How to Flavor Iced Green Tea Naturally

You know green tea is good for you, but do you love the flavor? If you want to add flavor to green tea, try this healthy iced green tea recipe with easy iced green tea variations. Hot or cold brew green tea flavors are simple and delicious!

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Green tea is a darling of the health world. There are perfectly good reasons to drink it, which I will get into in moment. When it gets right down to it, though, green tea tastes kind of like… grass?

Not that I make a habit of eating grass, though there may have been some dares back in the day. You know the ones– “I bet you won’t eat grass without making a face!” In any case, green tea tastes kind of like grass smells. They are both bright green, after all!

If you enjoy the flavor of green tea, all well and good. For those of use who don’t, a little simple, natural, even beneficial flavoring makes all the difference.

What Makes Green Tea Healthy?

Green tea appears on lists of foods to help us with everything from blood sugar control and weight loss to anti-aging to skin health. But why?

You know about antioxidants; they are abundant in green tea. Catechins, the polyphenols in green tea, supply antioxidants that do us all sorts of good. From cancer to mental health to heart and metabolic function, green tea’s anti-inflammatory properties can do quite a bit for us.

Some benefits include:

• reducing cancer risk
• preventing stroke and heart disease
• boosting brain (and mental) health
• strengthening bones
• lowering blood sugar
• protecting the prostate
• easing stress and anxiety
• promoting healthy skin
• improving energy (with less caffeine than coffee)
• aiding weight loss

Learn more here!

In addition to anti-inflammatory effects, green tea offers another systemic benefit with wide-ranging implications; it may improve your gut health. By improving the digestive process and soothing the gut lining while also feeding beneficial bacteria (prebiotics are food for these helpful microbes), green tea can improve gut health.

And our gut health affects every aspect of health, mental as well as physical!

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What is green tea?

Tea originates in a particular evergreen shrub, camellia sinensis. The leaves can be made into teas, which vary according to how they are processed. Tea leaves are processed in different ways, including drying, fermenting, and more, to yield different flavors and appearances. Green, black, oolong, white, and other teas result.

If you love the taste of green tea, great! For those who don’t, there are different simple, delicious, and even beneficial ways to make this super food (super drink?) taste different ways. The green flavor recedes, so you mostly notice these other tastes!

How to Flavor Green Tea

You start, naturally, with some green tea. This can be in the form of tea bags or loose tea. I usually use organic green tea bags for convenience, but the loose version may be even better, with no bags to potentially add contaminants.

You can brew the tea in hot (but not boiling) water for maximum benefits. (The clove version requires this!) You can also make an easy cold brew; just stick the tea in water (with the yummy stuff) and let it all sit in the refrigerator overnight. 12 hours will do it.

What do you add? I will share four that we like, plus other ideas. Once you have the idea, you can range far and wide, adding assorted fruits and herbs in different combinations according to what you love, what you have on hand, what benefits you want, and so on.

Strawberry Mint

Don’t you love transforming something that would otherwise be waste into something good? I surely do. Yes, you can compost strawberry tops. Alternatively, turn them into something first, then compost them later!

It may seem odd to make a drink using strawberry tops, but they yield a strawberry flavor. I slice them off with a generous bit of fruit on them for maximum flavor. You could slice up a few berries instead. I like to eat the berries and use the tops for tea!

Now, strawberry tops allegedly provide health benefits all their own. You can use them for different things, so why not? Get more ideas here.

Of course, you can combine strawberries with various things to different effect, but here I used mint. I have it growing, so for maybe half the year I need to use it up! It grows fast. And it tastes refreshing with strawberry flavor.

You don’t need an exact recipe. Here is what you do:

• fill a jar with filtered water– roughly 2 quarts
• add 3 green tea bags (or use 2 quarts of green tea brewed with hot water and cooled)
• add the tops of a pound of strawberries (or a few sliced berries)– organic is good
• stick 2-3 stems of fresh mint into the pitcher
• refrigerate 12 hours or so

It will turn into something more tea-like after awhile:

Blueberry Lemon Balm

This flavor of green tea is quite delicate. In fact, after 12 hours, I couldn’t even taste it! After 24 hours, the blueberry came through very slightly. The lemon balm dominates, in a good way. Use extra blueberries or switch to strawberry or another fruit for more intense fruit flavor.

