Dried Rose Buds Tea Recipes for This Summer: Hot, Iced or Cold Brew

Jasmine tea really isn’t the only kind of flower scented tea you can enjoy. With dried rose buds, you can get the summer vibe right into your home. Read our recipes below on how to steep them together with black or white tea.

Before we start, don’t steep your teas with mediocre rose petals. The often times hardly have any aroma left in them, and are mainly for decorative purposes. Instead, go for rose buds and steep them together with a black or white tea.

Black tea with Rose Buds Recipe

Rose buds are really fragrance, and we highly recommend to steep it together with a black tea like Lapsang souchong. Any other black tea could also work as long as you avoid very smokey black teas. Now follow the steps below.

Western brewing (hot tea)

1. Add 3 grams of black tea into the teapot with 12 pieces rose buds.
2. Add 500ml (17 oz) of hot water and put the lid on the teapot.
3. Steep for 3 minutes and serve.
4. Optional: sweeten with 1 tablespoon of honey.

Iced & cold brew tea

For iced tea, there are two ways. The first way is to simply add ice cubes after you brew the tea based on the above steps. Another way is to cold brew the tea using the following steps:

1. Get a large vessel that can hold 1000 ml of tea.
2. Add 10 grams of black tea and 20 rose buds into the vessel.
3. Add cold water and store the vessel in the fridge for at least 6 hours.
4. Add ice cubes, optionally sweeten the tea with honey, and serve.

Tip: you may also prepare the tea in the evening and store it overnight and enjoy the next day. We do recommend not to cold-brew the tea longer than 12 hours. After 12 hours, you can strain the tea and separate it from the black tea and roses. This is because after 12 hours, black teas sometimes start to release a very astringent taste.

The tea can be stored for up to 2 days in the fridge.

Traditional brewing (hot tea)

The following steps are for the tea enthousiasts who like to brew with high tea-to-water ratio:

1. Add 5 grams of black tea into a small gaiwan or teapot (without the roses).
2. For the first 3 steeps, steep for 15 seconds and serve.
3. For the 4th brew, add the 12 pieces of rose flowers and steep for 1 minute. Add another 30 seconds for every following brew.

Note: The reason we recommend to add the rose buds later for traditional brewing is because the somewhat lighter flavour starting from the 4th brew, balances the best with the intensity of the rose aroma. In addition, if you’re using a delicious black tea, you can enjoy the pure flavour first, before you add the rose buds for flavour reactivation.

White Tea with Rose Buds Recipe

White tea is another great choice to brew with rose buds. You can simply follow the above same steps for white tea. White tea is lighter in flavour, so you may want to slightly increase the amount of tea you use. We highly recommend Silver Needle tea. white tea, except for cold brewing. When you cold brew roses with white tea, the best choice is a Bai Mu Dan white tea.