regular ones - any water bottle works) or even a large tea pot.

Above is the dry leaf in the glass bottle.

Next I put cold filtered water into the container with the leaves. It takes at least eight hours for it to infuse, so I usually make this the night before. When I wake up in the morning I have refreshing and chilled tea. Yum.

Does anyone else have any favorites or different ways of making cold brew? Or favorite teas you use? Comment your reply.