Not familiar with lemon balm? It is in the same family as mint, and the leaves resemble mint leaves, just a little lower growing. The flavor is delightful! Less pungent than mint, and lemon-y without the sourness of actual lemon, lemon balm makes lovely herbal tea all by itself.

I have never bought fresh lemon balm; maybe you can find it at a farm stand, but growing it is easy and rewarding. I harvest 4 times per growing season, and it regrows each spring where I live in Georgia. You can find teas that contain it, or even buy a lemon balm tea for its delightful taste and/or health benefits.

What are these health benefits? Many, it turns out. Soothing, anti-anxiety properties are commonly cited, but there are many others, including support for various organs, anti-inflammatory and antibacterial properties, and more. You can use it for many things, like this tincture or this salve from Heidi; check out her articles to learn more!

Here is what to do:

• start with about 2 quarts of water (or green tea)
• slice a handful (1/3-1/2 cup) of blueberries in half (so the flavor releases)
• add several sprigs of lemon balm– maybe 5-8
• add green tea as in the previous recipe, unless you used green tea to begin with
• chill 24 hours

Strawberry Cucumber Basil

This is essentially the same as the first strawberry green tea! I love strawberry, and especially repurposing the tops into green tea whenever we have strawberries. With cucumber and basil, the flavor is entirely different! Basil complements strawberry.

Here is what to do:

• fill a jar with filtered water– roughly 2 quarts
• add 3 green tea bags (or use 2 quarts of green tea brewed with hot water and cooled)
• add the tops of a pound of strawberries (or a few sliced berries)– organic is good
• stick 1-2 stems of fresh basil and a small handful of sliced cucumber into the pitcher
• refrigerate 12 hours or so

Clove Green Tea

This one you really must make with hot water. It is simple enough, but use hot water (never boil tea water!) with green tea and cloves. That’s it! Brew well, then strain and chill thoroughly. I usually brew a quart of it fairly strong in a Pyrex pitcher that can take the heat, then strain and add another quart of water and chill.

To make it:

• use 2 quarts of hot water (or 1 quart hot, then another quart after brewing)
• 3 green tea bags
• 1 tsp whole cloves
• chill well

Cloves may seem a little unusual for iced tea, but they are quite refreshing, cheering, and good for us. In fact, I got the idea from the book Super Gut, by Dr. William Davis. (Check your library– I had to wait a bit, but it is a fascinating book.)

The main topic of the book is how to use specific probiotic strains to address particular health problems, along with improving gut health. In his recipe section, Dr. Davis recommends green tea with cloves for gut health.

The green tea serves to feed helpful microbes, while the cloves rebuild and fortify the gut lining. A double whammy! I don’t know how effective it is, but I read this book in May. Iced tea sounded good, and some of us really enjoy it.

A bonus “recipe”

If you like, the fruity green teas can be made without any green tea. Except that then they aren’t green tea recipes… Just use plain water in place of the tea. I did this all the time before I got the idea of using green tea, and it makes a refreshing version of water with maybe a little extra health boost tossed in.

I think the fancy folk call this “spa water”, presumably because something like this is served in spas. You just stick the stuff you want into water– I use 2-3 flavors at a time. It seems to turn out best with a fruit and an herb. Or two herbs with a fruit (strawberry with mint and basil is great!) or two fruits with an herb (apple and strawberry with ginger, which isn’t an herb).

You can see that this is ideal for summer, when you need extra hydration and also have access to fresh herbs and fruit. It is simple, and a good use of odds and ends like strawberry tops and apple cores. The flavor is delicate, and not at all sweet. A bit like Hint flavored waters. Variety!

Here are some we have liked:

• any berries, or the tops of strawberries
• apple slices or the cores of 2-3 apples (maybe with a cinnamon stick)
• any fruit you want to try!
• a few slices of fresh ginger root
• lemon, lime or orange slices (remove after a few hours, or they turn bitter)
• fresh herbs (mint, basil, lemon balm, rosemary, etc.)

It is fun to experiment, and you can use odds and ends for a very inexpensive and refreshing way to make hydration interesting. No sugar needed!

What flavors would you put together?

Looking for more refreshing things to drink?

• bubbly lemonade
• root beer
• water kefir