In traditional Chinese medicine, green tea is considered a 'cooling' substance, which is to say it assists your body to lose heat. Good news! As green tea requires lower temperature water to brew, you don't need to stand in front of a steaming kettle to prepare your beverage. But for those who aren't keen on drinking anything above a fridge-cold beverage, here are three ways to cool it.
Hot-to-cold infusion
Prepare a hot green tea but use double the amount of tealeaves than usual to create a 'concentrate'. Pour the tea into a larger jug. If you have a flair for it, grab another jug and pour the tea from vessel to vessel—this increases the air around the liquid and cools it down faster. The 'concentrate' is half your liquid; the other half should be a combination of cold water and ice. The tea should now be cool to drink.
You should be able to reuse the leaves for one more infusion.
Standard cold brew
If you have more time and are less inclined to juggle tea, the standard cold brew method may be the way for you. Use either a teapot with an infuser or a jug or container that can be sealed.
Spoon one-and-a-half to two times the usual amount of tealeaves into the vessel. Fill it with cold, fresh water, close the lid and leave in the refrigerator for 6-8 hours. To serve, strain out the leaves and pour. If it'll be more than 12 hours before you need the drink, I suggest decanting the tea into another container at the 8-hour mark as around this time the tea goes from 'refreshing' to 'robust' (though of course if you want it that way you can keep steeping).
You should be able to reuse the leaves for another one or two infusions, just increase the steeping time by 1-2 hours each subsequent round.
Ice brew
Ice brewing, called kooridashi in Japan, is excellent for fine tea like gyokuro. Place the tealeaves in a glass, ceramic or porcelain vessel, then cover the leaves with ice. Cover the vessel. The amount of tealeaves to ice should be about one teaspoon to about 50-100mls of ice. Leave the vessel at room temperature. When the ice melts, strain the leaves out and drink.
The other important thing to remember is to make sure you use good quality ice; if you use filtered water in your tea, use filtered water for your ice. When using ice from your home freezer, you may want to rinse it in case it has absorbed aromas from other items.
You should be able to reuse the leaves 2-3 more times.
Other 'cooling' substances? Chrysanthemum and peppermint. You know what to do.
