Cold hojicha can be made by slowly infusing tea in cold water, or by brewing it with boiling water and cooling it over ice. Both produce a cold drink, but the tea’s contact with water follows different paths.

Here are Maruhachi Seichajo’s cold-brew tea-bag instructions and Ippodo Tea’s recipe for cooling tea over ice: one cup that waits, and another brewed hot before it is chilled.

Cold brewing: 600 mL of cold water for 3 hours

Maruhachi Seichajo recommends 2 Kenjō Kaga Bōcha tea bags with 600 mL of cold water, infused for 3 hours. Each bag contains 3 g, making 6 g of tea in total.

The company describes the roasted aroma in this cold brew as even clearer than in hot tea. This is the seller’s description of this particular product’s flavour. It presents cold brewing as a way to enjoy another impression of the aroma, rather than simply a replacement for hot tea.

The same tea bags use different proportions for a hot cup

The hot-brewing method for this product uses the same 2 bags with 260 mL of boiling water for 45 seconds. Cold brewing combines the same tea quantity with more than twice as much water and takes 3 hours instead of 45 seconds.

The bag count is the same, but the combination of volume and time is very different. The cold-brew instructions form a complete method, rather than simply replacing the hot water with cold water in the hot-brewing recipe.

Another cold tea begins with boiling water and ends over ice

Ippodo Tea’s Iced Hojicha recipe uses 10 g of tea with 240 mL of boiling water at 100°C, infused for 60 seconds without stirring. Prepare plenty of ice, then pour all the brewed tea over it to cool.

This is not an infusion in cold water. Brewing with boiling water and then cooling over ice means that the brewing water and the cooling ice have separate roles. Melted ice also adds water to the drink, so 240 mL should not be read as its finished volume.

Look beyond “iced” to the brewing method

Waiting with cold water, or pouring a hot infusion over ice: both can be called iced hojicha, but they take different time and equipment. Choose by the process—cold brew if you are preparing ahead, or have ice ready if you want to brew hot and cool the tea.

These two official recipes use different products and formats. Follow the chosen method without swapping ingredients or quantities partway through. When comparing them, enjoy each as a cup made by its recipe, rather than attributing every difference you notice to temperature alone.