First of all, this is the first post of OolongOwl.com! I’m happy to of made the move to my own domain and webspace!
Yunomi.us posted an interesting method of steeping tea – Ice Steeping. The idea of this tea steeping method is for the tea leaves to steep away as the ice melts.
I do plenty of iced teas (hot tea chilled) and cold steeping (tea steeped in cold water in the fridge) but steeping just with ice is a new idea to me! Ice Steeping apparently works best with spring harvested teas, like gyokuro. I got some fantastic gyokuro, Kurihara Tea’s Heritage Gyokuro, which I will be using today!
Today seems like a good day to try this technique out – my kitchen isn’t totally functional at the moment. My husband assembled a new kitchen island, so my counters are so piled up with stuff that I can’t get to my electric kettle.
I used 5 grams of the Heritage Gyokuro (or half the package of my 10g sample) and added it to my teapot. As always, lovely deep vibrant green tea leaf appearance!
I then filled the teapot with ice. The tea will steep in the melting ice, how cool is that?
The steeping took around 2.5 hours, I can see steep time may vary depending on the temperature of your home.
The result: Pretty strong tea! There was a strong grassy, yet mellowness going on first sip, with a bit of buttery and sweetness.
This cup is too strong for me though, so I topped up my cup with some filtered cold water.
With additional water, the gyokuro has a flavor similar to cold steeping, but with a little reminder of hot steeping due to the strength of the tea and plenty of unami notes. I’m picking up a great grassy flavor, loads of mellow, buttery and unami notes. The tea finishes off crisp and refreshing with a bit of a grapefruit citrus note. Very smooth texture here, leaving a buttery texture on the lips with no bitterness and lots of unami. As always, Yunomi’s gyokuro is lovely!
Reflecting on this steeping technique, I can imagine results could vary quite a bit with melting time causing the tea to steep longer or quicker depending on outside temperature, thus big potential of flavor variation. I wonder if putting the tea and ice in the fridge would effect the flavor? I wonder what would happen if I froze the tea in ice, and melted it? I do like that this steeping method is faster than cold steeping in the fridge.
Either way, if you feel like trying some tea steeping experimentation, try this Ice Steeping method out! Please share with us if you have any interesting findings!
Bonus!
Barney the Owl wants to pour you a cup of tea!
