An infusion or herbal infusion is a hot watery decoction of herbs or plant(s). It is also popularly called an herbal tea, but this is actually incorrect. The term “tea” should officially be used only for aqueous infusions of the Camellia Sinensis plant (green tea, white tea, oolong tea, black tea and red tea). Thus, when referring to a chamomile tea, this is incorrect. Juister is to refer to it as an infusion of chamomile.
There are 3 ways to infuse a plant/herb in water: a macerate, an infusion or a decoct. A macerate is a decoction of an herb in cold water. A decoct is a decoction by boiling herbs. Here I am going to limit myself only to making infusion.
It is difficult to give an unequivocal answer to this question. As a guideline, you can use 1 teaspoon of dried herb (for roots and seeds a level teaspoon, for leaves, stems and flowers a heaped teaspoon) per 25cl of water. However, this is not an exact science, dare to use your intuition and don’t hold back from experimenting. Often we tend to use too much herb rather than too little. You can also always make the infusion time longer so you need less of an herb.
An herbal infusion is usually made with water at 90 to 95 degrees. If you don’t have a tea thermometer handy, you can let the water come to a boil and then let it stand for 1 minute. That way, your water will be the ideal temperature. There are also tea kettles that allow you to set the right temperature. Just a note: different water temperatures apply for teas made from Camellia Sinensis. More on that later in another blog post.
Usually this depends on the plant part used. The softer parts (blossoms, leaves) release their contents more easily than the harder parts (such as the roots or bark) and thus do not need to be infused for as long. Most herbal books use the following infusion times as a guideline:
5 minutes: blossoms
10 minutes: leaves and stems
15 minutes: roots, seeds, bark
When you drink an infusion primarily for flavor and aroma, you can keep the infusion time relatively short. When you consume an infusion also for medicinal reasons, it is often more effective to let the infusion steep a little longer. The longer you let an herb steep, the more the bitter compounds are released as well. While this may not always be to everyone’s taste, bitter substances are often very beneficial to our health.
Place the herbs in a teapot or cup, pour the water over them and let the tea steep for as long as it takes. You can put the herbs loose in the teapot or use a tea filter (exists in paper, metal, plastic, reed…) that you can place in your teapot or cup and let the herbs steep in it. If you go for this option, make sure that the herbs have enough space to release their contents.
At ‘t Lof der Kruiden, we are quite a fan of glass teapots and tea glasses because of the visual aspect. We love to see the leaves and flowers floating around in the water and the color of the water changing. By the way, you can find all our accessories for making an infusion via Accessories.
When the infusion has sufficiently infused, the time has come to smell, taste and enjoy.
Here’s to your health!
Robin
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