Korean Citron Tea (Yuja-cha): How to Make Yuzu Tea

Most guides to Korean citron tea begin at the teapot. Korean practice begins weeks earlier, at a jar. Yuja — the fruit most English speakers meet as yuzu — is sliced, packed with sugar or honey, and left alone until a clear syrup pools over the peel; only then is there anything to stir into a cup. Once that is clear, the question changes: not how long to steep, but how the preserve was built.

In This Guide

1. Korean Citron Tea Starts in a Jar, Not a Teapot
2. Why Yuja Is Sliced Into Sugar, Not Squeezed
3. Why Yuja-cheong Only Needs Two to Three Weeks
4. Hot or Iced: How Yuja-cha Is Actually Served
5. Yuja-cheong Beyond the Teacup
6. Frequently Asked Questions
7. One Jar of Yuja-cheong, a Whole Year of Tea

Korean Citron Tea Starts in a Jar, Not a Teapot

Korea’s national encyclopedia of culture lists three ways to make yuja-cha, and then singles one out.

• Steep two or three thin slices of the fruit in a cup of boiled water.
• Simmer the peel.
• Stir in yuja-cheong — and that, the entry says, is the one most widely used.

That preference is the whole argument of this page. Yuja-cha is a solution rather than an infusion: the flavor is already made, waiting in a jar.

Yuja-cheong belongs to a family of Korean preserves called cheong (청) — fruit held in sugar or honey until it gives up a syrup. Kumquats, green plums and schisandra berries all get the same treatment; the kumquat guide covers cheong, the Korean method of preserving fruit in sugar as a category, so this page can stay with what the method does to a citrus that is mostly peel.

One note on the English name. Botanically, citron is a different fruit — Citrus medica — and yuja is not it, though Korean jars are sold in English under that name all the same. The ingredient guide covers what yuja is and how it differs from a lemon.

A teacup takes a spoonful of yuja-cheong and a few slices of preserved peel, then well-boiled water over the top; jat (잣) — pine nuts — are sometimes floated on the surface. The Rural Development Administration’s farming dictionary supplies the other half of the practice — the same preserve goes into iced water — which is why yuja-cha is not a winter-only drink, whatever the seasonal photography suggests.

So there is no brewing time to get right and no leaf-to-water ratio to miss. The work happened weeks earlier, inside the jar, which is where the rest of this guide goes.

Why Yuja Is Sliced Into Sugar, Not Squeezed

Squeeze a yuja and very little comes out. UC Riverside’s citrus variety collection records an average juice content of 18 percent by weight, and suggests the fruit’s many large seeds are the likely reason. The collection also puts citric acid at an average of 4.5 percent — acidic enough that it says yuja is used much the way a lemon is used in the United States.

Yuja yields only about 18 percent of its weight as juice, and Korean citron tea is built from sugared peel, not pressed juice.

That acidity is also why the sugar is not a matter of taste. On its own the fruit is punishing; sugar is what makes it drinkable and what keeps the preserve from spoiling.

The aroma lives in the peel. The same collection notes that yuja’s rind oil is intensely fragrant and is used to lift soups, fish, candies and medicinal teas. Stir a spoonful of cheong into water and that oil is what comes up out of the cup.

Yuja is picked from October into November, and the fruit is used at more than one stage of ripeness. The peel behaves differently at each stage too. It does not come away easily while the fruit is still green, and separates more readily once the fruit has matured.

Most readers outside Korea will never handle a fresh yuja; what is on the shelf is a jar. The ingredient guide handles buying yuja and jarred yuja-cheong outside Korea, including how to keep it once it is open.

Why Yuja-cheong Only Needs Two to Three Weeks

The jar works on a short clock. Korea’s national encyclopedia of culture describes thinly sliced yuja layered with honey or sugar in a crock and kept somewhere cool and dry; after two to three weeks a clear juice has pooled, and that pooled liquid is the cheong.

Yuja-cheong, the preserve behind Korean citron tea, is ready when clear syrup has pooled over the peel, and Korea’s national encyclopedia of culture puts that at two to three weeks.

The Korea Tourism Organization’s description of citrus tea, written in English for visitors, gives the same shape in a modern container: yuja with sugar or honey in a glass jar, left for about two weeks before any tea is made. The encyclopedia records a second method as well — the fruit pierced with holes instead of sliced, then packed in honey or sugar — and the Rural Development Administration’s farming dictionary notes that the peel alone is sometimes used.

