I'm a hot tea drinker through and through. Around DC, summer can be brutal. Oh, it's 90 degrees outside and with humidity making it 110 degrees? Yeah, still sipping on my hot tea. In the summer the heating up of my body by the tea actually turns into a cooling sensation and It feels nice.

I know that Iced tea is a big thing but I'm truly not the biggest fan! I still enjoy iced tea of course, but I will always choose hot over iced. I always strive to bring on content that is wanted though and I know so many people love iced tea! I wanted to try a new way of brewing so I started digging.

I found an article on Bon Appetit that mentions kouridashi, a Japanese ice brew method. It was difficult to find other sources on this, mostly search items brought up Japanese ice brew coffee. I decided to follow the general directions in the article and see if I liked the result.

I decided to use the puer from Yunnan Sourcing that came in my sipsby box. The article mentioned "specialty" teas and I know they meant green teas but I wanted to experiment with puer. Essentially, instead of using water you allow the tea to brew as the ice melts.

I used one of those large ice cubes that are often used to make drinks, I happened to have a round mold but a square would be even better !

Pour about a tablespoon of your leaves into the container on the ice an it's ok to let it fall around the ice. Take a little bit of water and pour it into the tea pot to start the melting! You could use a few drips for a stronger brew or use up to 1.4 cup of water. I used room temperature water.

Now, we wait.

SO....this is really cool! First, I didn't think that the tea would get as dark as it did! I generally prefer the ripe puers because they often have darker steeps but for a raw puer, this color is pretty on the mark!

I didn't keep track of time strictly but this definitely took a few hours. I think you could probably speed up the process by adding more water at the start but then your tea wouldn't be as strong.

The flavor was very fresh! It was refreshing and got the flavor of the tea really well. In terms of practicality, I wouldn't use this method often or if I was short on time but it was definitely a fun experiement!