The Only Tea Bags You Should Use For Brewing Iced Tea

When it's hot out and you want a nice iced tea pick-me-up, the first thing you look for is your favorite loose leaf tea and infuser. While the single best ingredient for iced tea is high quality loose leaf tea, sometimes you've run out, or you're at a store where there are only tea bags available. In that case, there is a choice to make.

Jordan G.L. Hardin, director of food and beverage for Alfred, told Daily Meal in an exclusive interview recently that, in lieu of loose leaf tea, he recommends using tea bags formulated specifically for iced tea. "They will work better for all available iced tea brewing methods than trying to adapt a hot tea bag for iced tea prep," Hardin tells us. If you are using bagged tea you can still up your iced tea game by paying extra attention to the water you use since it makes up 99.5% of unsweetened tea.

Jordan G.L. Hardin tells Daily Meal, for brewing iced tea, to "stick to black tea (or maybe herbal teas), it's the only suitable tea in tea bags that will give you good consistent flavor." In general tea in bags goes bad faster, largely because most bagged tea includes dust and fannings to make it fit in the bag. These pieces oxidize at a faster rate than whole leaves. Plus, they often sit on the shelves at grocery stores longer than if you buy them from a specialty shop.

You can find these specially crafted tea bags online or at your local grocers. Twinings sells oversized bags specifically made for iced tea that you steep in hot water for four minutes and then add ice. Lipton has a special blend for cold brew teas that make iced tea in three minutes. We're bigger fans of the longer hot brewing method as cold brewing your tea results in a different flavor profile as it takes heat to extract the tannins from the leaves — but sometimes, you need to use what you have available.