During the past few weeks, many of you sent us questions about how to brew our herbs. We’ve put together some universal advice to help newcomers with their tea prepping skills.
Water
Water quality highly affects the flavor of your tea. Unless you’re lucky enough to live in an area with delicious, odorless tap water, we suggest opting for filtered.
Space
Here at Daphnis and Chloe, we’ll use a large teapot when making tea for everyone, or a simple teacup strainer when it’s tea for one. And sometimes if a herb is easy to fish with a spoon, (like Mountain Tea) we might infuse it straight into the mug (lazy but efficient). Vessels are a matter of taste & practicality, but here’s one important rule: during the infusion, whole leaf herbs need space to breathe. If you want them to taste great, don’t squeeze them into a tiny strainer!
Time
The average brewing time is 5’ and most herbal teas will start getting bitter if over-steeped. Steeping time is different for cold brews (eg. lemon verbena infused water takes at least 5 hours)
Temperature
Brewing tea at an improper temperature can dramatically affect its taste:
If you “stew” your herbs, you’ll end up destroying their flavor & precious antioxidants. If the water is tepid, your tea will be tasteless. For most whole leaf herbal teas, the water has to be around 95C (that’s like pouring from a kettle that has just started whistling).
Quantity
This depends on how you like your tea, but a generic rule is enough to fill a spoon, which normally amounts to less than 1g. Use all parts (this includes mountain tea stems) as all parts contain essential oils. Herbs can be steeped up to 3 times, in the same day.
Personality
Add lemon, honey, ginger or a slice or orange to your Mint Teas. Pair Mountain Tea with fennel, or with a few leaves of Sage. Serve Dittany along with a prosciutto sandwich. And if you happen to come up with a mind-blowing combination, share it with us! We’re all ears…
pics by @recordsintheden feature @carlyhaaseduester prepping a Pennyroyal, ginger & orange infusion.
