Microgreen Iced Tea: An Herbal Recipe Worth Making

Quick answer: This microgreen iced tea combines cold-brewed herbal tea with sunflower microgreens for a lightly flavored, not-too-sweet summer drink. You can have it ready in about 20 minutes — 10 to prep and steep, plus a quick chill — and it serves four. Sunflower microgreens add a mild, nutty finish that complements mint or lemon verbena without overpowering them.

This microgreen iced tea is a cold-brewed herbal drink finished with sunflower microgreens — their mild, nutty flavor rounds out the brightness of mint and lemon verbena without competing with it. It's a good option for summer afternoons when you want something that isn't water but also isn't overly sweet. Prep takes about 10 minutes, steep time is another 10, and it serves 4.

Ingredients

• 4 cups filtered water (divided: 2 cups boiling, 2 cups cold)
• 3 bags or 3 tablespoons loose-leaf herbal tea (chamomile, mint, or lemon verbena all work well)
• 1 cup sunflower microgreens, loosely packed
• 2 tablespoons honey or agave syrup (adjust to taste)
• 1 lemon, sliced into rounds
• 1 sprig fresh mint
• Ice, for serving
• Optional: a few edible flowers for garnish

Instructions

1. Bring 2 cups of water to a boil. Remove from heat and add your tea bags or loose-leaf tea. Steep for 5–7 minutes, depending on how strong you want the flavor. Don't oversteep chamomile or it turns bitter.
2. While the tea is still warm (not boiling), stir in honey or agave and mix until fully dissolved.
3. Pour the warm tea into a pitcher. Add the remaining 2 cups of cold water and stir to combine.
4. Add the lemon slices and fresh mint sprig to the pitcher. Refrigerate for at least 10 minutes, or up to 2 hours if you have time.
5. Just before serving, add the sunflower microgreens directly to the pitcher or divide them among individual glasses. They'll float on top and add a subtle, nutty note as you drink.
6. Fill glasses with ice, pour the tea over, and garnish with a few extra microgreens or edible flowers if using. Serve immediately.

About the Microgreen

Sunflower microgreens have a mild, slightly nutty flavor — closer to the seed than the plant — with a hint of sweetness. That profile works well here because it doesn't overpower the herbal tea base. It adds something interesting without turning the drink into a salad.

If you don't have sunflower microgreens on hand, pea shoot microgreens are a solid substitute. They carry a similar sweetness with a clean, fresh finish that also pairs well with mint and citrus. You can read more about how we grow sunflower microgreens at Wind River Greens if you're curious about what goes into them before they hit your glass.

Tips

1. Don't steep the microgreens in hot water. Adding sunflower microgreens to boiling or very hot tea will wilt them instantly and muddy the flavor. Always let the tea cool before introducing the greens, or add them fresh right before serving.

1. Cold-brew for a cleaner flavor. If you want a smoother, less tannic tea base, skip the hot steep entirely. Combine your tea bags with 4 cups of cold water and refrigerate for 6–8 hours. The result is noticeably less bitter, and the sunflower microgreens' flavor comes through more clearly against a gentler backdrop.

1. Adjust sweetness after chilling. Tea tastes less sweet when it's cold, so taste the drink again after it comes out of the refrigerator before serving. Add a little more honey if needed, or squeeze in a bit of fresh lemon juice to balance it out.

1. Make it in bulk ahead of time. The tea base (without the microgreens) keeps in the refrigerator for up to 3 days. Store it in a sealed pitcher and add fresh sunflower microgreens per glass right before serving so they don't break down and turn slimy.

This tea pairs well with a light lunch — a grain salad, a simple sandwich, or a cheese board — where you want a drink that has some character without pulling focus from the food.