Anyone who has made kumquat cheong will recognize the outline and then notice that the fruit changes the design. Both go into the jar sliced, but a kumquat leaves the jar as either a syrup or a candied sweet, while yuja-cheong is built to end up in a glass. And because yuja gives up so little juice, its peel is not a byproduct of the preserve — it is the preserve.

Two to three weeks also sets this apart from Korean fruit syrups that are set aside to age for months. It is a different route altogether from omija tea, which is cold-brewed from dried berries instead — there the omija (오미자) berries meet water directly, with no preserve in between.

Hot or Iced: How Yuja-cha Is Actually Served

Water goes in at a full boil (212°F / 100°C). Korean sources call for well-boiled water, and there is no traditional lower temperature to hit.

The Korea Tourism Organization puts the taste close to lemonade, with a citrus scent particular to yuja. For a Western reader the closest thing is a hot honey-and-lemon drink, except that the peel stays in the cup instead of being strained out.

Iced yuja-cha is not a modern invention. The Rural Development Administration’s farming dictionary defines the drink in a single sentence as shredded yuja preserved in sugar and stirred into boiled water or into iced water.

The Korea Tourism Organization recommends yuja-cha after a meal, or when a cold is coming on. Yuja itself has long been believed in Korea to help with arthritis and neuralgia, to ease a hangover and to aid digestion. These are traditional beliefs, not clinical findings. For what the research does cover, the K-Beauty Kitchen column sets out how a Korean diet is actually studied for skin and recovery.

Yuja-cha is not Korea’s only traditional fruit drink, either. Omija, Korea’s five-flavor berry anchors a whole family of them, and reading the two side by side is the quickest way to see how differently Korean kitchens get fruit into a glass.

Yuja-cheong Beyond the Teacup

The syrup does not stay in the teacup. On this site the same preserve turns up in a bulgogi salad dressed with yuja, where it does the work a vinaigrette usually does.

Outside Korea the habit is spreading in an unexpected direction. The Korea Agro-Fisheries & Food Trade Corporation lists a cheong-making boom among American YouTubers as one of the reasons U.S. demand recovered after its pandemic dip. The trade numbers moved with it: exports of Korean yuja products to the United States reached $20.3 million in 2025, more than double the 2021 figure of $9.9 million.

The glass jar of yuja-cheong is still the mainstay of the domestic market, with portion cups, powders, tea bags, pouches and ready-to-drink bottles arriving alongside it — a sign that the preserve has outgrown the kitchen it came from without changing what it is.

On Jeju the citrus is the tangerine rather than the yuja, and the Jeju brunch cafe named for the island’s tangerines shows what a menu looks like when a whole kitchen organizes itself around one fruit. Yuja’s own season is short, October into November, and the jar is how the fruit gets past it.

Frequently Asked Questions

What makes this recipe authentically Korean?

Yuja-cha begins with a preserve rather than a leaf, a powder or a tea bag. Korean practice slices the fruit into sugar or honey, waits weeks for the syrup to pool, then stirs that syrup into water — and leaves the peel in the cup instead of straining it out. Pine nuts floated on top are the traditional finish.

What if I can’t find fresh yuja for yuja-cha?

Outside Korea the usual product is jarred yuja-cheong, sold at Korean groceries and online, and it behaves in a cup exactly as a homemade preserve does. If you would rather put up a jar yourself, Korean kumquats take the same sugar treatment — same method, different fruit — which makes kumquat cheong the closest substitute you can actually make at home.

How do I know when the yuja-cheong is ready?

Korean public sources put yuja-cheong anywhere from one week to three. The Rural Development Administration’s farming dictionary says a week, the Korea Tourism Organization about two, and a state-funded encyclopedia of Korean culture two to three. The sign is visible rather than timed — the sugar has dissolved and a clear syrup has pooled over the sliced peel.

What should I serve with Korean citron tea?

Korean custom serves yuja-cha after a meal, or at the first sign of a cold, with pine nuts on top. It sits well beside jeonggwa (정과), Korean candied fruit — candied kumquat jeonggwa is a natural match, since both are citrus held in sugar until the peel turns tender. In hot weather the same preserve goes into iced water.

One Jar of Yuja-cheong, a Whole Year of Tea

Get the jar right and the cup takes care of itself. Sliced fruit, sugar or honey, two to three weeks in a cool dry corner, and you have a syrup that goes into boiling water in January and iced water in July. The peel is the point of the exercise — leave it in the glass.

If the method appeals more than the fruit does, maesil-cheong (매실청), the green plum syrup that takes the same jar and a longer wait is the next jar to fill.

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