I hadn’t tasted a green tea soda before, so this week’s tea project was to make my own.
Tea sodas are fairly popular, you’ll find commercial versions as well.
It’s basically a tea that has sparkling water in it, and you drink it cold.
There are a lot of recipes online, so what I did was try different ones and select the best.
I’m saving you the trouble by finding a good green tea recipe for tea lovers!
Initial experiments
Commercial green tea sodas have added flavoring and color. I won’t be using those, and plan to keep sweeteners optional. I prefer unsweetened.
Tea bags or instant iced tea powder are out of this recipe. The idea is to have a good quality, healthy soda.
For the ratio of brewed tea to sparkling water, I found recipes ranging from 1/4 tea up to 3/4 tea. I tried them and felt that anything below 3/4 tea had a flavor that was too faint.
The green tea I chose for this recipe was bancha, but you can have any tea you like. Use the leaf to water ratio that you usually brew with, and you may increase the steeping time if you want a stronger flavor.
Green tea soda recipe
Ingredients:
- Green tea leaves, enough to make 3/4 volume of tea in your glass
- Hot water
- Sparkling water, cooled
The glass I used holds about 300 ml (10 oz), so what I did was make 225 ml (7.5 oz) of bancha in my teapot.
Pour the tea into your glass, and let it cool. If you want, you can place it in the refrigerator.
Once the tea has cooled, just top the glass with sparkling water. No need to mix it.
At this point, you can sweeten it and add ice if you wish. In my case, I didn’t add anything else.
I liked the taste, it definitely tastes like tea 🙂
The sparkling water adds a nice touch. Why buy soft drinks when you can make your own tea soda?
April 29, 2014
Ooh this looks so yummy! If I could drink soda I would probably have a lot of these over the summer.
April 29, 2014
Thank you Amanda, sorry to hear that you can’t drink soda.
April 29, 2014
Awesome recipe! I was skeptical when I first heard about tea sodas but last summer David’s Tea was serving some and they were very refreshing.
April 29, 2014
Hi Nicole
Actually I first heard of them through your blog, but it wasn’t until now that I decided to try making one.
April 29, 2014
Thanks very much for this. I have been experimenting with some differerent recipes using tea recently, and I will definitely be trying out this one!
April 29, 2014
Hi Amanda
Thanks for the comment. Have fun with your tea recipes!
April 30, 2014
First time I tasted green tea with soda was at Cha Cha No Ma tea shop in Omotesando Tokyo. Their recipe was more complex than yours and the quantity served was much less but the taste was super. I have yet to try it here but it is something I want to do one day. Specially when it is hot.
May 1, 2014
Hi Lochan
I like Cha cha no ma, I even follow them on Twitter 🙂
But I haven’t tasted their green tea soda, I should do so next time.
May 2, 2014
They have twitter account? I should follow them. The green soda tea was super. Kitagawa san who was making tea that day, prepared it for me. I do not know if it was in the menu or just his recipe.
May 21, 2014
Thanks for posting this recipe Ricardo…I haven’t given much thought to green tea soda, but this post has piqued my interest! Great idea as we head into the summer season.
May 21, 2014
Thanks for reading Scott.
It’s an easy recipe, hope that you like it.
February 8, 2015
it was yummy
February 10, 2015
I’m glad that you liked it, Varun.