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freshcup.com | May 2014 49 he organizers of Ride the Rockies, a weeklong tour de Colorado, provide participants with an elevation chart to show how much up and how much down the cyclists will traverse on each day of the event. The elevation charts of most races, either on foot or bike, roll with slight hills and long flats or are bell curves or, at worst, look like a group of mountains and valleys. The Ride the Rockies chart is one brutal peak followed by a sharp drop straight into another harsh ascent, nary a gully between. The chart could be a cardiogram of a cyclist doing Ride the Rockies. Which is all to explain why during the 2010 ride Maria Uspenksi drank so much Gatorade she worried she had harmed her teeth. Maria, the owner of the specialty tea wholesaler The Tea Spot, resolved to switch to tea the next year. That wouldn't be too easy though. During the ride, the cyclists sleep in tents and cook, if they cook, on camp stoves. Brewing tea on a camp stove after an eighty-mile thigh- torching climb was just too much. Instead of hot brewing and icing her tea, Maria began cold brewing white and green teas. "I'd throw them in a mason jar over night, in the morn- ing I'd strain them out, and I'd have two or three amazing bottles of fresh tea ," Maria says. "And I was shocked, because some of them tasted a lot bet- ter than they did hot brewed." Maria has worked since that ride to perfect both cold-brew blends and steeping baskets. For her, cold brew- ing is a continuation of the rise of the specialty tea industry. "Pure cold brew- ing has only been possible on teas that have been in the US for only ten or fifteen years," Maria says. Before that, fine specialty teas were just too rare across much of the country. Bill Waddington was among the few who had those teas, and he's served cold-brewed tea at his Tea Source shops for nearly two decades. Bill is a jovial and gregarious guy who enjoys demystifying tea, whether it's through tea production workshops or his bright and inviting teahouses in Minnesota. Bill believes cold brew provides a perfect entrance for cus- tomers new to loose-leaf tea. Plus, it lets him deliver a favorite punch line. "It's the easiest way to make iced tea in the world," he says. "You don't even have to know how to boil water. How easy is that?" Cold brew is a great gateway to spe- cialty tea because there's a ready mar- ket for the drink. According to the Tea Association of America, the US population drank seventy-nine billion servings of tea, with half of the coun- try downing a cup every day. If that seems like a lot of hot cups, it would be. Eighty-five percent of those serv- ings were iced. Americans have long been fans of iced tea. Now, that's not cold brewed and it's mostly bagged CTC tea, but if you think Americans aren't really into tea you're just think- ing of the wrong temperature. Cold-brewed tea, at the risk of stating the obvious, differs from regular iced tea by being steeped in cold water, usually spending its long infusion time in a fridge. (Bill consid- ers it iced tea, full stop, rather than some third category of tea. Again, simple.) Regular iced tea, when done right, requires the same care and attention as a meticulously made hot cup. That's evinced, paradoxi- cally, in the bizarre sweet tea recipes posted to cooking websites like Food and AllRecipes, which call for roil- ing water to be poured on tea bags that will steep for a dizzying fifteen minutes. What about the horrid bit- terness this unleashes? Well, that's why the recipes call for baking soda. Then, of course, the enamel-eating amounts of sugar. That's egregious, yes, but for aver- age iced tea drinkers that's the prepa- ration advice they'll readily find. Tell them to measure out so many grams of loose leaf, hit this temperature with the water, and steep for this many minutes (or seconds, really), and you might as well have explained a science experiment. Cold brew sidesteps that poten- tially daunting level of care. When Bill and Maria give the outlines for a cold-brew recipe, it sounds like a parody of lazy preparation. Drop a couple teaspoons of tea in a mason jar, pour water over it (no, it doesn't really matter if its cold), put the jar in the fridge for several hours (or over night, that's fine, too), then strain it. Enjoy. This simplicity is what makes cold brew so attractive T THE BEST COLD-BREW TEAS After many discussions with imminent tea blenders, sellers, and connoisseurs, it became clear there is one superior tea for cold brewing: your favorite tea. This may be a sign of cold-brewing's youth, but there's zero consensus on what teas brew best. One person said white teas are subtle and brilliant while black teas just don't work. The very next person contradicted that take completely. Greens and oolongs offer foolproof ease, and are a good place to start. Ratios also have little consensus, so start with your preferred ratio and experiment. Cold brew sidesteps that potentially daunting level of care. When given the outlines for a cold-brew recipe, it sounds like a parody of lazy preparation. C O R Y E L D R I D G E May14_magazine.indd 49 4/18/14 10:45 AM