Related from Wind River Greens

1. Microgreens 101: Everything You Need to Know
2. Explore All Microgreen Varieties (Plant Database)
3. How to Grow Microgreens at Home
4. 12 Health Benefits of Microgreens

Why Sunflower Microgreens Work in a Cold Drink

Most people's first instinct with microgreens is to put them on a plate — tucked under a piece of salmon or scattered across avocado toast. Using them in a drink feels counterintuitive, and that hesitation makes sense. Leafy things in beverages usually don't work out well. They get slimy, they sink, or they taste like lawn clippings.

Sunflower microgreens are different, and the reason comes down to their flavor profile. Unlike radish or arugula microgreens, which carry a sharp, peppery heat that would clash with herbal tea, sunflower microgreens are mild. They taste more like the inside of a sunflower seed than like a green. There's a slight nuttiness, a mild sweetness, and almost no bitterness. That combination sits naturally alongside chamomile, mint, or lemon verbena without pulling the drink in a competing direction.

Texture matters here too. Sunflower microgreens have a sturdy stem relative to other microgreens. They hold their shape in cold liquid for several minutes rather than wilting immediately. That's what allows them to function as both a flavor element and a visual garnish — they float, they stay green, and they don't turn limp the moment they hit the tea.

The lemon and mint already in the recipe bring brightness and a clean, herbal note. The sunflower microgreens add something quieter underneath — a soft, slightly earthy finish that keeps the drink from tasting flat or one-dimensional. It's a supporting role, not a starring one, and that's exactly what you want from a microgreen in a beverage context.

Why This Tea Base Works Specifically

The three tea options listed in the ingredients — chamomile, mint, and lemon verbena — are all recommended here for the same reason: none of them are tannic. Black tea and green tea both carry tannins that create a dry, slightly astringent finish. That quality can clash with the mild sweetness of sunflower microgreens and make the whole drink feel muddy in flavor rather than clean.

Chamomile is the most neutral of the three. It has a soft, slightly floral quality that pairs easily with honey and lemon without asserting itself too strongly. If you're serving this to people who are uncertain about herbal drinks, chamomile is the safest starting point.

Mint tea will make the drink feel more refreshing and slightly more intense. It works especially well if you're serving this in peak summer heat when you want something cooling. The combination of brewed mint tea plus fresh mint sprig plus lemon is clean and direct — nothing surprising, but reliably good.

Lemon verbena is the most interesting choice. It has a distinct lemon flavor that's brighter and more floral than actual lemon juice, and it pairs unexpectedly well with the nutty note from sunflower microgreens. If you grow lemon verbena in a kitchen garden or have access to it fresh, you can use it loose-leaf in place of bagged tea — about 4 to 5 fresh sprigs steeped for 6 minutes works well.

Variations Worth Trying

Once you've made the base recipe once and understand how it comes together, there's room to adjust it in a few directions depending on what you have available or what flavor you're after.

Swap the Sweetener

Honey is the default here because it dissolves cleanly in warm tea and adds a mild floral note that complements chamomile and lemon verbena. Agave works if you prefer something with less flavor presence — it sweetens without adding much of its own character. Maple syrup is worth trying if you're using chamomile; the slight earthiness of maple actually reinforces the nutty quality of the sunflower microgreens in an interesting way. Start with 1.5 tablespoons of maple syrup rather than 2, since it can be sweeter per volume depending on the grade.

If you want to reduce added sugar entirely, try 4 to 5 medjool dates blended with the cold water portion before adding it to the pitcher. It takes an extra few minutes but gives you a naturally sweet base with a slight caramel depth. Strain it before combining with the tea if you want a clearer liquid.

Add Cucumber for a Longer Chill

Four to five thin cucumber slices added to the pitcher alongside the lemon rounds will extend the drink's freshness without adding calories or sweetness. Cucumber doesn't compete with herbal tea — it softens it slightly and adds a clean, cooling quality that works well if the drink is going to sit in the refrigerator for closer to 2 hours before serving. Remove the cucumber after 90 minutes or it starts to taste slightly vegetal.

