Kitchen

Fruit Tea Recipe: Home and Budget-Friendly Hacks

by Kevyn Gohu
August 16, 2024

When craving Fruit Tea and ordering out isn’t worth it, here are some home and budget-friendly hacks to make your favorite fruit tea recipes!

Milk tea may be tasty but for lactose-intolerant people, they’ll prefer something fruitier and without any dairy. Hence, fruit tea — it’s sweet, has chewable bits, and without any dairy. And while a lot of stalls and stores sell fruit tea, it’s not easy when the cravings hit at night. So, what’s a momma and her kids to do when there’s none open or nearby? Develop their own fruit tea recipe, of course!

Here are some hacks for making one’s own fruit tea recipe!

Choosing the tea

Different kinds of tea leaves have different flavors. But most milk tea and fruit tea shops use black tea leaves. Black tea leaves have bold, malty, earthy, and smoky notes which allow them to meld with other flavors without clashing. But other stores use yellow or green, depending on the flavor they want.

Here’s a guide to which tea leaves to use:

Black Tea Leaves – Recommended mostly for milk tea drinks, black tea leaves have a caramel-like note after being steeped in hot water. When cold-brewed, they often have a more honey-like note.
Green Tea Leaves – Its earthy almost grassy notes make it not a preferred base. However, it does make a good base for stronger flavored fruits like lemon and green apple. Depending on where it was grown, the tastes can change.
Yellow Tea Leaves – A smoother and mellower version than Green Tea, it has a sweeter and nuttier taste.

It’s easy to buy the loose leaves! Restohub is available on both Shoppee and Lazada and sells tea leaves in bags and grams, up to 1 kg.

Can you use tea bags? Yes, you can! But make sure the flavor is plain. Some tea bags have fruit infusions already in them.

Steeping vs Cold Brewing

When making tea, temperature plays a big role in breaking or making the taste. If the water’s too hot, it can make the tea taste too astringent and bitter, making it hard for the fruits to mask the bitter flavor. Most teas steep best at a few degrees shy of boiling water, around 90 or 80. The best way to tell is if there’s steam rising from the kettle. That’s usually around 85 degrees, more or less.

Cold brewing can get the flavors and reduce the acidity but, the most is 4-8 hours. Any longer than that and it becomes too acidic.

The flavors and the sinkers

While most people like the sago or the boba as they call it, fruit tea has a wider array of sinkers. The best part is, they’re easy to find. Nata de coco, jelly in a jar — all these are found in the preservatives section.

But for those who want more fruit bits, that’s easy to get from the canned fruit section. Especially if we received canned fruits as part of the Christmas basket then, we can use these as the sinkers for our fruit tea recipe. Feel free though to use the actual fruit also if we want to control the amount of processed sugar we’re taking in.

Modern Parenting’s Fruit Tea Recipes

Here are some of the fruit tea recipes we’ve decoded to enjoy at home:

Thai Pandan Iced Tea

Slightly citrus with a refreshing earthy aftertaste, this pairs well with savory Thai dishes like stir-fry Krapow and Pad Thai. Here’s how to make it:

Ingredients

10 pandan leaves
2 tbsps of light brown sugar or 5 sachets of stevia
water

Procedure

Wash the leaves first and cut off the roots, especially if you got them fresh.
Steep the leaves in water for 3-5 minutes in hot water.
While steeping, add the brown sugar.
Then, let it cool a bit.
Strain it into a glass with ice and enjoy!

Notes

Dried pandan leaves work just as well. That also means you can skip the first part.
Feel free to steep other things like lemongrass (tanglad) or ginger with the tea.

Kenshin Izakaya’s Fruit Iced Tea

Kenshin Izakaya is a beloved Japanese restaurant for many residents who live near the Philippine National Railway (PNR) and often serve their fruity iced tea in pitchers. Unfortunately, their lack of parking means we can’t just go there. So, here’s the recipe for their fruit iced tea:

Ingredients

1 8.5 oz can of fruit cocktail
2 tbsps of black tea leaves
Half a lemon
water

Procedure

Steep the leaves in water for 3-5 minutes in hot water.
While steeping, add the syrup from the can.
Juice half a lemon and mix it in the tea.
Then, let it cool a bit.
Strain it into a glass with ice and the fruit bits and enjoy!

Notes

Feel free to use real fruits. Sweeteners like pineapples, peaches, and grapes can help.
If the lemon juice is too sour, try using an orange! The sourness is more bearable!

Other ways to budget-friendly recipes to make fruit tea at home

If cutting fruit or buying a can of fruit isn’t something we see ourselves doing, a tetrabrick of fruit juice ought to do the trick. It’ll be similar to making C2 or our favorite bottled iced tea but at a cheaper price since we can make it in bulk. The trick in making a fool-proof fruit tea recipe is measuring the sweetener against the acidity and bitterness of the tea.

Besides, fruit tea is supposed to be healthier. Milk often binds to the tannins and the antioxidants found in tea, making milk tea unhealthy. At least with fruit tea, there are more vitamins and antioxidants to be had.