Simple herbal tea brewing methods
Important Factors for the Perfect Cup of Herbal Tea
- Your water needs to be HOT… as in, you just boiled it.
- You need to cover your tea while it steeps.
- You need to let it steep for the proper amount of time. Most teas steep anywhere from 3 – 15 minutes. The longer it steeps the more bitter it may taste.
How To Make The Perfect Cup Of Herbal Tea
Supplies:
- a tea cup or mug
- some herbal tea – great starter teas are peppermint, chamomile, and green tea
- a tea strainer or filter
- honey, agave or maple syrup
Directions:
Step 1: Boil Some Water
It doesn’t matter if you use a tea kettle to boil your water or if you boil it in a sauce pan on the stove top. The tea kettle makes quick work of it, but either will do. You can also use an electric kettle to boil your water in about a minute if you really need a small amount of boiling water quickly.
The goal here is to boil the water so that it’s so hot that it quickly and easily infuses into the herbs and works to pull out the properties of the herbs… as well as the vitamins and minerals too!
Step 2: Place Herbs In Tea Strainer
Now here… if you don’t want to mess with loose leaf teas, that’s totally fine. You can purchase premade herbal tea bags or you can buy seal-able tea bags and make your own using loose leaf teas. There are a lot of options. I personally like using loose leaf teas with strainers. I think it’s so much easier, and I know my herbs are fresh and haven’t been in a box for a year already. Anyway, put about a tablespoon of herbs into your strainer or your tea bag if you’re making your own, and place it in your tea cup.
Step 3 – 4: Pour Hot Water
Super simple. Pour your just boiled water into your cup so that your herbs are submerged in the hot water.
Step 5 – 6: Steep Your Tea
Cover your tea cup with another bowl or plate so that the steam doesn’t escape. This helps the essential oils that are in the herb not to evaporate out of your herbal tea with it’s steam. Yes… there are essential oils in your tea. Not enough to harm your body, but they’re a part of the plant so they need to stay in your tea so that everything works together like it was meant to. After you’re done steeping your tea, you can sometimes see the oil-like film floating in patches on the top of your tea… it’s so cool!
Steep times will vary depending upon what herb you’re using and how hard (or tough) it is. For most tea leaves and flowers, 10 minutes of steeping is perfect. If you’re using a harder herb like barks or berries, give it about 20 minutes to steep. If you’re using roots, you’ll need to let that steep for at least 30 minutes, and sometimes you even need to simmer these on the stove in a saucepan over low heat.
Step 7: Strain Your Tea
If you used a tea bag, just squeeze the excess water out of your tea and compost your bag… or make another cup with it since you can usually get two cups of tea out of one bag. If you used a tea strainer, just take it out of your cup and compost the tea in it, or like I said, use it again.
Step 8: Sweeten Your Tea
This is it… the last step. Sweeten your tea if you’d like with whatever sweetener you prefer. I love using honey. It just goes with tea, but you can use whatever sweetener you favor. Just a little is needed. I mean, there’s nothing worse than super-sweet herbal tea. In fact, after you get used to drinking teas regularly, many times you’ll find that you don’t even need a sweetener in your tea. You can even use herbal honey if you have some of that made which will give your tea a double whammy!
So basically, this is it for making a perfect cup of herbal tea all in 8 simple steps.