Try a Different Microgreen

The recipe already mentions pea shoots as a substitute for sunflower microgreens, and that's a reliable swap. But if you grow your own microgreens or have access to a wider selection, a few others are worth experimenting with.

• Basil microgreens — specifically sweet basil — add a slightly sweet, anise-adjacent note that pairs well with lemon verbena tea and a thin slice of peach in the glass. This combination skews more sophisticated and works well for a weekend brunch situation.
• Fennel microgreens bring a mild licorice note that sounds unusual but holds up well against chamomile. Use them sparingly — about half the amount of sunflower microgreens — since the flavor is more pronounced.
• Broccoli or kale microgreens are not recommended here. Their sulfur-forward flavor does not translate well into a cold drink, and they'll overpower the tea entirely.

Make It Sparkling

Replace one of the two cups of cold water with plain sparkling water, added just before serving rather than when building the pitcher. This keeps the carbonation intact. The microgreens float even better on sparkling tea, and the effervescence lightens the whole drink. If you go this route, cut back on the ice slightly so you're not diluting the carbonation too quickly.

Equipment Notes and a Few Practical Details

This recipe doesn't require much equipment, but a couple of specifics are worth mentioning because they affect the outcome.

The Pitcher

Use a glass pitcher if you have one. It's not about aesthetics — it's about temperature. Glass chills more evenly than plastic, and it doesn't hold onto flavors from previous batches. If you're reusing a plastic pitcher that's held strong-flavored juices before, you may notice a faint off-flavor in your tea. Glass sidesteps that entirely. A 1.5-liter pitcher is the right size for this recipe. Anything smaller and the lemon slices, mint sprig, and microgreens will be crowded; anything much larger and the tea will look sparse.

Loose-Leaf Tea vs. Bags

Either works. Loose-leaf tea generally produces a more nuanced flavor, especially with chamomile and lemon verbena, where the whole dried flowers or leaves release oils differently than the finely cut tea inside a bag. If you use loose-leaf, you'll need a fine mesh strainer when pouring from the pitcher into glasses — otherwise you'll get bits of herb in the cup, which most people don't love in a drink.

Tea bags are faster and produce a consistent result. If you're making this on a weeknight for a quick cold drink, bags are perfectly fine. Look for single-ingredient bags rather than blended varieties with added flavoring — "chamomile honey lemon" tea bags, for example, are already sweetened or artificially flavored in ways that will compete with the fresh lemon and honey you're adding.

Water Temperature for Steeping

The recipe calls for boiling water, which is the right call for most herbal teas. However, if you're using a delicate floral blend — dried lavender and chamomile together, for instance — pulling the water off the boil for 60 seconds before steeping will give you a smoother result. Lavender especially can turn slightly soapy when steeped in aggressively hot water.

Storage and How Long It Keeps

This tea keeps well in the refrigerator for up to 48 hours, but with one caveat: remove the microgreens before storing. Sunflower microgreens left sitting in cold liquid for more than about 30 minutes will start to soften and release a faint green, grassy flavor into the tea. That's not necessarily unpleasant, but it shifts the drink away from what you built it to be.

The smart approach is to build the tea base — steeped tea, sweetener, lemon, mint, cold water — and refrigerate that separately. Add fresh microgreens only when you're pouring glasses to serve. This way the base can sit for up to 2 days without any quality loss, and each glass gets a fresh addition of microgreens with their flavor and texture intact.

If the lemon slices have been sitting in the pitcher for longer than 6 hours, remove them before storing. The pith continues releasing bitterness into the liquid the longer it steeps, and after several hours the tea can take on a slightly sharp, bitter edge that wasn't there when you first made it.

The fresh mint sprig can stay in the pitcher through storage — it actually improves the flavor slightly over the first 24 hours as the oils continue to infuse. After 48 hours it starts to fade and the mint flavor becomes a bit flat, which is your signal that the batch has run its course.