How to make a medicinal tea
In most cases, when an herbalist suggests a tea for a client, they’ll mean at least a quart per day of a long infusion. My favorite way to do this is using a standard 34-oz French press (they’re not just for coffee!), as it gives you a quart in one brewing, and it’s easy to just keep refilling your mug throughout the day until it’s done.
To brew your tea:
- Add a generous 1/4 cup of loose plant material to the bottom of the press and fill with boiling water. Take care to keep all the plant material below the filter mesh, as any little bits above will end up in your tea. Pro-tip: Press the plunger up and down once or twice to mix up the herb with the water. (Leave the plunger at the top.) 😉
- Depending on the tea, you can let steep for 10-15 minutes, several hours, or even overnight. Different lengths of time will draw out different constituents, and longer steep times will give you a higher concentration of a given constituent. (The recommendation will include steep time.)
- Press & pour! The nice thing about the French press is you can just press out whatever volume you want to drink, and leave the rest steeping for later (see pic above, which is ready to pour off a cup).
- When you’ve finished the whole French press, you could either refill with boiling water and steep again to get even more of the medicine out (this will make a weaker tea), or simply compost the ‘marc’ (the leftover plant material).
Of course, you can also brew tea in a pot (or any large vessel) of water and strain it out when you want to drink it. Alternatively, many folks like to use quart-sized mason jars for steeping. If you’re in a pinch and you only have tea bags, try 3 in a cup of tea to get closer to a medicinal amount of plant material.